Author: Brandie Minchew (Page 4 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.

Superstruct: (Re)Building Our Future

July 13, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

Our world is in deep trouble, and as the danger mounts, the Institute for the Future‘s Ten-Year Forecast team and Dr. Jane McGonigal have a new mission for you! IFTF recently announced Superstruct, “the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game.” Scheduled to begin on September 22, 2008, Superstruct is expected to run for six weeks. The human race has only 23 years left, and it’s up to you to save us! The countdown begins in 2019.

Dr. McGonigal is no stranger to games that use future forecasting as a design element. She helped develop World Without Oil, a game that asked players to imagine and document their lives during an oil shock. Like World Without Oil, Superstruct will ask players to project themselves into the year 2019, at a time when a supercomputer simulation dubbed “GEAS” has predicted that the human race has a survival horizon of 23 years. GEAS, or the “Global Extinction Awareness System,” has pinpointed five “super-threats” that may bring about the collapse of human civilization as we know it. (Perhaps incidentally, a “geas” is also a vow or binding, often magical or supernatural, that is difficult or impossible to ignore or cast off.)

What does the name “Superstruct” mean, and what does it tell us about the goals of the game? According to the game’s FAQ, “superstructing” refers to the building of new structures on top of old structures. The problems uncovered in 2019 indicate that the existing structures – social, commercial, environmental, etc. – are not enough to support the survival of the human race. Superstruct asks players to work towards building new structures and finding new solutions to overcome the “super-threats” identified by the GEAS.

“This is a game of survival, and we need you to survive” states IFTF’s mission briefing. Rather than simply projecting or predicting the future, Superstruct aims to “invent the future” through player contributions, survival stories, strategies, and more. “Bring what you know and who you know,” IFTF’s Superstruct FAQ invites, “and we’ll all figure out how to make 2019 a world we want to live in.”

While we wait for September, IFTF has invited players to get a head start on the game by sending a description of their future selves and their lives in 2019 to [email protected]. Players’ responses will be posted on the Superstruct blog throughout the summer.

Progress Report: The Sky Remains

May 28, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

A couple of weeks ago, ARGN received a witty recruitment letter from The Sky Remains 6th Dimension Detective Agency, kicking off “The Sky Remains,” a much-anticipated game by Licorice Film.

If you haven’t had a chance to jump in on “The Sky Remains”, don’t worry! The game is still “in progress,” and Licorice Film has designed it in a way that allows players to follow the story at their own pace. In addition to the website, the player-maintained wiki is a good place to start, as is the “Useful Info” post for the game.

Currently, the 6th Dimension Agents of The Sky Remains Agency are working to solve Case #1: the case of Wendy Skinery, a pregnant woman living alone in an isolated house in England’s West Country. Wendy’s grandfather left her the house and everything in it, including some strange photographs. Agents on the case work under the supervision of agency director, Ms. Poliakov. Players of MeiGeist, Licorice Film’s first interactive project, may run into some familiar faces around the agency, as well!

GMD Studios Stalked by Cricket; Eldritch Gifts Prompt Response from PuppetMaster

April 18, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

On April 16, 2007, mysterious packages began finding their way into the hands of unsuspecting people about to be lured into a world of dreamscapes, nightmares, madness, and death. The contents of the packages led to a network of dreamers, reaching out for help to dwellers in the mundane world. The Dreamers found willing listeners and clever helpers in several internet communities. Together, these Good Samaritans became Sentries; became Providence; watched helplessly as several friends left them, one by one; embarked on a journey together to find answers; and then waited together in the darkness when, at the last, all contact with their friends was lost as the signal faded out nine weeks ago.

The Eldritch Errors ARG, produced by GMD Studios, gathered a strong following of players from its launch in 2007 into its third “book” in 2008. In February, at what was supposed to be the climax of the game’s third installment in February, the game’s momentum faltered. The day for the promised climax passed in silence. After realizing that the game was on hold indefinitely for reasons unknown, frustrated players created a space for venting and even “uncovered” an obituary for one of the game’s characters, in hopes of eliciting some comment from GMD.

On Monday, April 14, two days before the game’s one-year anniversary, a person using the alias of Mr. Cricket visited the GMD Studios offices, leaving a drawing of a cricket taped to the door. On Tuesday, Mr. Cricket visited again, this time leaving a dog collar – with the nametag of “Providence” – hanging from GMD’s doorknob. On Wednesday, the game’s anniversary, Mr. Cricket returned a third time to draw a familiar mark in colored chalks upon GMD’s doorstep.

