Author: Brandie Minchew (Page 3 of 5)

Staff Writer
Brandie became fascinated with interactive fiction after reading/clicking through The Dionaea House. Shortly after, she learned about Alternate Reality Games from reading a news story about the lonelygirl15 "hoax", which lead her to Wikipedia, which led to ARGs, which led to unFiction, which led to the most exciting year of her life in 2007.

After spending five minutes feeling sorry for herself that she hadn't been paying attention in 2001 when The Beast made its debut, Brandie set out to learn all she could about multi-platform storytelling and interactive narrative while she experienced her first ARGs - MeiGeist, World Without Oil, Eldritch Errors, and (her favorite so far) Sammeeeees II: The Wrath of Johnson. After reading as many of the guides to past games as she could find, Brandie realized she had finally found a game genre that fulfilled her childhood dream of stepping out of the mundane and into another world.

Today, Brandie lives and writes in Houston while slowly building up the courage to write and launch an ARG of her own. Her three cats provide plenty of distraction, as does her husband, who occasionally worries for her sanity when she paints SATOR squares under the bed or wanders around the house muttering about "ravens" and "dark temples". When she isn't writing or plotting, Brandie spends her time playing SF0 and playing games on her XBox 360.

Zombie Truth: Preparing for the Z1 Pandemic

July 14, 2009 / Brandie Minchew

Since news of the H1N1 (swine flu) virus broke this past March, the world has been watching and waiting for signs of the next devastating pandemic. But what if H1N1 is only one mutation of a human-engineered virus more deadly and infectious than any that has yet emerged? One group of researchers has turned to the internet to alert the world to the terrible possibility of a new biological threat – Z1, the Zombie Virus.

According to ZombieTruth.com, in 2001 a medical research team died at the hands of their patients, who had succumbed to a “viral-induced psychosis”. Researchers in the rescue teams tasked with retrieving the victims managed to salvage some of the data gathered by their dead colleagues. After several years of subsequent study, the troubling characteristics of the virus have worried researchers enough to go public with some of their findings and their continuing progress in order to help the world prepare for a possible outbreak.

The Architect – Israel’s First Alternate Reality Game

March 25, 2009 / Brandie Minchew

mysarona

A few weeks ago, the biggest mystery in Yoni Grishman‘s life was why the people of Tel Aviv so despise the members of his chosen profession – that of a parking attendant writing tickets for the hapless drivers of Israel. Now, he’s got a lot more to worry about. His girlfriend has disappeared, suspiciously soon after he started the Facebook group “Real Estate is Not a Game” to protest the purchase of her apartment building and impending eviction by a rich real estate developer.

After receiving threats from a mysterious group, Yoni, with the help of the people of Tel Aviv, has been attempting to uncover the group’s secrets, determine their connection with the mysterious Architect, and find his girlfriend.

Called “The Architect” and billed as Israel’s first alternate reality game, the story has attracted several hundred players across Israel. Two live events have already taken place in Tel Aviv’s Sarona district as players took to the streets to protest the building of My Sarona, a luxury spa featuring an anti-gravitation room in addition to other more typical spa offerings. (The My Sarona promotional video has English subtitles.)

Israeli ARGers meet to discuss the game in an Israeli gamer’s forum and have set up a wiki to keep track of their information. Most of the game content and discussion is in Hebrew, but don’t let that stop you from having a look around!

Although the game is set to end on March 31st, take a peek at the websites and video. Once the game wraps up, we’ll have a follow-up article for you on the puppetmasters behind the scenes of Israel’s first – but hopefully not last – alternate reality game.

Deepwell: Tell It to Someone Who Cares

March 9, 2009 / Brandie Minchew

rubyesbequest

The Institute for the Future once again opens a window into tomorrow’s world, this time letting us peer into 2010 where in the town of Deepwell a woman’s mysterious will has the townsfolk in an uproar. On December 7, 2009, the citizens of Deepwell learned that a woman named Ruby Wood left a “substantial” sum of money to their town, but with one condition – that the townspeople learn to take better care of each other. Who is Ruby Wood? No one in the town seems to know. The town will learn more when the last will and testament of Ruby Wood is opened on March 9, 2010.

In order to get a little outside help and advice on caring, the citizens of Deepwell have launched a website called Ruby’s Bequest, along with a town blog, Deep Into Deepwell, where citizens can discuss the bequest and other town interests. Accusations of being “the town that doesn’t care right” and the tragic death of an elderly citizen have upset many of the townspeople and sparked a debate about caring.

Alma’s Back? Armacham Corporate Website Goes Viral

December 1, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

Something wicked is stirring at Armacham Technology Corporation, a well-known organization from Monolith Productions’ survival horror title, F.E.A.R. With just a few months until the release of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin in February, it appears that a viral campaign is being launched to promote the new title. For the past two weeks, Armacham Corporate has been experiencing website malfunctions that allow visitors to take a peek into the inner workings and upcoming activities of the company.

The Armacham site appears to be a perfectly normal website showcasing its new line of sub machine guns, and also a new item regarding “Level II Recruitment”. Clicking on any part of the page causes the screen to dissolve in a flood of critical errors. (During the distortions, sharp eyes may notice the distortion of the error link from http://www.armacham.com to http://www.almasback.com, a currently unregistered domain. Watch the link on the 404 page very closely, just before the distortion begins.) Next, what appears to be an auto-login sends site visitors into the account of Dr. Richard Findes, a biomechanical specialist at Armacham who has expressed concerns over ethics breaches occurring within the company.

