Month: March 2006 (Page 1 of 2)

Find Araya Wraps Up

March 30, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Find Araya, a grassroots Alternate Reality Game that began in late January, came to an end last week, and from what we gather, the experience was satisfying for players of the game until the end, when the game ended suddenly. We caught up with Mountain Girl, an UnFiction forums member who was one of the most active participants in the game, and she had this to offer:

The premise of Find Araya was just as the name implied. Araya Benedict was missing. An anonymouse note led detective James Pearson to the case. The note described a young girl missing for over a month and pled for help finding her.

After searching diligently for any links to who Araya was, the team was led to Ditch Media. The company appeared to be a group specializing in the creation of alternate realities in order to secure a better future for a subject the company deemed needy. The alternate reality would not be revealed to the “subject” but instead completely take them by surprise and change their life forever.

NextArt – The Voice

March 25, 2006 / The ARGNet Staff

NextArt: The Voice debuted last night at the Orlando Film Festival. Previously reported on here at ARGN, Jeff Wirth’s style of spontaneous theater blends real life seamlessly with a created reality, dropping a “spectactor” into a situation in which he or she is another person and must act accordingly.

If you’re in the Orlando area, you can use the contact information here to get involved with some of the real-life events taking place in the next week. Otherwise, watch the story unfold on the blog and on the Rosetta Corporation home page. Since there was a casting call posted to the Unforums a month ago, you might discover that some of the online interactors are people you know.

NextArt: The Voice runs until Thursday, March 30, 2006.

ReGenesis – Season Two to Debut

March 19, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

When ReGenesis hit the airwaves last year, people were not sure what to expect with the “extended reality” that was built for the show. After all, this was the first time that a Canadian-made television series had attempted to try anything as large in scale as an Internet-based companion adventure. The end result, to the delight of many fans, was an interesting and immersive experience that showcased the talents of the team at Xenophile Media, creators of the game. Tonight, season two of ReGenesis will debut on The Movie Network/Movie Central, and with it comes a new extended reality game. This season, the game will hit the ground running, starting with tonight’s episode. Players will be able to participate on many different levels, and the worldwide audience will have greater access to key game elements, making it more accessible to people who are unable to view the series on television.

SXSW Interactive: Brian Clark of GMD Studios

March 14, 2006 / Dee Cook

ARGN at SXSW

Editor’s note: For those of you who played Art of the Heist last year, or who are currently enjoying Who Is Benjamin Stove?, you might already know about GMD Studios, the driving force behind some of the biggest Alternate Reality Games to date. Brian Clark, who co-founded the company in 1995, has become a valuable and active member of the ARG community. His energy and creativity have helped in taking the genre to new heights, and Dee Cook was lucky enough to sit down with Brian during the SXSW Interactive festival for a few words.

What is your favorite movie?
My favorite movie? Probably my favorite movie of all time would be Bladerunner. [Ed. Note: Possible spoilers for Bladerunner.]

The director’s cut or the original version?
Oh, definitely the director’s cut. No narration, no Mickey Spillane voice-over with the extra wrinkle that the Bladerunner’s a replicant (Oh, no, spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! I spoiled the movie!)

Did you see the narrated version first?
Yes.

Do you think that made you appreciate the second one better?
No. I think once they took the voice-over out, it left more to speculation. Peoples’ motivations and machines’ motivations became less clear. We didn’t need to have Harrison Ford tell us about Rutger Hauer dying. We could just watch that scene and not have to say, “Maybe in the end he valued any life, even his own.” I think that the film company underestimated the intelligence of the film-going public.

I read somewhere that Harrison Ford said he did the narration badly deliberately so they’d have to cut it.
Really? That’s a great detail – a little sabotage.

True, but I don’t know whether it’s an urban myth or not.
Yeah, but it’s interesting.

SXSW Interactive: Cluetrain: Seven Years Later

March 13, 2006 / Dee Cook

ARGN at SXSW

Speaking today at South by Southwest Interactive was a panel on the Cluetrain Manifesto. Published in 1999, Cluetrain.com is a list of 95 points regarding companies, consumers, and the relationship between the two, asking companies to wake up and deal with their customers on a human level rather than treat them as potential sources of profit. The panel, moderated by Henry Copeland (founder of BlogAds, was a discussion of Cluetopia and whether society is getting there.

One of the original writers of Cluetrain, Doc Searls, spoke on the origin of the manifesto. In the midst of the Dotcom madness in 1998, the Cluetrain founders, as they would become known, were discussing the disconnect between what the internet actually was versus what was receiving funding and how the net was playing out in the press, as if it could be an extension of the shopping malls in the real world. The founders would use their theories on marketing in order to filter out clients whose philosophies didn’t mesh with their own; if the clients did not agree with the concept of marketing as a conversation, the founders would decline to work with them. The discussion turned into the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which was kicked off by Chris Locke’s statement from the everyday citizen’s point of view, “We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. We are human beings – and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.”

SXSW Interactive: Serious Games for Learning

March 12, 2006 / Dee Cook

ARGN at SXSW

This afternoon’s South by Southwest Interactive panel entitled Serious Games for Learning provided a fascinating look at how immersive gaming is bringing new opportunities into learning environments.

Moderator Jim Brazell from the IC^2 Institute opened the program with a reference to how quickly technology has developed in the last several years. In 1995 there was a Teraflop Challenge, asking supercomputer manufacturers to develop a computer which was capable of teraflop operations (one trillion operations per second). At that time, the cost to upgrade a computer to that capability cost $100 million. Today, the XBox 360 is teraflop-capable and has a MSRP of $299.99. He projects that by 2011, a teraflop computer will cost one dollar.