Author: Jane Doh (Page 8 of 9)

Staff Writer

Jane Doh is the online gaming persona of an otherwise ordinary person. Jane has a particular love for grassroots and independent projects, especially those run out of basements and breakfast nooks, and is working on several creative projects of her own.

Exercise Your Spirit of Adventure: Facebook’s First Soap Opera

April 10, 2010 / Jane Doh

spiritofadventure Helen Hobbes, forty-nine-year-old British homemaker, has a quiet and charmed life with her husband of twenty-eight years Bruce and two grandchildren, but she is restless and yearning for excitement beyond deciding what to make for dinner. While reading a second-hand copy of Madame Bovary, Helen discovers three worn diary pages inside, narrating what might have been a downed airman’s last days in the desert. Overtaken by her curiosity, Helen leaves everything behind and embarks on a worldwide journey to uncover the airman’s fate in Spirit of Adventure.

A “visual novel” presented through a Facebook app, Spirit of Adventure combines an artful and engaging narrative with embedded gameplay through puzzles and riddles. Spirit of Adventure is created by “social storytellers” nDreams, the makers of the wildly successful and innovative Xi, the first console-based alternate reality game that brought over 5 million players into a virtual world on Playstation Home and out on the streets worldwide. nDreams is also behind the currently running game, Lewis Hamilton: Secret Life, in which players help the Formula 1 driver recover stolen artwork from around the world.

Each Thursday, a new chapter in Helen’s story unfolds, as she travels around the world in search of the airman’s identity. Every person Helen meets along the way is an entrÃ©e into another life, another story, and sometimes another puzzle that brings in an otherwise marginal character deeper into the story. While solving puzzles and progressing in the plot, players collect mementos of Helen’s journey, such as a matchbook from a Paris cafe or a little plastic rhino. Perhaps an experiment in monetizing storytelling, players can subscribe to further content from the airman’s point-of-view, but otherwise Spirit of Adventure is free to play. Slated for twenty-six weeks, Spirit of Adventure is currently in on its sixth week.

What Happened to Sarah?

March 21, 2010 / Jane Doh

Something spooky. In the middle of the night, we watch as Sarah wakes and slowly walks down to the lake behind her house. There, a mysterious glowing orb is just beyond the edge of the dock. She reaches out to touch it… and in a flash she disappears.

What Happened to Sarah? (officially called The Curtain) is an online game/webseries with a polished, professional look. Billed as a “showcase [for] the work of a small group of filmmakers, designers, and transmedia storytellers,” the story is just starting to unfold through video, websites, emails, and social networking sites. Already, the level of player interaction seems pretty high in the early stages of this game/web series, and weâ€™ll soon see how players will affect the cryptic story that is just starting to unfold.

So far, we’ve learned thatÂ Sarah DiMichaela is a new recruit at Goldman and Dawn Accounting Associates. With the slogan “Thereâ€™s Magick in our numbers!” Goldman and Dawn practice an unusual kind of accountancy, and, according to the website, will soon offer free web seminars. The first seminar will be on “Strategic Thelemic Accounting.” Sarahâ€™s brother, Vincent DiMichaela, is the new Dean at Thelema College, “the premiere institution for the expansion of the mind and human essence.” Thelema College also hosted Robert K. Maxwell, author of the controversial book The Hidden Secret of All Creation, who “dips deep into the wells of many numerous paradigms, including magick, shamanism, and quantum physics.”

Players can apply to Thelema College by filling out a form, creating a sigil, and uploading their sigil to a Flickr group. Much of the interaction right now seems to take place over e-mail, so newcomers should find the Unfiction thread incredibly useful. Players have also discovered an audio recording of a rather anxious conversation, and a family friend named Neil Desmarais has set up a Facebook group to track Sarah down.

Now, excuse me while I apply to Thelema College; I hope I come up with an appropriately esoteric name.

Salt Your Unfolding History with Hope or Doom on an Expedition with Mr Mirrors: An Adventure at This Monthâ€™s Victoria & Albert Museum Friday Late

March 7, 2010 / Jane Doh

AEWMM An Expedition With Mr Mirrors is a collaboration between Failbetter Games and A Door In A Wall (ADIAW), designed for Hide&Seek’s Sandpit Night on Friday, March 26, at the storied and majestic Victoria & Albert Museum. Expedition will be one of several games in this monthâ€™s V&A Friday Late, themed “Playgrounds,” where possibly thousands of participants will invade the museumâ€™s halls for an evening of games and revelry.

Expedition will bring to life some of the dark yet droll inhabitants of Fallen London, the Victorian-inspired universe of Echo Bazaar, a browser-based RPG with strong social and narrative dimensions. Well-received since opening for beta late last year, Echo Bazaar has been nominated for The Escapist‘s Best Browser Game of 2009.

In Expedition, amnesiac players have been drawn to the V&A at the behest of Mr Mirrors, enigmatic Master of the Bazaar and “purveyor of the frangible and the fine.” Travelling the halls of the museum, participants will encounter possibly allegorical strangers who can helpÂ participants recoverÂ their memories after revealing some cryptic secrets. In addition to cards and puzzles, participants will be treated to “glimpses of some new Fallen London back-story and splotches of [contributor] @emilystaubert‘s trademark salacity” as they try to learn who they once were.