A camera feed embedded in the site interface shows disturbing footage from inside Armacham. Dr. Findes apparently has good cause to worry over something going badly wrong within the corporation.

Although it seems that the hapless Dr. Findes has been locked out of many of his account permissions (many of the links result in “Access Denied” errors), his email is still accessible, revealing communications from W. Reid, K. VonScriptor, J. Karsberg, and W. Wallace, some with attachments that may contain vital clues. Findes has apparently missed a lunch meeting with Reid. Is he missing or on the run?

The corporate calendar indicates that Armacham has initiated a recruiting program centered around “virtual evaluation and testing of potential candidates via gaming community”. Armacham recruiters were spotted testing attendees at Wizard World Dallas on November 7-9 and at Atlanta Supercon on November 21 and 22 in Atlanta, Georgia. The next marked calendar date is December 3, for meetings and tours located in Orlando and Tampa, Florida to sites including Walt Disney World, Sea World, Andrews Air Force Base, and CentCom.

Someone is keeping an eye on Armacham’s recruiting movements and warning others not to participate in their tests and so-called FEAR Labs. A letter accompanying a briefcase sent to Geeks of Doom instructed the receiver NOT to participate in FEAR Labs under any circumstances and to watch projectorigincommunity.com for the combination to open the briefcase. The handwritten letter was signed “R” – for “Richard”, perhaps? Kotaku also received a letter that contained a key and directions to a storage unit where another briefcase was found. Kotaku’s letter included a DVD, the contents of which are posted in the above-linked entry. Phillip DeFranco of PhillyD TV was also mystified at receiving the spooky briefcase and videoed its retrieval from the storage unit. Everyone who received a briefcase is on a “list” at Armacham, according to the mysterious Mr. R, who wants to make sure word gets out about these suspicious Armacham tests. Mr. R will log in to the Project Origin community site as “Case Man” on December 5th.

Join in the Unfiction discussion here. If you’re approached by anyone wearing the Armacham logo, proceed with caution.

Dr. Jane McGonigal Featured in BusinessWeek’s “Innovation” Section

November 13, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

BusinessWeek’s November 10th “Innovation” special report features none other than Dr. Jane McGonigal, the Institute for the Future‘s Director of Games Research and Development. Dr. McGonigal is known for her work on Microsoft’s Halo promotion, “I Love Bees”, the award-winning “World Without Oil” game, “Find the Lost Ring” and her current project, “Superstruct”. In her article, “Jane McGonigal’s Brave New Worlds”, BusinessWeek’s Innovation Department editor Reena Jana gives an overview of Superstruct and its goals, as well as insight into how information gathered through Superstruct’s scenarios will be used once the game is concluded.

In a short video embedded in the article, Dr. McGonigal answers five questions about Alternate Reality Games. The questions:

Can you define exactly what an ARG is?
Can you give more insight into the collaboration skills of “signal/noise management” and “multicapitalism”?
Are ARGs more affordable and more efficient than expensive digital graphics and virtual worlds?
How will “Superstruct” serve as a real-world tool for companies and individuals?
Are you still working on promotional games?

Always looking for ways to turn real-life tasks into games, Dr. McGonigal set her video camera to stop recording at the six minute mark in her attempt to answer all five questions in five minutes. At the end of her video, she asks viewers to give her feedback on the interview and help her earn level-up points for her personal gamer stats by visiting +1me.com.

Report from Austin Game Developers’ Conference 2008: In ARGs We Trust

October 13, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

Editor’s note: Brandie was ARGNet’s press presence at this year’s Austin Game Developers Conference. This is the first in a series on her experiences at the conference.

At the Austin GDC‘s only session devoted exclusively to Alternate Reality Games, Elan Lee of Fourth Wall Studios shared his thoughts on trust between ARG designers and players along with anecdotes from some of the most well-known cross-media experiences like AI and I Love Bees. In an interactive, real-time game-story experience, the level of trust between the designers (Puppet Masters, if you will) and the players can have a profound effect on the outcome of the game and the memories the players carry away at the end. “ARGs: Fake Websites, Invented Stories, Automated Phone Calls, and Other Methods to Earn the Trust of a Community” examined the building of trust as an integral part of the game-story experience.

Elan Lee opened the session with a look back at “The Beast” the promotional experience designed for the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Steven Spielberg came to Microsoft and said he wanted to do something promotional that would familiarize his audience with the A.I. world before the movie opened. What evolved from this was a series of websites, puzzles, and events that attracted thousands of dedicated players – who, incidentally, solved several weeks worth of content in a matter of hours. The designers had to scramble to keep adding content, altering the storyline as needed, and even responding to their audience by taking an initially unimportant but player-beloved character (The Red King) and promoting him to the character A-List.

After “The Beast” ended, Elan was surprised to receive three wedding invitations from players who had been deeply affected by their experience with the game. He realized, he said, that something magical was happening, when an audience felt close enough to a total stranger to invite him to participate in their real-life celebrations. “The Beast” and its designers had evoked a trust that transcended the anonymity of the internet and crossed over into the real world. What builds this intense sense of trust? According to Elan, one of the keys to trust is… a magnet.