Month: November 2010 (Page 1 of 2)

Flynn Lives: END OF LINE?

November 20, 2010 / Robbie Smith

It has been a busy two months for Flynn Lives, which has been a nice change of pace for players who had been growing anxious for activity following the two month lull post San Diego Comic Con. In early October players noticed a new puzzle on the Flynn Lives Facebook page that, once cracked, led to tickets for a screening of twenty minutes from Tron: Legacy in IMAX 3D in theaters across the country for Tron Night, October 28th.

Ordinarily such a screening would be prize enough for most players but Flynn Lives did not stop there. Just days before the Tron Night screening, the Flynn Lives website updated, letting players know that the game was back with a vengeance and that the endgame had begun. Players began frantically searching the site for updates, and it was quickly discovered that Zackâ€™s popular Arcade Aid puzzleÂ game from months past had been updated with new titles of classic video games.

Players worked together and beat the updated game, earning new achievement badges within just a few short hours, but it was the message with the final achievement badge that left the forums buzzing. Titled End Game, the unlocked achievement let players know that something was coming in the mail soon from Flynn Lives. Â A screening and swag? Players speculated that this was surely the Endgame hinted at on the Flynn Lives main page and as Tron Night came and went, everyone anxiously awaited their package, their final parting gift from Flynn Lives.

ARG vs. MMORPG: More Real, and More Social

November 15, 2010 / Priscilla Haring

Editor’s Note: over the past year, Priscilla Haring conducted a series of interviews with players of alternate reality games (“ARGs”) and massively multiplayer online games (“MMORPGs”) to delve into the motivations that drive player involvement. Haring kindly agreed to share a summation of her findings, provided below. For her full thesis and other related papers, visit her site at http://www.priscillaharing.info/Academics.htm.

Several interviews and a blanket survey of gamers I conducted shows that alternate reality gaming environments are very real to its players. Not in the sense that players â€œconfuseâ€ the realm of make-believe with that of reality, but in the sense that is these environments constitute an important environment eliciting real emotions, real interactions and real results. ARG players experienced their game environment and the other players in them as being more real than MMORPG-players did. I found that an ARG creates stronger effects due to high perceived reality, this combined with several transference effects into â€œreal lifeâ€ makes it a good learning environment: one that would be very suitable as a social learning tool.

There are many similarities between ARGs and MMORPGs. The underlying worlds created for both ARGs and MMORPGs exist without the presence of individual players. So while players are necessary to populate the respective game worlds and drive the story forward, the worlds themselves exist independently. Similarities between ARG and MMORPG can also be found in the importance of the social aspect of gaming. For a MMORPG, the open social interaction is important, while for an ARG this interaction has a direction and a purpose. The social interactions in ARGs are not just any form of human-to-human contact but are specifically collaborative in nature. Naturally, collaboration is also possible in a MMORPG, but it is not a necessary component.

A Peek Behind Previously Closed Doors with Power to the Pixel

November 11, 2010 / Michael Andersen

Unless you’ve presented a slide deck to potential production partners and financiers, the process of pitching a transmedia property probably seems like a foreign concept. Since 2007, Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Forum has sought to make this process more transparent. The centerpiece of the conference was The Pixel Pitch, where nine transmedia projects were pitched in an open forum before a jury of decision-makers, commissioners, and industry executives with a Â£6,000 prize on the line.

Michel Reilhac, the Executive Director of ARTE France CinÃ©ma, gave the first of two keynotes kicking off Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Forum on October 12, discussing The Game-ification of Life. In his keynote, Reilhac recognized that the ubiquity of gaming culture is a reality that cannot be ignored in storytelling and experience design.

Reilhac traces the gamification of life through cash incentive, loyalty, and status reward systems. He notes that in gaming culture, the status / bragging mechanic is the most powerful tool for interaction, citing the prestige of having a platinum airline mileage card, earning Foursquare badges, and gaining social equity through Twitter followers as examples. Just as players turn to games to satisfy different motivations, transmedia participants seek different methods of interacting with stories. Specifically addressing alternate reality games, Reihlac celebrates the genre’s ability to empower players, not through an avatar, but as themselves. Alternate reality games engender trust that extends beyond the game and into the real world.

The second keynote was delivered by Campfire Media’s Mike Monello with the alliterative title Babies, Buns and Buzzers, a historical look at the last century of experiential entertainment told through the framework of Coney Island, and running through an ARGFest-spawned obsession with tiki bars (along with a brief mention of Campfire’s work, including the multi-platform viral campaign leading up to author Andrea Cremer’s Nightshade).

