Month: September 2010 (Page 1 of 2)

Dexter Game Concludes with a “Bang”

September 28, 2010 / Nicko Demeter

Just in time for Sunday’s premiere, the Dexter alternate reality game ended on September 23rd with the Infinity Killer’s death.

The game’s conclusion was appropriate for a game riddled with references to the inevitability of fate. Driscoll Connor, also known as the “Infinity Killer” and “F8,” arranged to meet the self-professed “Serial Huntress” Dee Pratt at a restaurant with two remote-operated rifles trained at both of their heads. The Infinity Killer thenÂ left both of their fates in the hands of the players, asking them to vote for who would live and who would die. This dramatic stand-off, streamed live at a hacked version of the Serial Huntress website, echoed both characters’ formative experiences as potential victims of the Roulette Killer over thirty years ago. As a child, Connor chose to shoot the Roulette Killer instead of shooting Pratt. And finally, decades later, the players chose to spare Pratt, condemning ConnorÂ to a death worthy of a serial killer of his caliber.

The final moments of the game were broadcast live and are now available on YouTube,Â providing a look inside the mind of a deranged psychopath and also insight into his determined hunterâ€™s motivation. During The Infinity Killer’s final moments, he looked at his monitor, tallied the numbers, and accepted his fate.

The end of this alternate reality game also serves as a chance forÂ Modernista! to tally the numbers and reflect, as the creators of this experience. Â The team should be lauded for providing an overarching plot that was easy to follow along with at the developer-created Hunter Prey blog, for allowing for a significant amount of interaction between the characters and the players, and for remaining intriguing to the last moment. Active player discussions led to over 11,000 posts on the Serial Huntress forums alone over the course of the game. Those that followed the Dexter alternate reality gameÂ from the beginning will remember it fondly.

PICNIC: Everything We Know About Transmedia Is Wrong

September 26, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

This installment returns to our coverage of PICNIC with one of the “PICNIC Specials” sessions, and advanced masterclass entitledÂ Everything We Know About Transmedia Is Wrong! It’s worth noting that some speakers referred to the session as Everything You Know About Transmedia is Wrong!, a subtle distinction.Â The panel was moderated by Seth Shapiro, two-time Emmy Award winner, principal of New Amsterdam Media,Â and a leader in the field of digital media, having worked for a number of media initiatives. One of these initiatives that may be familiar to our readers is Tim Kring’s Conspiracy for Good.

All of the panelists were first given the opportunity to introduce themselves along with a short presentation on their ideas on transmedia. First up was Dan Hon,Â co-founder of Mind Candy and Six to Start, currentlyÂ a senior creative at the London branch of Wieden + Kennedy.Â Dan started by showcasing one of W+K’s recent major success stories, the Old Spice viral campaign. He then prefaced his definition of transmedia by discussing The Beast, a game that many consider to be the first alternate reality game. HonÂ reminded the audience that The Beast played out on the pre-YouTube, pre-Facebook and pre-Twitter “archaic web”, a time when sharing and collaboration online was synonymous with email.Â The Beast and its launch was based on the principle of “Internet archeology”: if you start digging for something online, you might just discover a story and even get involved in it. So, in the case of The Beast, people intrigued enough by a brief mention of a “sentient machine therapist” working on the movie A.I. to search further would stumble upon a deep narrative.

According to Dan, there’s a major challenge facing the traditional alternate reality game, something we might nowadays call transmedia entertainment: people seem to associate them with massive collaborative problem solving and puzzles. One of Hon’s major complaints with current alternate reality game and transmedia development upon which he as waxed eloquent in the past is thatÂ ARGs are not mainstream enough because they “incorporate obscure shit that no one want to see or do” by relying on tactics such as steganography, cryptography and solving stupid puzzles. Hon chastises developers, saying,

Stop doing this! Your audience is not stupid. If you put a work of fiction in front of them, they will understand what it is and we do not have to pretend that ‘it is not a fucking game.’ The number of people who are interested in mathematical cryptography is very very small; instead, let’s make stuff that just entertains people. I don’t want to jump through hoops to enjoy something, I want to view Charlie bit my finger on YouTube.

What if, Hon posits, the first alternate reality game wasn’t based on a scifi movie, catering to a geek audience? What if it was based on the movie AmÃ©lie, which also came out in 2001? An interesting question. What would have happened? It begs the question: are we are using the alternate reality gaming genre in the right way?

Redesigning the World with PICNIC

September 24, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

This article is the first installment in ARGNet’s coverage of PICNIC 2010. Over the coming days, DaniÃ«l van Gool will provide summaries of the sessions he attended as part of ARGNet’s media partnership with PICNIC.