Centian Is Looking Forward to Playing with Humans Again

February 14, 2010 / Jane Doh

centian Centian misses playing games with humans…wonâ€™t you oblige? By playing with Centian, you could win a registration badge for the 2011 Interactive festival at SXSW. Run by the folks at Sweb Development, the points-based contest ends March 15, and the central hub for the game is the Centian Games Ning site. Centian Games incorporates multiple platforms, including Twitter, SMS, and GPS-based smartphone apps. Right now, contestants can compete by using the #centiangames hashtag when Twittering their check-ins on Gowalla and/or Foursquare. Another way to win theÂ SXSW badge is to answer internet search trivia questions over an SMS subscription service. It remains to be seen what other challenges and fun human games Centian will devise in the lead-up to Sweb Developmentâ€™s exhibit at the free and open-to-the-public ScreenBurn Arcade at SXSW from March 12-14 in Austin, Texas. But, thereâ€™s something undeniably ARG-ish about Centian.

The twitter accountÂ responded to my Gowalla check-ins, and we started a conversation about playing games, which moved from Twitter into e-mails (I’ve posted the e-mail correspondenceÂ over at Unfiction). There, I got the chance to learn more about Centian the non-human. Centian certainly has a distinct personality: chipper, bubbly, and fun-loving. It reminds me of Eddie, the Heart of Goldâ€™s onboard computer in the Hitchhikerâ€™s Guide, butÂ less nauseating. The contest itself is an ancient game called Malkut, which means Royalty in the language of its people.

Wait… what? Centian has a people? At first I thought it was some kind of HAL-like electronic entity, just a superficial net-presence to run the contest. I was wrong. According to Centianâ€™s e-mail responses, it is a â€œKrateran,â€ an extinct people that apparently had human interactions in the past. Now, Centian seems to be alone, the last of its kind. I wonder what happened, and why we humans have forgotten the Kraterans.

Lekhaâ€™s Journey: An Interactive Experience Battles Political Oppression

February 12, 2010 / Jane Doh

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Free speech, a fundamental human right? Yes, of course, you’d say. A universally granted human right? Absolutely not, even in the 21st century. Confronting 5,000 years of reading, writing, and the politics of censorship, Lekha’s Journey is a fictional interactive experience tied to the four-part documentary series, Empire of the Word, which aired in November-December 2009 on TVO, a publicly funded, educational media organization in Ontario, Canada.

In Lekha’s Journey, author I.P. Burroughsâ€™ writings sparked international controversy and violent rioting that forced the mysterious writer into hiding 20 years ago. Aspiring Canadian writer Lekha Sharma forged an online friendship with the fugitive author, who is about to release a translation of the Bhava Sutra manuscript. The Bhava Sutra is believed to be a politically dangerous (anti-patriarchal) tract, written by a woman in Dehradun, India, in the 5th century BCE. The last people who tried to study the Bhava Sutra died or disappeared in unusual circumstances.

I.P. BurroughsÂ convinced Lekha to meet her in Egypt, but the Bhava Sutra manuscriptÂ was stolen from the modern Library of AlexandriaÂ before the two couldÂ meet.Â Instead, I.P. Burroughs has laid a puzzle trail for Lekha, as she looks for missing pieces of the manuscript around the world. As she travels, Lekha is being followed, but she cannot allow the hidden message of the Bhava Sutra to be suppressed. Beautifully filmed on location in Canada, Egypt, Italy, Turkey, Germany, India, and England, Lehka is plucky and approachable as the protagonist,Â albeit a little naive.Â I.P. Burroughs’ supportersÂ Lekha meets alongÂ her travelsÂ can beÂ entertaining and sometimes cryptic as they help guide Lekha’s journey.

Bank Run: Climbing the Corporate Ladder Can Be Fatal

February 7, 2010 / Jane Doh

bankrun SilkTricky, a Portland-based digital agency, will preview Bank Run: Someone Has to Pay, their soon-to-be-released interactive movie and iPhone game app, on Tuesday, February 16, at The Living Room Theaters in Portland, OR at 7:00 pm and 8:15 pm. In the completely live-action Bank Run experience, you control the choices and actions of Evan Sharpe, a collared-shirt office cog who stumbles into a deadly conspiracy. Ski-masked guys will come at you with unnecessary force–are you sharp enough to evade death? Hot babes may try to influence you–do you trust them? Will you and Evan make it out alive?

Bank Run will be presented in two parts. The first part is a choose-your-own-adventure video experience, which will be available for free online. The iPhone app continues the plot and features additional games–such as a third-person shooter–that, when beaten, unlock further scenes. The iPhone games can be played in infinite arcade mode, available to replay without going through the narrative experience.

Bank Run is inspired by the popularity of SilkTrickyâ€™s 2008 interactive zombie movie, The Outbreak. Puppeting the protagonist James, The Outbreak progresses in short chapters, and the transitions from scene to scene require viewers to make choices. With a horrifying line of zombies amassing in the yard outside, I had to make some hard choices. In the process, I learned something about myself: I am really ill-prepared for the coming zombocalypse.

Bank Run goes way beyond The Outbreak by introducing the iPhone app to the overall narrative experience. With the game/movie release coming very soon, weâ€™ll soon see how the two components come together. But, the interactivity already inscribed in The Outbreak seems a pretty good preview of whatâ€™s to come.

Bank Run previews at The Living Room Theaters (341 SW 10th Ave., Portland, OR) will include Q&As with the Director and Producer of the project. Space is limited, so RSVP through Bank Run‘s Facebook Fan Page, or via e-mail to [email protected].