Elect Garrison Medill: The Next Mayor of Chicago

November 9, 2010 / Jane Doh

We’re just now recovering from the mid-term elections here in the United States, but Garrison Medill is making a fierce run to become Mayor of Chicago. This “outside the Beltway” candidate, a Pratt University graduate with an MFA in sculpture, calls himself a “forward-thinking mayor.” At his campaign kickoff party, Garrison Medill took a firm stand: “What Chicago needs is a strong push toward technologies of the future, so it can be a thought leader in this country and around the world.”

No, no, incumbent Mayor Daley (in office since 1989), did not suddenly throw up his hands and leave the top municipal seat of the Windy City. But don’t tell that to Garrison Medill â€” he’s the protagonist in an alternate reality game created by students in a Writing, Language, and Culture seminar focusing on alternate reality games at Columbia College in Chicago.

In this course, run by Dr. Brenden Riley (who has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education for his Zombies in Popular Media class),Â students are guided through a “collaborative approach to learning and work” as they design, build, and launch an ARG. Seventy percent of a student’s grade hinges on their participation in the development, implementation, and evaluation of their classroom-grown game.

Guided by the efforts of Riley’s class, Garrison Medill is reaching out to Chicago voters by making public appearances, including a live Mayoral Expo on campus where Medill squares off against an opponent. Medill has certainly made some waves among theÂ politicosÂ in Chicago. A number of community responses to Medill’s run for mayor can be found from the student community’s blog, Vote or Don’t, and the political blog, Not Another Daley. This is just a small sample of the online assets of this student-created game.

Cast your vote for the next Mayor of Chicago by checking out Garrison Medill’s campaign page or follow along atÂ the game thread on Unfiction.Â Will this plucky, dark horse candidate make it to the top of the municipal food chain? Doesn’t he just look like a natural-born Mayor?

PICNIC on Crowdsourcing Cars and Apple Stores

November 3, 2010 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

We return to ARGNetâ€™s coverage of PICNIC 2010 with more coverage from day one of the conference, themed “Redesigning Design.” The first speaker of the afternoon section, Tim Kobe, is founding partner of Eight Inc., referenced as “8_” throughout the presentation (and for the rest of this article).Â 8_ is a combination of many different things, all rolled into one company: design agency, architectural firm and “collaborative design innovation studio.”

Their output, so to speak, is design for both residential environments, products, and commercial buildings and spaces. One of 8_’s most famous projects was developing theÂ architectureÂ and design for the Apple Retail Stores. According to Kobe, 8_’s goal is to find strategies to design for brands to engage the consumer.

Kobe’s presentation was titled “Making Design Real,” but mainly served as a showcase for what 8_ does, starting off with a clip from Men in Black where several applicants for a position at the MiB need to fill out a questionnaire while sitting in egg-shaped chairs.Â Kobe followed the clip with a quote by Charles Eames: “The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem.”Â In Kobe’s own words, design is equal to serving a certain purpose as best as possible.

_8 works with clients like Apple, Citibank, Coach, Gap, HP, Nike, and Swatch and embrace the fact that they make things (even though they are not fabricators), preferably things that change the way people think, feel, and act. They pride themselves in building “irrational loyalty” as Kobe calls it. And why do they have that opportunity? Because, apparently, 80% of production companies think that their product is differentiated in its market, while only 8% of the consumers agree. Kobe notes that 50% of all purchases are done based on word of mouth, and 80% of word of mouth is generated by direct experience.

DevLearn10: Paging Dr. Strangelearn

November 2, 2010 / Jane Doh

Life as a Mad Scientist can be really, really tough.Â Sometimes it’s difficult to get the other Mad Scientists to sign on to your amazing discovery, your new way of doing things, your “Eureka!” moment. Â Everyone has experienced bureaucratic inertia, office politics, and personal opposition to new ideas and innovation, but atÂ Dr. Strangelearnâ€™s Learning Laboratory, you can equip yourself with vital tools to overcome opposition, maybe even help others “learn to stop worrying and love the bomb.”

Dr. Strangelearn and his army of Mad Scientist friends are all characters in Tandem Learning‘s latest alternate reality game designed to enhance the upcoming DevLearn 2010 conference in San Francisco from November 3rd to 5th. The conference, sponsored by The eLearning Guild, will focus on technology-enhanced organizational learning and knowledge-sharing strategies. The Mad Scientists are being played by learning industry experts whose true identities will be unveiled at the conference and on Twitter. At DevLearn10, there will be sessions at the Dr. Strangelearn Information Stations where participants will have a chance to meet the experts.

This year, attendees of DevLearn10 will be exposed to many new learning strategies, and Dr. Strangelearnâ€™s Learning Laboratory will help DevLearn10 participants handle organizational objections to implementing those strategies when they get back to the office. Through the game, research, case studies, and academic papers are being shared with players to arm them with what they need to convince their organizations of the feasibility and value of new learning strategies.