Month: October 2008 (Page 1 of 4)

ARGNet Owner/Editor to appear on Irish talk radio morning show

October 30, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

So, it turns out that the folks in the Emerald Isle are itching for news on alternate reality gaming. After RTÃ‰ news ran a nice feature about Traces of Hope earlier in the month (which featured a brief appearance by yours truly), the newstalk radio station has called and arranged for a chat about ARGs on October 31st at 10:45 am local time (and yes, as I write this, that’s only a few hours away, at 6:45 am ET).

I am pleased to be a part of the on-air discussion, and hope that a few of our readers will be able to tune in, either on the radio or via the live Internet audio stream.

Editor’s note 10-31-08: Leave it to me to leave out the time zone. Added, but the interview has already happened. Watch this site for a downloadable mp3 version.)

After a Brief Commercial Break, Project Abraham Returns

October 28, 2008 / Michael Andersen

Resistance 2 / 42 Entertainment Have you seen the new advertisement for Resistance 2 on the television recently? Apparently, the end of the world is coming soon to a video game retailer near you. And with the game’s release mere days away, the Project Abraham alternate reality game has returned.

Over the summer, Dr. Cassie Aklin (Katee Sackhoff) selected candidates for highly experimental and dangerous clinical trials based on weekly votes by the players. Weekly calls from Dr. Aklin encouraged players to continue as one by one, the soldiers selected for injection died. Finally, only Sergeant Nathan Hale and Lieutenant Kenneth Danby were left alive: Hale, because he somehow survived the injection, and Danby because the players hadn’t gotten around to voting on his death warrant. Following a live event at the Penny Arcade Expo on August 29, the game’s websites went underground.

According to an article on Wikibruce, the silence came to an end on October 17 when the fax machine on the Alliance for American Autonomy website started blinking. Setting a record for longest fax ever, three days later the site was updated with a list of 20 cities and a countdown that expired yesterday at 2PM EST.

The expiration of the countdown revealed the Metastasis website and coordinates for the first five locations: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles. The first lucky player to reach each location picked up a Project Abraham satchel with an assortment of seemingly random items as well as a code that unlocked new puzzles leading to comic panels.

The next drops will take place today. With the game’s November 5th release, it looks like the endgame may be in sight, so be prepared for anything.

Click Here for the list of drop locations
Click Here to join the discussion at Unfiction
Click Here to view the wiki at wikibruce.com

Operation Sleeper Cell: Cruel 2 B Kind Live Events

October 27, 2008 / Michael Andersen

This coming Saturday, you can help fight cancer by screaming out compliments and pleasantries to crowds of complete strangers. That’s right, Operation: Sleeper Cell, the ARG with a heart of gold, is organizing not one, not two, but THREE simultaneous games of Cruel 2 B Kind on Saturday, November 1st from 2PM-4:30PM in the following locations:

Southbank, London – 40 places
Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester – 40 places
City Center, Plymouth – 32 places

A nominal (minimum) entrance fee of Â£4 will be charged for each player, with all profits going to Cancer Research UK. Players must form teams of 2-4. Players need to be at least 16 years old to take part in this event. E.V.I.L. operatives will be conspicuously absent from this event in order to maximize the “loveliness-spreading” out in the field.

Cruel 2 B Kind was created by Jane McGonical and Ian Bogost as a game of benevolent assassination and public space reclamation. Players use a series of compliments to “assassinate” other players and make the day just a little bit better for the random passerby. Thus, holding a series of Cruel 2 B Kind games is a perfect fit for Operation Sleeper Cell developers Law 37. And with three consecutive games running across the UK, the winning teams might even have the chance to call up their cross-country compatriots to “congratulate” them.

Go to the Operation Sleeper Cell Events page to register for one of the games of Cruel 2 B Kind (C2BK) and donate lots of money to Cancer Research UK. Lots and lots of money. On a completely unrelated note, wasn’t The Manchurian Candidate a great film?

Click Here to start playing Operation Sleeper Cell.
Click Here to join the discussion at Unfiction.

Muggle Quidditch 2.0: You Must Be This Big to Play

October 25, 2008 / Michael Andersen

Video courtesy of GXC Studios, Inc.

You may not be aware of it, but the Harry Potter fandom community does some fairly nifty stuff. Apparently, people like JK Rowling’s franchise enough to put on puppet shows, start rock bands, and write fan-fiction of Professor Severus Snape… well, let’s just say there’s a reason I’m not linking to Snape’s fanfiction here.

Sufficed to say, I consider myself a fan of our bespectacled hero and his ragtag crew of hooligans. When my city transformed downtown into Diagon Alley for the midnight release of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, I was one of over 50,000 in attendance, decked out in House colors. So you can imagine my excitement two weeks ago when I learned about Muggle Quidditch 2.0, a Harry Potter themed alternate reality game. There’s a lot of creative energy out there in the community that could be harnessed for a great game.

Since our last article, the game mechanics of the non-magical version of Quidditch have been revealed. Contrary to my expectations, the ARG’s version of Quidditch will not require players to actually run around cradling broomsticks between their legs. Instead, GoCrossCampus.com is hosting a virtual game of strategy, highly reminiscent of Risk, where the four Hogwarts Houses battle for supremacy. Once a day, individual players log on to charge their energy that can be used to move or attack rival territories. Since this process takes less than a minute a day, the game is ideal for keeping its casual players engaged, while creating opportunities for more committed players to create elaborate strategies or negotiate with other Houses.

