This article is the third in a series, providing summaries of the presentations at ARGFest-o-Con 2008 in Boston

Steve Peters left ARGNet a few years back, but he still sticks around. Supposedly, he works for some company named 42 Entertainment that sponsored ARGFest 2008 and purchased tickets to The Dark Knight for attendees. In this Showcase Presentation, Steve Peters explained how to deal with Alternate Reality Gaming audiences using the Microsoft Vista-sponsored ARG Vanishing Point as an example.

According to Peters, there are Five F’s of Fantasticness necessary for every alternate reality game: Find, Focus, Fun, Freedom, and Fear.

The first step to every alternate reality game is the FIND: discovering the game. With Vanishing Point, 42 Entertainment targeted early adopters with puzzle boxes, puzzle graphics on Windows and technology blogs, and a taunting message suggesting that the readers wouldn’t be able to solve these. Solving the puzzles led to the main page for Vanishing Point, where, explains Peters, players found the ever effective and tantalizing countdown. So effective, in fact, that Vanishing Point included dozens of countdowns scattered around the website, each one culminating in a live event.

Which brings us to the second step: FOCUS. Players need to know what to expect when they’re entering a game. While you can pick up a book and anticipate the commitment it will involve by the number of pages, size of the font, and reputation of the author, the same does not necessarily apply to alternate reality games. Sticking to regularly scheduled updates helps generate expectations for the players. Setting more explicit boundaries through iconic touches to the websites can also help guide players and protect the developer’s sanity.

The third factor is both the simplest and the hardest: FUN. Under the direct assault of hundreds or even thousands of skilled players, puzzles often need to be difficult. However, they still have to be fun, and often building upon previous puzzles can help with that process.

Next is the FREEDOM factor. Playing an alternate reality game gives a voyeuristic experience into the lives of the characters, as players piece together their lives through emails, voicemail messages, and the various artifacts left to explore. But it’s the interactive nature of alternate reality games that bring players back, and developers must remember that there is no such thing as people “playing wrong” — the ideal development experience can be compared to Dueling Banjos. Each party calls and responds in turn, modifying aspects of the conversation to generate something special.

Finally, the FEAR factor. Players should not be afraid of the design team. The reverse is not necessarily true. For the Vanishing Point game, players often got videos of the live events online faster than 42 Entertainment, and solved most puzzles in a matter of hours, if not minutes. With such fast response times, players have to trust the puppetmasters not to ask them to do anything stupid or dangerous. And that’s a healthy responsibility.

Be prepared for the unexpected, whatever that may be. Even if the unexpected is a flexing, tattooed bodybuilder flexing in nothing but a banana hammock and sunglasses.

Check back over the next few weeks for the video of this panel when it is released.

Click Here to learn more about the flexing, tattooed bodybuilder that made a surprising appearance at the end of Steve’s presentation

After a number of panels featuring discussion between independent puppetmasters and members of different design companies, 42 Entertainment‘s Jim Stewartson (Chief Technology Officer), Elan Lee (Co-Founder, Vice President of Experience Design), Sean Stewart (Co-Founder, Creative Director), Steve Peters (Game Designer) and Michael Borys (Visual Design Director) sat down for a roundtable discussion, moderated by Kristen Rutherford, about how their team works together.

Stewart began the roundtable with a discussion of a chemistry puzzle in the Beast that was intended to look “cool and spooky” but be relatively easy to solve, and 42′s subsequent efforts to reproduce that effect in their other games. One of these attempts was Flea++, the “programming” language used in I Love Bees. In a similar vein, players would “teach” the character of the Sleeping Princess to speak as she cobbled together words and phrases from their emails and replied to them. Stewart’s favorite draft reply was “I want a cupcake.” Lee told him they couldn’t use it because it was too ambiguous — it could be a call to action for the players. According to Stewart, one of Lee’s main roles within the company is removing ambiguity from what the players see (Stewart’s summary: the creative process at 42 consists mainly of Lee saying, “That’s really good but can we have another draft?”).

Lee explained that this is important because it’s easy for puppetmasters to forget how much information they have that the players don’t.

Peters and Borys joined the company after the Beast and I Love Bees, and for Peters the creative process, at least for Vanishing Point, revolved around adding greater elegance and enjoyment to the puzzles they created and removing the potential for frustration. (Peters’ summary: the creative process at 42 consists mainly of Lee saying, “This is a really good puzzle but it’s not quite fun yet.”) Borys observed that a mistake they made during Vanishing Point was creating the first group of puzzles first; they got better as they went on, so they should have waited to do what the audience would see first until they’d had more practice. Lee explained that never designing level one first is common practice in video game design, but the just-in-time delivery nature of ARGs often makes that an impossibility, prompting Borys to lament that playtesting is another luxury often lost because of that delivery schedule.

