Announced today on the game’s meta blog, many of the folks behind Eldritch Errors will be on IRC tomorrow night starting at 9:00 pm EST to answer questions about the game and hopefully give us some ideas of what’s to come next.
With the recent completion of Book Three, this promises to be an entertaining and lively chat. You can join the fun either via your web browser with the ARGN java chat, or if you have an IRC client, the server is irc.chat-solutions.org, and the room is #stfeline.
The phrase “This Is Not a Game” has resonated over the years as an often misunderstood mantra for alternate reality gaming. Thus, I say the following with a bit of hesitation: This is Not a Game is, surprisingly enough, not actually a game. At least, it isn’t if you’re talking about Walter Jon Williams’ newest novel of the same name, due out March 24th.
This Is Not a Game (not to be confused with Dave Szulborski’s book of the same title) is a novel about Dagmar, an alternate reality game designer trapped in Jakarta during a revolution. When one of her co-workers is gunned down in the parking lot, she draws on her game’s player base to help her without their knowledge, diverting player talents and energies to solve her problems within the context of the ARG.
Walter Jon Williams is no stranger to alternate reality games, and worked with 42 Entertainment as a writer for Last Call Poker, working with prose, radio plays, comic books, sound files, puzzles, and teleplays. You can read more about his time working on Last Call Poker at his blog, Angel Station. His experience with Last Call Poker inspired him, in his words, “to take this bright, hot, blazingly hip new medium and turn it into ink on dead paper.” Williams’ goal with This Is Not a Game is to capture both the frantic pace and sense of danger ARGs can convey due to the immediacy of feedback and dynamic nature of the game due to player involvement.
While the plot of the novel centers around alternate reality gaming, there are no plans to develop cross-media…yet. However, Orbit Books has already picked up two more books in Williams’ new universe, starting with a direct sequel, Deep State.
Click here to pre-order This Is Not a Game at Amazon
Just before the holidays, we asked our readers to come forward and join our staff of volunteers, and wouldn’t you know it, some of you did just that. Now that the craziness of the holiday season is over and we are firmly planted in 2009, we’d like to make things official by welcoming our new staffers!
John Fogg joined the ranks of the ARGonauts in 2002 when he followed along with Push, Nevada, the short-lived television series with an extended reality and a one million dollar prize. According to his staff bio, he spends a lot of free time researching cross-platform narratives and stories that play out in a non-traditional ways, and so far he has written about Natalie Ross and Breathe, the new project by Expanding Universe.
Tim Hill is a filmmaker and storyteller from the sunny shores of Australia, earning him the distinction of being our sole international staffer in a while. Tim is the creator of Jack Kain an interactive film that takes place on the Internet. He is the only person on staff that I know of who “debat(es) the merits of fluoridated water.” Tim has written a lovely article on This is My Milwaukee, an experience that has created a great deal of buzz within the ARG community and beyond.
Robbie Smith describes himself as, “a flash-developer by day and comic nerd by night.” He got involved with the Dark Knight ARG and hasn’t looked back since. Robbie wrote a recent article on Transition Village and a brilliant feature called The Family That Games Together in which he details how he managed to get his mother involved with Project Abraham. We imagine Robbie might not be celebrating the recent NCAA football title win by the Florida Gators, seeing as how he is a rabid fan of the state rival Seminoles of Florida State.
Once again, we welcome our new writers to the fold, and know that their contributions will mean even more news about ARGs, cross-media experiences, extended realities and anything else we might dig up, tune into or have sent to us in the mail.
Conspiracy theorists are often a depressing lot, decrying the end of the world at the hands of a cabal of aliens, monsters, and the Illuminati. Thus, it was refreshing to receive an email from Jeffrey Freedman, internet reporter and administrator for TopSecretConspiracy, who somehow manages to believe every scatterbrained theory he hears while retaining a sense of humor. Of course, it helps that he’s promoting the new Dreamworks animated sci-fi comedy Monsters vs Aliens in the process.
According to Freedman, “There is a massive conspiracy at work being engineered from the media, the NWO, the Illuminati, genetic laboratories, corporations, public utilities, crossword puzzle writers, and various recreational senior activities groups. They want us to be passive and ignore the looming extraterrestrial threat in our midst. They want us to fall asleep at the wheel of our tractor trailer truck of truth and derail on the freeway of propaganda.”
TopSecretConspiracy.com is Freedman’s attempt to help people learn the truth, but he doesn’t stop there. In Episode 7 of “Expose the Truth”, Freedman infiltrated WorldCon 2008 to discuss a government and conspiracy to disguise the truth of the alien threat as “science fiction” stories through a comedic series of interviews with convention attendees. The previous six episodes are conspicuously absent from the website, no doubt due to those troublesome recreational senior activities groups.
io9 reports that a number of book covers filmed in “Expose the Truth” include the characters Bob, Dr Cockroach PhD, and Ginormica from the upcoming Dreamworks film Monsters vs Aliens, scheduled for wide release March 27, 2009. Furthermore, the website’s Terms of Use state that the website is made available by Pacific Data Images, Inc., a computer animation production company owned by DreamWorks SKG.
Interaction is currently limited to contacting Mr. Freedman via twitter or email with evidence of the massive conspiracy encompassing practically every aspect of our lives: however, once players prove their loyalty, they can become part of a “trusted cabal of citizen journalists.”
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