Month: October 2005 (Page 2 of 3)

ARGs in Now Playing Magazine

October 24, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

Recently, our very own Steve Peters was part of an interview in Now Playing Magazine called “Meet the Puppetmasters”. Before you go off to your local convenience store in a mad panic, hoping to find the issue there on the magazine rack, check this out — Now Playing has decided to embed an ARG right in the magazine! Without saying too much, those of you who are lucky enough to get a copy of the magazine can look to the page where the article is found. From there, we’re told that there are a series of interactions that players can go through. Neat!

(There’s also a link on their website, and after trying 2267 ways 2 view the content, we had success. Maybe you can as well…)

Thanks to Now Playing Magazine for featuring ARGs in such an interesting article!

Sable & Shuck Winners

October 24, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

Belated congratulations go out to community members Wishi-San and Meak, who were two of the four winners in the Sable & Shuck ARG. A promotional device for Stella Artois beer, the Sable & Shuck ARG ran from September of 2004 until wrapping up in June of this year. Because the final puzzle was never solved, contest organizers announced earlier this month that they would split the grand prize of Â£10946 between the four that “were most worthy of the prize”. That means that Wishi-San and Meak each get a nice Â£2,736.50 slice of the pie. Bravo to them and the other two unidentified winners!

Another Mysterious Countdown

October 15, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

News articles at Team XBox and GameSpot (scroll down to Rumor #2), as well as an anonymous tip to ARGN, have led us to The Lutz World Report, a self-proclaimed “‘truth’ source of the Paranormal and Extraordinary.” But wait — what is that there? Is that… a countdown timer? Counting down to… sometime on October 18th? What could it all mean???

We all know how important countdown timers are in the world of Alternate Reality Gaming — who could forget the launches of I Love Bees and Metacortechs? At the same time, one shouldn’t forget non-ARGs like Our Colony and OrigenXBox360. The moral of the story, as it always is, is to wait and see. We’ll be watching to see what happens on Tuesday with cautious optimism.

Lost and Found

October 14, 2005 / Dee Cook

ABC’s hit TV series Lost has captured the imagination of its viewing audience since its phenomenal pilot episode. There are at least 8 different official and fan-created websites (one of which we reported on before the summer) to explore for more clues and fan-fiction about the Lost universe.

Warning: this article may contain spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 of ABC’s Lost.

Last Call Poker: A Full House?

October 13, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

I know, I know — it’s been forever since we last talked about Last Call Poker. It’s definitely not because of lack of update information — we’ll speak to that in a few minutes. No, the problem is… I had to pry (that’s right, pry) myself away from the poker tables at LCP to make this update happen. So many of us here at ARGN are so thoroughly enjoying the game, that we’ve been setting this update aside while we won monster pots from players the world over. If this means that we’re all going to have to do some soul-searching (and major gambling detox) afterwards, then so be it. But enough of my lilly-livered sniveling — let’s get to the good stuff.

Project Gateway 2 Ramps Up

October 11, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

The sequel to Project Gateway is up and running, with a very slick design and some interesting real-world interaction thus far. Atrophied, a member of UnFiction’s forums, gave us a quick reference to all that has happened so far:

Clues from emails led players to a dead-drop at Providence College in Rhode Island on the 24th of September. The dead-drop gleaned a leaflet and CD containing an archive of the original PG1 website (including flash movies, audio files, etc.).

The next big event was an email from [email protected]:

Quote:
I think… I think it is time we talked.
Come to #historyneverdies on irc.chat-solutions.org. I know you know how to get there.
Sunday night. 8:00 PM EST.
If I were you, I’d start formulating good questions. I will only answer certain ones.
-The Historian

Sunday refers to Sunday, September 25th. A transcript is available at unfiction.

This chat then lead players to another real-world meeting, this time with an author at a book signing at the Colonial Mall in Harrisburg, PA. The author was Stephen Pytak (mentioned a couple of other times up to this point in the game). He gave us a letter from Shadown to Rowen Darkblade (both of PG1 fame).

Thanks Atrophied, it sounds like things are going well. I can see from the forum discussions that many players are enjoying this game thoroughly.