Tag: orbital colony (Page 1 of 2)

Orbital Colony Puppetmaster Chat

January 23, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

As is tradition with the endgame of a successful Alternate Reality Game, the Puppetmasters of Orbital Colony have announced a post-game Puppetmaster chat to be held on Saturday, Jan. 28th. The chat will start at 7:00 pm EST (GMT -5) in the #inquiringminds channel on the Chat-Solutions IRC network. We have set up a linked chat page here at ARGN, located here, from which you can access the chat and, quite possibly, get a chance to ask your questions about the game and the experience.

From the announcement by bagsbee, one of the PMs: Since Orbital Colony started out as a training ARG, I would definitely encourage everyone to attend, even if you didn’t play the game, and especially if you are an aspiring PuppetMaster. Pretty much everyone on the team started out with little or no PM or BTS experience, and we learned a lot along the way. We would love to share our experiences with you, and answer any questions you might have.

We’ll see you all on the 28th — space elevators are optional.

Orbicon’s Stellar Finish

January 22, 2006 / Carie Ward

Orbital Colony finished up this weekend, finally answering the question as to what happened to Orbicon scientist Steven Mae.

The beginning of the end started when players discovered Cassandra’s blog on the Inept website. The mysterious Cassandra, who looked too much like Davina for everyone’s comfort, was on the station and that she was the one who had kidnapped Steven.

With the help of the players, Seth set up a trap for Cassandra. He would put up a fake blog post saying that more information of Steven’s had been seen in the Gardens. When Cassandra showed up to collect it, he would capture her. At 7:00 EST, players were able to listen in on what was happening in the Gardens. When confronted with the fact that she was caught, Cassandra collapsed, and gave Seth a clue to Steven’s whereabouts in case something worse happened to her.

At this point, the audio connection to the station is cut. Raider, the ever resourceful SAIPets robo-dog, is able to connect to IRC and the players start to help Seth decode Cassandra’s message. The name Cassandra provides was another directory on her website. Players had to solve a couple of different number slide puzzles before they got their answer. Steven was being held in the Level 13 Biolab V.

Rushing off to save Steven, station security protocols caught up to Raider, and he had to implement additional measures to stave off detection. Upon reaching the Biolab, Seth (with Raider and Stevie in tow) finds that Igor Bronco is there waiting. Igor had known what was happening all along, thanks to his elaborate security system. Igor’s plan falls apart though when his two daughters, Cassandra and Davina, walk into the Biolab instead of his security forces. When Cassandra pulls a gun on Igor, he grabs Stevie to use as a human shield. Unfortunately for Igor, Raider’s programming to protect Stevie kicks in and he attacks Igor, saving Stevie from both Igor’s clutches and the bullet from Cassandra’s gun.

With Igor’s plan uncovered, and Steven found unharmed, the Puppet Masters were finally able to come out from behind the curtain (u:steven.mae p:FLYHGGH). We would like to congratulate everyone involved in the game for a job well done.

Responses from the players have been positive, and we look forward to any new games that this group may put together. So if you happen to see any of those brave individuals who sacrificed their time and energy into this game, be sure to congratulate them.

A post-game PM chat is in the works, although no dates and/or times have been finalized. We will have all of the details on ARGN as soon as they are announced.

Orbital Colony Launches

November 23, 2005 / Carie Ward

After twenty-one months of planning, fifteen months of pure speculation and a four months of dissecting the only (found) in-game site, Orbital Colony has finally launched.

Very neatly timed with the finale of Last Call Poker, Orbital Colony launched November 16th. Players who had provided their phone numbers in the Name That Rock competition were called by the TEP Foundation (not to be misheard as PEP, PEG, PET, TET or any other variation) and asked a series of survey questions. After the calls were over, players rushed to find two brand new sites to peruse: The TEP Foundation and SAI Pets

A few days later, after a hacking incident at Orbicon, three more websites appeared on the horizon. Coalition Against the Road To the Stars, Path Back to Eden and The Inept are all working to bring Orbicon down, as if Orbicon didn’t have enough problems with suing both NASA and Google.

What started as a mere training ARG for potential PMs has grown into a fully polished game that just happens to be run by several members of the unFiction community (and if you keep your eyes peeled, you might just run across a name or two carefully hidden in plain view). With phones to answer, emails to send, videos to watch, audio to listen to, and quite possibly the long lost brother of Wongmo, Orbital Colony has something for everyone to enjoy. So sit back, strap yourselves in, and get ready for your ride into space.

Discussion at UnForums

Wiki hosted by Deaddrop

IRC Chat in #orbital hosted by Chat Solutions

Orbital Colonyâ€™s Stellar Launch

August 2, 2005 / Yulia Mostovoy

The long–awaited Orbital Colony took off last week with a stealthy launch during ARGFest NYC. Attendees of the convention found, within their welcome envelopes, a rather bizarre credit card advertisement that promised to send their credit “into outer space!”

The embedded puzzle (what? of course there was an embedded puzzle!) led players to the Orbicon Corporation, a company dedicated to the noble task of building a space elevator and bringing humanity to the stars. Theyâ€™re holding a â€œName that Rock!â€ contest, so if you want to get involved, why not enter? There might even be a few rock puns that havenâ€™t yet been made.

Initially envisioned as a training ground for new PMs, Orbital Colony appears to have grown into a full-fledged ARG sometime during its two years of development. The projectâ€™s meta page has more information on its unusual history.

Discussion at Unfiction
Wiki
Chat (irc) in #orbital

This Week in ARG: Ilovebees on G4TechTV; Orbital Colony Trailer

August 29, 2004 / Steve Peters

The PMs-in-training over at Orbital Colony have released a trailer for their upcoming ARG. The quality is impressive, and seems to give us the promise of a very intriguing, well-done Alternate Reality Game.

Orbital Colony announced a launch in the Summer of 2004, but no firm date has been set, yet. So keep your eyes open, or better yet, subscribe to the ARGN Announce List (in the sidebar at right) to keep tabs on what’s going on.

In other news, Ilovebees and ARGN were both featured on a recent episode of Pulse on G4TechTV. This episode will be re-airing all week, but if you can’t catch it on TV, it’s been made available online.

VIDEO: Windows Media-HI|Windows Media-LO

Two More ARG Leads

July 16, 2004 / Steve Peters

Holy crap, what a busy day it’s been! First, we find orbitalcolony, then along comes a Fedex package leading to ilovebees.com with its mysteryious AI virus. Now we have two more good solid ARG leads to add for your investigation.

First comes a tip from the trailer for the upcoming remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Seems the evil company portrayed in the film has an online presence: www.manchurianglobal.com. What’s interesting about this (very well done) corporate site is that it has a password protected Limited Partners Extranet. In addition, there’s a Voice Recognition Game which may provide some fun, and a Kyocera phone, if you’re lucky.

Finally, Konamouse at unfiction alerted us to www.sen5241.net, which very well looks like it may be a tie-in to the upcoming DVD release of the classic George Lucas film THX-1138.

Well, that’s about it for one day. Happy hunting!