The Sky Remains

March 30, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

The Licorice Film team, creators of 2007’s popular MeiGeist game, has a finger on the launch button for their newest project, The Sky Remains, due to begin in April. In partnership with HP Labs, The Sky Remains combines interactive ARG elements with GPS technology and the thrill of geocaching and treasure hunting using mscape (short for “mediascape”), HP Labs’ experimental mobile gaming platform. A list of compatible hardware for mscape is provided on the mscaper site. The game’s FAQ section states that players do not need these devices to participate.

Players of MeiGeist may have spotted some familiar faces in the trailer for The Sky Remains. (ARGNet also has a brief cameo!) The main story arc centers around the “6th Dimension Detective Agency” – with the players taking on the role of the 6th Dimension Agents, of course! The game breaks away from the one-time ARG experience by introducing a “re-playable” narrative. It also offers players the option to follow some parts of the story as a single player. However, collaboration and cooperation among players will be necessary to “discover the deeper subplots,” according to the FAQ. The Sky Remains also invites user-generated content, and the game’s website will serve as a social networking site for players to create and publish their own case files and stories after the initial case file has been solved and closed.

Video Games and ARGs – What Can they Learn from Each Other?

March 15, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

Note: This article covers two SXSW Interactive 2008 events: Cross-Media Cross-Pollination: Mashing Up Video Games and ARGs (Saturday, March 8th, 3:30-4:30 p.m.), and its follow-up, Core Conversation: What Can the Video Games Industry Learn From Alternate Reality Games? (Monday, March 10th, 3:30-4:30 p.m.).

A last-minute change in programming on Saturday, March 8th, at SXSW Interactive 2008 brought together familiar faces from the Alternate Reality Games development community: Dan Hon of Six to Start, Tony Walsh of Phantom Compass, and Dee Cook, a freelance writer and designer who has written and developed content for games such as “The 4400” Extended Reality, World Without Oil, Unnatural Selection, and many others. Hon, Walsh, and Cook presented the panel “Cross-Media Pollination: What Video Games can Learn from ARGs”. The follow-up conversation on Monday afternoon with Steve Peters from 42 Entertainment, and input from Jane McGonigal, Ken Eklund, Hazel Grian, and others, rounded out Saturday’s panel.

Currently one of the most popular past-times world-wide, video games have an audience both extensive and diverse. Gamers are consistently asking for more from game designers – better AI, more content, more interaction, more story and narrative, more immersion. What can Alternate Reality Game designers learn from video game design and the needs of video game players (many of whom also play ARGs), and what elements of ARGs might video game designers consider when making games for gamers in a world of rapidly-evolving technology and techno-culture?

The panel opened with the question: what elements of ARGs might interest and engage video gamers? “I Love Bees”, a well-known ARG, tapped into the fan base of Bungie’s Halo video game by providing a glimpse into Halo’s (and its predecessor, Marathon’s) detailed backstory. Many Halo players enjoyed ILB because of the opportunity to explore more of that game’s mythology. The puppetmasters presented a Halo story that the players could interact with in a different way, affecting the game not by moving the controller but by problem-solving with other players, answering payphones, emailing the Sleeping Princess, and convincing an AI that they were, in fact, human, and one of her crew.

Perhaps, Steve Peters pointed out in Monday’s follow-up conversation, cross-media is one answer to a demand for more interaction and individualized response. A player’s progress through a game could be tracked, with content delivered not only through the console but also through SMS, phone calls, or even the post office! Similarly, Tony Walsh raised the idea that ubiquitous computing, the imperceptible integration of computing systems and functions into every day life, might indeed be the next game platform, heralding the end of the “couch-potato” gamer.

The Elder Gods Listen… to Providence Radio

February 14, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

Two enterprising players of Eldritch Errors, Denny Vaccaro (endercoaster) and Jake Sapir (unknownwarrior33) launched an in-game radio broadcast last Sunday, reviewing significant game events of the week and inviting players to call in to the show. Providence Radio will be on the air every Sunday morning from 10 – 11 a.m. CT on Grinnell College radio, KDIC 88.5. Listeners out of the broadcast area can tune in via the internet at kdic.grinnell.edu. Players – and characters – can call into the show at 641-269-3328 to share their experiences, speculations, and observations about the uncanny affairs of the Eldritch Errors world. Providence Radio is completely in-game, so no Meta discussion allowed, folks! We’ll bseeingu on Sunday!