There’s just one catch: the game won’t start until 15,000 people register to play. Matthew Brimer, Chief Marketing Engineer at GXC Studios, Inc., informed me that “things are pretty hectic around here what with Ludo out of commission and the Ministry breathing down our neck to get this game going with the numbers they’re expecting. We’re just doing the best we can to cooperate with the MQ 2.0 effort and do our part as Ludo’s partner.” In order to achieve these numbers, members of the Chamber of Secrets forums (the official forums of MuggleNet.com) are reaching out to Harry Potter fan communities far and wide to get the word out. The Wizard Rock groups The Gryffindor Common Room Rejects and The House of Black have agreed to create demos to help the cause.

Since one of the main selling points of Muggle Quidditch 2.0 is the opportunity to support your Hogwarts House, GoCrossCampus’s decision to sort players randomly is surprising. While this can be chalked up to a rather capricious Sorting Hat, the decision to set a mandatory player base is harder to rationalize. The strategy has been successfully utilized in the past, but the move is a risky one. When 42 Entertainment launched its campaign for the Dark Knight by removing a pixel for every email sent to the website, a massive fan outpouring revealed the image within hours.

Muggle Quidditch 2.0 has not been put on hold for the recruiting period: numerous clues have been hidden in maps at the GoCrossCampus website, existing websites have updated, and players were charged with drafting a speech for Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt. However, by waiting to provide an outlet for casual participants, the game may see high attrition rates from registrants before it reaches 15,000.

Click Here to register to play Muggle Quidditch 2.0.
Click Here for the discussion at Unfiction.
Click Here for the discussion at the Chamber of Secrets.
Click Here to visit the game’s Wiki.

Citizens of Virtue

October 20, 2008 / Geoff May

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the “Citizens of Virtue,” and they sure seem to be up to some shady practices. In this ARG-that-campaigns-against-ARGs, the C.O.V. are a fundamentalist Christian group that may or may not be holding some individuals captive while also apparently lying about their business practices. Citizens of Virtue is part of an Alternate Reality Game created by Rob Bell and Don Golden, as a promotion for their latest book – Jesus Wants to Save Christians. Yes, it is in fact of a rare breed – the Christian ARG.

Our first encounter with the C.O.V. came from an email we received in late September from a Ms. Savannah Merks, listed as the Public Relations Specialist for the group. In the email was a press release which claimed, among other things, that, “[a] sweeping wave of ‘alternate reality’ games is steering our nation down a dangerous path, according to the Citizens of Virtue (C.O.V.), a Christian organization dedicated to improving Christian lifestyles around the world.” Merks herself noted that, “[w]ith alternate reality games, literally millions of people could be caught up simultaneously in a mind-altering swirl of confused thinking.” Yeah, imagine that!

Since then, we’ve received a number of game tips pointing us to the game, and while it was part of the discussion in episode 63 of the ARG Netcasts, we know we’re a bit behind on getting involved in this one. However, we know that the community discussion at the Unfiction forums will help those who wish to get started, and we’re pretty sure that anyone there will be glad to help get you up to speed!

We’ve got more information about the plot, the book tie-in, and a few interesting images of swag cards we received in the mail after the hump, so click on through!

SuperStruct: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It… And We Feel Fine!

October 17, 2008 / Celina Beach

The year is 2019, and the world is caught in the grips of several SuperThreats, fighting for it’s very survival – but the citizen/players of this world aren’t taking it lying down. They’re creating survival plans, researching the SuperThreats, searching for allies, and making SuperStructures – plans and organizations created to survive, and combat, the SuperThreats – and in the end, helping to save the world!

Such is the premise of Superstruct , the new “massively multiplayer forecasting game” by the Institute for the Future (IftF), an “independent, nonprofit research group with over 40 years of forecasting experience”. The game’s Director of Game Research & Development is a familiar name to the ARG-Faithful: Jane McGonigal, fresh off her “Find The Lost Ring” success. With SuperStruct, the IftF gives players a possible scenario of what life is like in the year 2019, and players tell them how they’re coping, surviving, or even thriving, in that world.

So far, the players are doing just that – via blogs, wikis, discussions, they are creating their future personas and shaping the world of 2019. There are a lot of players participating in the shaping – 127 “Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals” (or SEHIs) in the first hour, and almost 1000 in the first 24 hours after launch. The site experienced a brief outage, which was restored in a matter of hours, and more than 1900 players had signed up by Day 2. At last count, 4481 players have registered.

Surviving in IftF’s 2019 isn’t easy. The 5 SuperThreats are daunting – Quarantine (of people infected with a contagious respiratory disease), Ravenous (hunger caused by widespread food shortages), Outlaw Planet (hackers and criminals causing major disruption in vital networks and the political process), Generation Exile (natural disasters forcing people to migrate seeking refuge), and Power Struggle (conflicts between the oil-rich countries against alternative energy sources). It is the task of the SEHIs to form Superstructures in order to combat and survive the global threats. So far, the SEHI’s *are* surviving, and apparently very successfully. In the 10 days since Superstruct launched, players have added 5 years to our survival horizon.

There is a mild competitive aspect to the game as well – players can earn “badges” by completing tasks and missions in relation to the Threats. Winning badges and other recognitions can lead to several honors, which will be selected and awarded by an A-list of celebrities, such as Tim Kring (Heroes), Warren Ellis (comic and Science Fiction author), and Ze Frank (Internet comedian).

What’s it all for? Besides being plain good fun, at the end of its six-week run, the IftF will release the official “Superstruct Report,” detailing insights gained and best tactics discovered for surviving future threats and creating superstructures. The report is expected to be released in April 2009 and will be emailed to all registered players. Even after the official game is over, the Superstruct site will remain live and open in archival form, for players to share their accomplishments with friends and family.

So, think you have what it takes to survive in the harsh world of 2019? Think the future needs what you have to offer? You have about 4 weeks to prove it, so get going! Superstruct is scheduled to end its run on November 17, so get in there and save the world!