An audience member inquired as to whether this meant that 42 doesn’t get to do any playtesting or prototyping. Stewartson and Peters agreed that in general, the company gets one shot at much of what they do. Stewart added that as Brian Clark noted in an earlier panel, turnaround times for corporate games are often extremely condensed, and that even when they have time to test elements of their games, the small groups with which they could test them don’t necessarily respond in the same way a large audience would. He credited much of their success to Lee’s ability to predict the behavior of large groups.

Another question asked about visual design for 42′s games. Borys described how love for the projects makes them go the extra mile, prompting a discussion amongst the panel members about how much they loved working with one another and admired the talents of their coworkers. Stewart described the atmosphere as more akin to playing with a band than working at a production house or ad agency. The other reason he is willing to work outrageous hours is because he feels that with an audience that is willing to pour their own outrageous hours and energy and passion into a project, the puppetmasters owe it to their audience to give it their best effort.

Rutherford repeated a question from an earlier panel about puppetmaster nightmares, in answer to which Stewartson wryly described his life as “a series of actual nightmares,” reminiscing about Last Call Poker’s poker system failing to work 40 minutes before the site launched, and realizing in the second week of I Love Bees that all they had was payphones when the players were already sick of the structure. Turning serious, Lee described his own greatest fear: that the genre into which so many people have poured their time, energy and passion will turn out to be merely a passing fad. Stewart added that the fear of disappointing the audience is one of his recurring waking nightmares.

Reasoning that things couldn’t always fit the “rosy” picture the panelists had painted about working at 42, an audience member asked if the company had suffered any growing pains. The panelists agreed that their biggest growing pain is figuring out how to grow: finding people with the relatively rarefied skills the company needs, hiring business-minded people who still understand what they do, and overcoming the difficulties of working on multiple projects at once.

A question about archiving games revealed that replayability is Lee’s “great white whale,” as well as that Stewart has in his possession the manuscript of a Beast novelization which can never be published due to complications with who owns the intellectual property.

To lighten things up, an audience member posed a more positive final question: what are the “wow moments” that the 42 team remembers most fondly? For Stewartson, it was a day of player interaction with Melissa in the programming language he’d invented, which he described as “one of the most thrilling three hours of my life.” For Lee, it’s realizing how their work has touched people, which was brought home to him when he visited Rutherford’s house and saw all the gifts and letters players had sent her. Stewart cited a puzzle from the Beast that had all the qualities that make up “the pure product” for him: a tight loop between players and puppetmasters, the risk of a highwire act, and intense emotional effectiveness. For Peters it’s the whole picture: how far the community has come. And for Borys, it’s the community responsiveness: that a day after a puzzle is launched there’s a player-created wiki page dissecting it in greater depth than its creators knew it had.

Stewart got in the last word, observing that another high point for him was during the voice actor auditions, when an unknown actress in the green room turned to her husband and said that the script reminded her of the Beast. Stewart gestured toward Rutherford: “She got hired.”

A two-part transcription of the panel is available at the ARGFest Wiki (Part 1 and Part 2).

Editor’s Note: Jessica Price works on Cathy’s Book, a 42 Entertainment property.

Thanks to Neowin’s Rob Wright and Dave Legg for hosting and editing the chat.

Game News

• Oh joyous day, the Receda Cube has been found! Of course, we talk about the center of attention in the Perplex City game, which officially ended (Season One, anyway) with the discovery of the Cube by Andy Darley, an admired and loved Unfiction forums member (Rand0m). Darley writes about his adventure here, and here. Also, here and here. Finally, here is the end of his tale. He’s a great storyteller. Aside from Darley’s discovery, we dish on how clues might have been given to one particular group and not the overall player base, and wonder why Violet was Combed Thunderclap, and how she knew about quirkyacuity.com months in advance of the site being registered.
• Deus City has responded to a player who offered suggestions, help and bug reports by asking her to leave the game, citing Terms of Service violations. We’ve got the details! We also discuss how players might become confused by the gameplay, given that two of the characters in the game are real people.