PICNIC reinvented itself once more this year. The self-proclaimed largest conference on innovation and creativity in Europe, held annually at the end of September in Amsterdam, managed to pull off another rather spectacular festival. Reinvention was a prominent feature of this yearâ€™s conference, as seen through it’s theme “Redesigning the World,” focusing on changes that are going on around us on different levels and with different impact.

This is ARGNet’s fifth year in a row covering the conference, and while many aspects have been reinvented, some thing remain constant. Â The PICNIC Club, which serves as the central hub of the event, looks amazing. The Club was impressively decorated, brimming with things to do and see and buzzing with people lounging, networking, eating (in actual picnic fashion) and browsing the offerings of several high and low-tech innovators. There was the 3D Lounge, where you can submerge yourself in audio and video using Sonyâ€™s new 3D TV system, as well as a setup of Microsoftâ€™s Kinect (which, incidentally, if rumors are to be believed, will not feature the much-hyped Milo & Kate game that Peter Molyneux talked about extensively at last yearâ€™s PICNIC).

Over the next few days, I will be reporting on some of the sessions I attended, starting here with David Romanâ€™sÂ thoughts on emerging industries and the emerging markets they will (need to) be catering to, in a presentation titled â€˜The Next Generation Enterprise meets the Net Generation Consumer.” Roman is the Chief Marketing Officer at Chinese-based PC manufacturer Lenovo, and has a history working with companies including HP, NVIDIA, and Apple.

We Lost Our Gold: Pirate Booty Still at Large

September 22, 2010 / Jane Doh

As reported previously on ARGNet, a befuddled pirate-and-ninja crew lost a treasure chest filled with 10,000 gold-colored US dollar coins somewhere in the five boroughs of New York City. This past Sunday, incidentally International Talk Like A Pirate Day, the final episode of the eight-part We Lost Our Gold web series aired, bringing the plot to a close. However, the pirate booty is still at large.

In July, several trailers, media appearances, and hilarious press releases built up interest for the series until it began in earnest on August 1st. Over the course of the episodes, the crew retraced their steps through New York City to try and remember where they misplaced the treasure chest. Starting off easily enough with Episode 1, the clues clearly led treasure-seekers away from Central Park.

However, as We Lost Our Gold progressed, the clues became more numerous and more difficult and also rife with red herringsâ€”usually tributes to filmmakers. The episodes parodied different genres and popular shows, such as The Larry King Show, where it was revealed that the pirates had stolen the money from Glove & Boots, a web series-making puppet duo consisting of Fafa the Groundhog and his friend Mario.

From Story to Legend Initiative Brings Together Transmedia Talent

September 21, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

Do you know what distinguishes a legend from a mere story? A legend is a storyÂ that is carried by its audience, often gaining some of the audienceâ€™s own perspective. This definition resonates with the working definition for transmedia storytelling.

To discuss and expand on this topic, several parties in the Dutch professional film industry have teamed up to organize From Story to Legend,Â an initiative to get leaders in the transmedia realm together to talk about their experiences in creating stories and worlds and share these experiences with professionals in the field of traditional media.

On September 27, during the Netherlands Film Festival, prominent speakers will share their thoughts and experiences. Their combined input will be turned into a masterclass on transmedia and film, which, apart from professionals in the film industry, will also be open to students in the relevant field.

Seeing Red with Webishades: An Introduction to a Few Web Series

September 12, 2010 / Michael Andersen

Images courtesy of No Mimes Media

Last week, I got a phone call from Felicia Day . . . and you can too.

It all started with an interview with No Mimes Media by Jenni PowellÂ posted on Tubefilter, a news site dedicated to web television. While Tubefilter’s primary focus is web television, alternate reality games and transmedia tactics have been successfully utilized in the space since the early days of YouTube, when lonelygirl15 became one of the biggest breakaway hits for scripted web television.

In the article, Powell mentioned that she recently “had the pleasure to collaborate with No Mimes Media” on a project. And in response to Powell’s final interview question asking where someone could find an ARG to play, No Mimes Media cryptically replied that “you never know, a rabbithole might even be on this very page somewhere, if you look carefully enough!” Sure enough, below that comment was an advertisement for Webishades.

Webishades, it seems, are an amazing new form of sunglasses that let you watch web television on the go. The campy website behind the product fully embraces the aesthetic atrocity that typifies many infomercial pages, while featuring images of the cast and crew from popular web series donning the signature red sunglasses. By following a sequence of clues, players hop seamlessly across websites, email, Facebook, Twitter, and phone trees, punctuated by an automated call from Felicia Day herself.

This experience was highly reminiscent of another one of No Mimes Media’s projects, Mime Academy. Mime Academy was a comedic storytelling experience presented at ARGFest and South by Southwest that billed itself as a “10 Minute ARG” for its ability to tell a cohesive interactive story in a limited amount of time. Webishades succeeds admirably at replicating the condensed feeling of interactivity that made Mime Academy such a powerful exemplar for the potential of alternate reality games.