Month: November 2011

Dark Score Stories Hides King’s Secrets in Bag of Bones Photo Essay

November 28, 2011 /


Image courtesy of Campfire

In anticipation of A&E’s upcoming adaptation of King’s novel Bag of Bones airing December 11th and 12th, Campfire created Dark Score Stories, a deceptively simplistic photo essay that provides a glimpse at life in the unincorporated township of TR-90. High fidelity black-and-white images shot by award-winning photojournalist Joachim Ladefoged provide artful glimpses into life at Dark Score Lake, complemented by audio interviews with the local townsfolk featured in seven separate sections of the site. Scratch the surface, however, and an entirely new experience inundated with King-themed puzzles and easter eggs emerges.

The first indication that something might be amiss with an otherwise straightforward photo essay comes from the headline images featured at the beginning of each of the seven sections. In her lighthouse studio, Jo Noonan’s smile is briefly wiped clean. Gerald Lean’s face is twisted by a grimacing smile at his shop of curios. And Lance Devore’s hands shift from a protective embrace of his daughter Kyra to a much more threatening grip. These changes are all the more startling for their subtlety, adding a new dimension to the audio commentaries.

Puzzles are integrated into the experience through messages hidden within each photo essay. Bold letters in the website’s introductory message instruct readers to “go down left side” for clues to seven increasingly difficult challenges. Solving each clue leads to a new exclusive preview of A&E’s upcoming miniseries as well as seven GetGlue stickers. The real challenge, however, lies in the photographs themselves.

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“Vanished” Teaches Children to Save the Future with Science

November 27, 2011 /

Images courtesy of the MIT Education Arcade

Scientists from the future reached out to present day scientists as part of Project Phoenix to investigate a natural disaster that wiped out the historical record as part of Vanished, an alternate reality game designed exclusively for children. The game was a collaboration between the MIT Education Arcade and the Smithsonian Institution, and sought to engage kids and teens in the role of scientific detectives and inspire scientific learning through an epic story. Prior to the game’s launch, ARGNet provided a sneak peek at the upcoming campaign. Now that the game has come to a conclusion, I followed up with Caitlin Feeley and Dana Tenneson of MIT’s Education Arcade to take a post-mortem look at the game.

The true heroes of Vanished were the players, who uncovered the mystery by making scientific progress week by week. The game was also populated by a full cast of characters; the most prominent was Lovelace, an artificial intelligence who traveled back in time to assist in the investigation. Moderators had in-game personas, like Storm and Megawatt, who played the roles of guardians and guides. The journey also involved interacting with real-world scientists from a variety of fields, and players even encountered a few villainous trolls and hackers among their own ranks before reaching the end.

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Six to Start and BBC Bring Codebreaking Back to Bletchley Park

November 10, 2011 /

Image courtesy of the BBC

On September 10, 2011, Pete Ryland cracked The Code and took home the coveted prize, a unique bronze and silver mathematical sculpture by Bathsheba Grossman. The lead-up to the tense finale was a collaborative transmedia treasure hunt centred around the three-part BBC2 show The Code, presented by Marcus du Sautoy. The game was designed by Six to Start, working with the BBC from the beginning to integrate clues and puzzles seamlessly within the broadcasts.

Before the first airing of The Code on July 27, about 700 postcards were sent out with an image and a code. Collaborating on Facebook, participants in this first stage soon discovered that each postcard image was a thin horizontal slice of a three-dimensional Platonic solid. Several of these “perfect” shapes then had to be combined and arranged into three concentric spherical shells – revealing the complicated nested sculpture that would be the grand prize.

Now the hunt could begin in earnest. The main stage of the game was intricately connected with the three episodes of the show: Numbers, Shapes, and Prediction. For each episode, participants discovered three clues: one by watching the program, one clue by playing related Flash games on the website, and one clue by solving a puzzle described on the blog. They also had to complete the Prime Number Challenge as a group, which involved uploading photos of all 305 prime numbers from 2 to 2011 to collectively receive the sixth clue for each episode. The six clues were then entered into a codebreaker to reveal three passwords, which granted access to the next stage of the game: The Ultimate Challenge.

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