• The Human Pet has a neat new video with some interesting plot twists. We’re curious as to when we’ll find out more about the present, as the back story stuff is nice but we’re ready for more.
• Puzzle of the week: Secret Human Pet Code! Get your, um, Human Pet Decoder Rings! The code is: VMRLFFS 8:32 BWDJFVS. See this thread at the Unfiction forums for more details.
• Thanks to tips from Sylvia and molecularr, we know about the cool swag players are getting as part of the Monster Hunter Club. Also, how cool are these promos for the game by Dee Snider of Fangoria Radio (and of Twisted Sister fame)!
• There’s a live event planned for the Meigeist ARG! It will take place on February 18th in Bristol! We’re still very much loving Meigeist from afar, which is kind of sad, because we’d really love to be playing this one.
• The Vanishing Point game had a chat with 42 Entertainment but, alas, it was postponed. Another chat took place… yesterday, but we talked about it like it would be taking place… tomorrow. to be fair, we did record on Sunday, so technically, we’re right on both counts.
• There was a game called Beast of Black River. It’s over now, because the puppetmaster has met an untimely (fake, we hope) death. Well, at least it didn’t implode.
• The Million Penguin Project is an ambitious multi-author novel project that is ahead of its time. Read the site and form your own opinion if you don’t believe us.
• We welcome new writers at ARGNet. You might be surprised at who we managed to sign on.

Topic discussion

• TINAG. This Is Not A Game. What does it all mean? Lucky for you, we have authorities on the topic who are more than happy to talk about it.
• Viral marketing and the skeptics it’s creating. Sean brings in news of a stealthy Canadian hair products viral marketing campaign that had people arching eyebrows right from the get-go.

Listener Email

• molecularr sends in a great update about Monster Hunter Club that will be part of an update article at ARGNet later this week.
• Sylvia updates us as Meigeist and MHC continue to impress fans and players.

The End

• As the netcast was running a tad long, we tried to rush this through. We did mention ARGFest (all panel members will be attending) and the Colts’ win at SuperBowl XLI. There’s also a super secret announcement about ARGFest and the Netcast series.

Contact us at our special netcast email address, netcast@argn.com with your tips, suggestions, concerns and submissions. Call us on our ARGNet voicemail at 630-274-5425.

Game News

• The Heroes 360 experience moves along, albeit very slowly. There is a lovely player wiki (yarr, there be spoilers) that has been created, so hopefully the game gains a bit more momentum, soon. Also, see this Blogspot page for more (spoilers ahoy!) information.
• Meigeist is getting love from afar. They also have a nifty player wiki which will get you caught up in less time than you can say “Save the cat, save the world.” Although, you’d sound silly saying that.
• Perplex City players are pretty darn close to finding that cube, we hear. Something about a rock, and a Jurassic… something. They also have some pretty cool plans for the reward money.
• Monster Hunter Club explains away some advertising, and characters show up at the Today show.
• Puzzle of the week: A grid puzzle needs reconstruction (and deconstruction) for Monster Hunter Club. See this thread at the Unfiction forums for more details.
• The VirtuQuest people send us a response to our questions about Township Heights. Jackie weighs in on the “mildly insulting” situation. Then the rest of the panel piles on.
• Check out this beautiful mock-up (totally unofficial, we understand) of the Neowin-Unfiction branded AMD chip. This will apparently be possible thanks to the winner of the meta puzzle of the Vanishing Point game. Neowin/Unfiction for the win! We also report on the now-postponed VP post-game chat with 42 Entertainment, so ignore that part when you get to it.
• Studio Cypher will be releasing the fourth chapter in their Multiplayer Novel soon, called High Stakes.
• Jessica talks about her experiences with Ravenchase, which you can also read about in her outstanding ARGNet article.
• Jane McGonical is going to be the first ever female keynote speaker at the Game Developer’s Conference in March. We couldn’t be happier for Jane and wish her the best!
• ARGFest is less than a month away.
• We let the cat out of the bag about ARGNet’s partnership with SXSW for the Screenburn festival. Details will be released in the coming weeks. Brooke will be speaking at the conference, for those who can make it.

Topic discussion

• We talk about how the recent kerfuffle in Boston over the Aqua Teen Hunger Force marketing campaign might impact on alternate reality gaming. This leads into a crazy discussion about pay-to-play and registrations — not to be missed!

Listener Email

• Charlie wants to know where to find old episodes of the netcasts. Here, Charlie. However, with this being the second request for a Netcasts-dedicated page, it’s something we’ll look at for the near future.
• Okay, so now the Monster Hunter Club forums have direct post links. We got the message, loud and clear. And, in one jerk’s case, loud, clear and with ubercrankiness. For the record, we talked about this on the last netcast, and the problem was solved shortly thereafter.
• The infamous Unknown Sender wants to know if there will be another training ARG in the future. We’re not sure, so if anyone out there has an answer, let us know.
• The blessed Thunderwolf sends in a player summary for Meigeist, which will be in tomorrow’s online edition of ARGNet. Thanks, Karl!

