Month: March 2007 (Page 3 of 4)

The Darker ARGs: This ARG is Not Yet Rated

March 16, 2007 / Michael Andersen

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a planned series of editorials exploring horror- and dark-themed ARGs from a number of different perspectives.

The saccharine lyrics and cheerful smiles of the popular Japanese pop group “Dessart” hide a dark secret: coded messages hidden within stage performances, websites, and promotional posters for the band lead concerned individuals to a cult inciting mass suicides among Japan’s disaffected youth. This is not a game. No, really — this time it really isn’t a game. Rather, it’s Japanese director Sion Sono’s award-winning film Jisatsu Circle. The movie paints a dark picture of what could happen within the alternate reality gaming industry.

Viewers never find out what drove Dessart to embed messages encouraging suicide within their seemingly upbeat music, but with song titles like Mail Me, it’s not too improbable to assume it was a viral marketing ploy gone awry.

This raises a question relevant outside the realm of fiction: what level of responsibility do PMs have over actions their players take?

ARG Netcast, Episode 16: Back to Basics

March 14, 2007 / Jessica Price

One week after the Greatest Show in ARG, panelists Nicko Demeter, Sean C. Stacey, Marie Lamb and Jessica Price join host Jonathan Waite for an hour long look at recent game developments and the fallout from ARGFest-o-Con 2007. Read the show notes (coming soon!) at the ARG Netcast web site. Subscribe to the ARG Netcast feed through this link or via iTunes.

Fest Quest ’07

March 14, 2007 / Will Bagby

OH NOES!! Gupfee’s been kidnapped! Even as the last words of keynote speakers Sean Stewart and Elan Lee echoed around the conference room, ARGFest attendees were quickly rounded up into groups, based on the color of the square on the back of their lanyards (so that’s what those were for!), and each group was given an envelope. The person or persons responsible demanded payment in the form of items (including a ciphered cake) that had to be collected from various locations in San Francisco. Save the ARG Ghoddess Gupfee!!

The first puzzle was to figure out where to go first. Some double letters in a piece of poetry, plus a “decoder ring” image, led to the place – MUSEE MECHANIQUE – and an item – COPPER SAL. Copper Sal?! What the heck is a sal? Was it decoded wrong? Did the kidnappers make a mistake? Already, the Questers were filled with doubt. No matter, Gupfee must be saved. {cue dramatic music} Off to the MusÃ©e Mechanique!!

The FestQuesters quickly collected their wits and headed over to Fisherman’s Wharf and the MusÃ©e (which is fancypants talk for “museum”). Fortunately for our intrepid Questers (and Gupfee), there was a labeled map enclosed with the directions, and the first team was there in no time. Upon entering the museum, the first thing they saw was Laughing Sal. Hey, it’s a Sal! And right next to Laughing Sal was a penny squisher (for lack of the technical term) that made — you guessed it — copper sals. The next puzzle used the plaque in the Laughing Sal machine, and led us to another San Francisco landmark, the world-famous Ghirardelli Square.

ARGFest Panel Videos on YouTube

March 11, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

Without the work of Ben Wochinski (encoding and uploading), Celina Beach (filming) and Sean C. Stacey (transcribing), among others, these videos would not have been made possible. A huge thanks to everyone who worked hard to get these videos up and available.

The 2007 ARGFest-o-Con in San Francisco had some brilliant speakers, and now you can watch the panel discussion from the comfort of your own homes! Click on the YouTube link above to get to the playlist that contains all of the videos that were recorded in San Fran, including:

The Introduction
Panel 1: Developing an ARG
Panel 2: Running an ARG, Part 1
Panel 3: Roundtable with 42 Entertainment
Panel 4: Running an ARG, Part 2
Panel 5: Defining ARGs and the Future of ARG
Keynote Presentation: Sean Stewart and Elan Lee, 42 Entertainment

Some of the videos had to be split due to length of discussion, but everything that the panelists discussed is right there on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Also, transcriptions are currently in the process of being completed at the ARGFest-o-Con wiki, and if any of you have a few extra minutes through the day, help them out by transcribing a few minutes of video.

ARGFest 2007: Cruel 2B Kind

March 11, 2007 / Jessica Price

Welcome to beautiful downtown San Francisco!
Did you see that amazing cable car?
You’re looking gorgeous tonight!

You’re too kind.

I should know, of course, since teammate Elan Lee and I are the Cruel 2 B Kind World Champions. We achieved this renown by carefully plotting our strategy weeks in advance: we monitored traffic patterns in the play area from a helicopter, had minions who quietly attached GPS tracking devices to ARGFest participants so we could locate them easily during the Friday night game, and brought in an industrial psych firm to do detailed profiles on our competitors so we’d be able to out-think them.

There’s a vicious rumor going around that we ended up partners by accident, hadn’t read the instructions in advance, and won only through sheer dumb luck, but I will of course categorically deny the truth of said rumor. And you should believe me. After all, I’m the world champion in a game of sneaky assassination, so you know you can trust me.

Cruel 2 B Kind is a game of “benevolent assassination” in which you slay other players with compliments and other kind phrases. You don’t know who else may be playing, so you have to be kind to random strangers as well, often with entertaining results. The three phrases listed above were our weapons, which we deployed against other teams in a sort of verbal rock-paper-scissors encounter to determine who was victorious and who was dead of an overdose of kindness. At ARGfest, we played the “Booty Variant” in which each player carried a piece of booty to award to the assassin who killed them most impressively. The booty ranged from the bizarre (a length of rubber tubing) to the edible (cookies and gourmet chocolate) to the truly entertaining (the “It’s Just A Flesh Wound” shirt Elan acquired from one of our first victims). Each time you kill another player, they are absorbed into your team.

The 2007 ScreenBurn Festival

March 8, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

We are happy to announce that ARGNet is an official media sponsor of the 2007 ScreenBurn festival, taking place at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival this weekend in Austin, Texas. The ScreenBurn festival is an initiative dedicated to providing programming about the newest developments in the gaming community, and we are honored that the festival’s coordinators are recognizing alternate reality gaming as an important piece of the gaming landscape. The festival will run from March 9th through the 13th, and will feature panelists many ARG fans are already familiar with. Brian Clark from GMD Studios and Tony Walsh from secretlair.com will be there, as well as Evan Jones from Stitch Media and Dan Hon from Mind Candy Design. We are fortunate to have representation at the festival as well, as staff writer Brooke Thompson (representing giantmice.com) will be talking on the panel entitled, “ARG! The Attack of The Alternate Reality Games,” which will be moderated by Alice Taylor of the Wonderland blog.

For those looking for a more robust experience (you know, the kind that goes beyond the realm of ARG), you’ll be happy to know that, according to the ScreenBurn website, “panels cover topics such as blogging, business models, content creation, digital convergence, e-learning, entrepreneurism, open source, ubiquitous computing, web design, web hacks and web standards.” With such a depth of topics and panels, the festival should be one of the can’t-miss events of the year.

So, with all of those superstars in attendance, how do you get in on the festivities? Easy! You show up at the door of the Convention Center in Austin, and you pay your money to get in. For the sheer amount of panel discussion and events taking place this year, the $350 cost for the weekend is a bargain. So, if you want in on one of the greatest cutting-edge festivals of the year, get down to Austin and get in to SXSW Interactive. Oh, and if you see Brian, Evan, Dan, Tony or Brooke, say hi for us.