The End

• Superbowl predictions — not that they matter now, since the game is over (yay Colts!) but here were the picks: Sean took the Patriots, Jackie chose the Ravens, while Brooke, Jessica and Jonathan all picked the Colts. Then Brooke almost changed her mind. Oh, hindsight, you wicked beast.

Contact us at our special netcast email address, netcast@argn.com with your tips, suggestions, concerns and submissions. Call us on our ARGNet voicemail at 630-274-5425.

This was Loki’s final message to those few of the hundreds of thousands of players of the Vanishing Point Game – a promotion for Microsoft’s upcoming release of the next version of its Windows operating system, Vista – who had managed to be present for the final live event of the game…and to witness the final clues to the identity of “Loki” and her secret to winning, among other things, the grand prize trip into space.

In the video, Loki recounted her mission and praised the progress of the players so far. Photographs from previous live events flashed across the screen, along with screen shots of web sites and message boards that had been involved in the campaign. As the video ended, a single white flare shot out over the lake from behind the screen, music swelled from strategically placed loudspeakers, and the crowd was bathed in bright hues as broad brush strokes of flame painted the sky, synchronized to the wicked techno beats tumbling their way up the hill.

The volume of the fireworks display was only briefly rivaled upon the finale, as the crowd burst into cheers and applause.

Vanishing Point Game was perhaps the most successful puzzle competition to date, with available prizes worth half a million dollars. It was produced by 42 Entertainment for Microsoft and apparently co-sponsored (or at least co-branded) by AMD, a microprocessor and graphics chip manufacturer and Intel’s largest rival. By all reports, the volume of active participants in the game exceeded the producers’ expectations by a handy margin.

The campaign consisted of four online virtual puzzle boxes, the opening of each coinciding with live events in locations around the world. Clues were projected on the faces of buildings, written in the sky with smoke, and the whole shindig was kicked off by a video projected on the waterspouts in front of the Bellagio Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. As each box opened, players attacked the dozen puzzles revealed, collaborating in online chats and message forums. In addition to the puzzles released each week, an over-arching meta-puzzle challenged players to find Loki.

In Seattle, both the video and fireworks contained some of the final clues participants required in order to solve the twelve puzzles revealed in the final box that evening. Keen-eyed players searched for patterns in the shapes and sequences produced by the exploding shells.

After the display, the milling crowd was directed to a stand of waiting buses, which had been outfitted with butcher paper lining the side windows so as to obscure the view. As they boarded, riders were admonished by an irascible gent to “look straight ahead, and don’t try to peek out the windows.”

The trip was short to Fremont Studios, where an after-party was prepared for attendees, hosted by Microsoft. They pulled out all the stops, with catered food, hosted bars, a live DJ, pinball games, and wi-fi all provided gratis. T-shirts were available, printed on the front with “I disappeared on 01.27.07″ above a Vanishing Point logo wreathed in smoke, the back listing the “tour dates” of the campaign’s live events.

Performance artists depicted famous people who had vanished – the theme of the evening – and in some cases managed to convince players that they held clues to the Vanishing Point puzzles (they didn’t).

The evening’s success was only slightly marred by production problems related to the high-definition video of the final clues at the park, as the media company contracted for the purpose had trouble uploading their video to the game’s server. But some players were able to use the hosted wi-fi and laptops to post their own versions later in the evening. Other players were perhaps less altruistic, as this reporter spied one individual attempting to email himself clues from an unattended personal laptop at one point during the evening.

Although the contest and prizes were unavailable to Microsoft employees, those intrepid programmers were not left out in the cold by Vanishing Point. The character Loki, ostensibly the “puzzle master” behind the entire campaign, had an actual office on the Microsoft campus, according to Steve Peters of 42 Entertainment, one of the actual puppet masters behind the puzzle master. Stickers were placed around the campus to attract the attention of employees, and provided directions to the curious that were intended to lead them to Loki’s office. There, the observant might have noticed some strange patterns of tape stuck to the office window. In fact, if lined up at just the right angle, one could match up the tape with the Seattle skyline, and a bullseye marking the spot. Solving this puzzle would have provided the successful employee with an invitation to attend the endgame festivities, but only one individual was reported to have done so.

The final meta puzzle revolving around the identification of Loki’s identity was solved by players late in the evening of January 30th, though the name of the player who will step into homes everywhere with their name engraved on the AMD chip has yet to be revealed. According to the Vanishing Point Game website, the sweepstakes winners will be drawn February 1-2, and the winners for both the sweepstakes and the AMD chips will be announced publicly on the game’s website beginning on March 1st.

Game News

• The Vanishing Point game is over, and Sean was there in the flesh for the festivities. Get the skinny on the behind-the-scenes action!
• Township Heights comes to a sudden and unexpected end. Was this a cash-grab or is the game still going, with the apparent endgame being part of the game?
• Gumshoe is billing itself as an interactive radio play. It launches on Valentine’s Day, and we’ll be listening.
• Meigeist kicks it old-school with enough content, puzzles and interaction to satisfy a multitude of players.
• The Sector Seven/Transformers ARG viral campaign stalls. Fanboys and fangirls around the world really want this to be more than what it currently is.
• Odina Nova will relaunch in March after a short hiatus. Our very own Jessica Price has the details on ARGNet.
• The Heroes 360 experience launches for the hit NBC television series. Save the cheerleader, play the ARG?
• The Library of Babel site for the Perplex City game holds what could be the final clue for finding the Receda Cube, after an article/advertisement in the London Sunday Times. Find it soon, please.
• Monster Hunters goes live, a tie-in with the North American release of a South Korean movie called The Host. Did you get your Yeti in the mail?

Topic Discussion

• Extended Realities (movies, TV, books) and the battle between parallel experiences v. immersive experiences
• Capturing the audience — with 11 games concurrently running, where can games draw their players from? How do they target new players?

Various Discussion

• No listener email or voice mail. Have we been reduced to “I’ll call you sometime, I promise” status?
• Jonathan’s birthday falls on Superbowl Sunday, and his Colts are in the big dance. It’ll either be a victory hangover on Monday, or a crying-in-the-beer hangover. Either way, send the aspirin now.
• Our open call for writers is of great importance right now. Get involved, you lazy writing bastards! (Stringers welcome — listen for a definition).

Contact us at our special netcast email address, netcast@argn.com with your tips, suggestions, concerns and submissions. Call us on our ARGNet voicemail at 630-274-5425.

Update: For all of you who shared Brooke’s frustration at not being able to link to the posts on the Monster Hunter Club forums, you can now do so quite easily. Just click on the little square picture at the top of each post and Voila! We don’t want to say it was because of us, but we like to think so Wink (thanks to Sylvia for being the first to point this out!)

It’s our first netcast of 2007, and I’m happy to be joined by regular panel guests Brooke Thompson, Jackie Kerr and Marie Lamb, with special panel guest rose. In our ninth netcast, we talk about games, games and more games. Subscribe to the ARG Netcast feed through FeedBurner or via iTunes.

Game News

• Vanishing Point is live and full of wonderful prizes and challenging puzzles. And, no, we don’t all think it’s an ARG… even if 42 Entertainment is behind it.
• Puzzle of the week: The META puzzle from Vanishing Point. Read more about it at the Unforums.
• Township Heights, the new VirtuQuest alternate reality game, launches with a pay-to-play model and a few T-shirts.
• Meigeist (the ARG formerly known as Geist) goes live and people are already buzzing about the quality of the game this far. Oh, and there are cute, cuddly cats involved. You can get behind-the-scenes information here if you can’t wait for us to publish an ARGNet article about the game.
• NeoVenus Construction (AKA Nevec) looked to be stalled before candy bars and a new blog opened the game back up with a resurgence. See Krystyn Wells’ ARGNet article for more information.
• The Sector Seven/Transformers ARG viral campaign stalls. Fanboys and fangirls around the world really want this to be more than what it currently is.
• Perplex City has life, as the players feel that they are close to finding that darn cube. It’s not an easy path, however.
• Second Life Future Salon panel discussion on ARGs took place on the 27th of November, we hope to have access to the audio from that discussion soon.
• The Human Pet reinvents itself with more videos and a shiny new website, complete with community-forming forums.
• Deus City is on a bit of a hiatus, claiming that the recent storms in the U.S. have thrown an icy wrench into their plans. Yeah, sure — nice excuse. No, really, we like it.
• Marie talks about Doom Skull, which we were ready to pass off as just another game… until she really sold us on it.
• Preview for next week — Bristelgoodman.. On first glance, it looks rather creepy. We’ll know more by next week.

Topic Discussion

• Catch a special netcast with the panel discussing ARGFest 2007: San Francisco! We made it into its own separate netcast because of all the juicy news, information and gossip!

Listener Email

• We get word on an explanation from the Another Contest Worth Entering puppetmaster. We get further word that the missing prize issue has been resolved. We’re now satisfied enough with this to never speak of it again.

Rambling Chit-chat

• The iPhone — because if we didn’t talk about it, we couldn’t call ourselves a podcast. Which we don’t, but it’s too cool to ignore.

Contact us at our special netcast email address, netcast@argn.com with your tips, suggestions, concerns and submissions. Call us on our ARGNet voicemail at 630-274-5425.