Sorry for the late-breaking update, but we’ve just found about a puppetmaster chat for Eldritch Errors, which recently wrapped up the first stage of its game. You can join the chat via IRC (chat applets here or at Unfiction) in the #stfeline room, starting at 9:30 pm ET/6:30 pm PT. This will hopefully be an opportunity to have your questions answered by the team of creators and designers before they disappear back into the mists of Book Two. Someone with a terrible sense of pun-humor might say, “I’ll B Seeing U there!” but there is no one on our staff willing to sink to that level of wit, so just show up, okay?
Author: Jonathan Waite (Page 13 of 37)
Jonathan Waite was an innocent lurker when The Beast hit the Internet in 2001. From his temporary residence in Jeon Ju, South Korea, he was immediately captivated by the lush environment that had been laid out before his feet. Moving back to his hometown (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) in July of the same year, Jonathan continued to be involved in the burdgeoning genre of Alternate Reality Gaming, getting into Plexata and finding a voice on the forums dedicated to the game. Once Lockjaw hit in 2002, there was no looking back. Jonathan adopted the alias 'jamesi', started a fansite called GuysGuise, and the rest is history.
Jonathan can currently be found as an administrator on Unfiction's forums, as well as co-hosting the ARG Netcast audio show. In the past, he has been involved with Smirkbox, a humor site that focuses on the realm of ARGs, as well as actively creating and maintaining JMX, a puzzle trail website that is currently working (yes, still) on a second run.
As a freelance developer and consultant, Jonathan has worked on such games as Ocular Effect (for Fallen on ABC family), Reach the Future (aka Holomove, for Microsoft), Enitech Labs (for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on FOX) and Monster Hunter Club (for The Host by Magnolia Films). He is happily married and has two wonderful daughters.
After almost five months of game play, Book One of Eldritch Errors has come to a close. What began in April with mysterious Craigslist postings and targeted snail mail ended with a live event in Atlanta last Monday, during which a hard drive and boarding pass were found in a room which included three “shrouded ‘figures’ that looked about 4-5 feet tall,” according to this account by sapagoo at the Sentry Outpost in-game message boards. As an epilogue to this climactic event, several additional Craigslists postings have been discovered, where it has been noted that B.A. St. Feline, the psychic character who runs BSeeingU, is experiencing “excruciating pain. Oh, and there were a series of grotesque and disturbing photos uploaded to a player’s personal web site without his consent (or so he says). If this seems confusing out of context, the story-so-far at the Eldritch Errors web site might be a good place to catch up on recent events, as well as the fan-run BSUWiki.
With loose ends being tied up and a break in the action forthcoming, the puppetmasters have come out from the other side of the curtain to talk about the game so far at Schmeldritch, a behind-the-scenes blog. So far, one post has revealed how the recipients of the mailed packages were chosen, and a chapter one credits list is up as well. Game creator Brian Clark describes the site as, “something that happens in between the episodes of Eldritch,” and as “an opportunity to share some tidbits from behind the scenes and some “how to” tutorials for other immersive narrativists dissecting the production.”
For the second year in a row, ARGNet is pleased to be partnered with the PICNIC cross-media conference! PICNIC’07 takes place at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam from September 25th through the 29th, during which a wide variety of events and discussion will take place. This year’s festivities also include a Come Out and Play event — London and New York have also been COaP sites. Last year, Sean C. Stacey and Brooke Thompson represented ARGNet at the conference, and provided a number of articles outlining the presentations and events that took place at PICNIC’06, and Sean will be returning this year, so expect more of the same top-notch reporting as last year!
PICNIC at Night, one of the festival’s special features, is a series of concerts and exhibitions that include various aspects of cross-media entertainment, from live music by worldwide artists to virtual worlds and groundbreaking animation. These special evening events are sponsored by companies such as Red Bull and Heineken, as well as the Creative Commons organization, and should deliver enjoyable, entertaining experiences to attendees.
Through the course of today, ARGNet may or may not have been unavailable, or may have been slow or sluggish. Our host has had sporadic, random problems with their servers today, especially (we found, anyway) with their SQL servers. We apologize if the site was misbehaving for anyone earlier, but things seem to be fine now, so hopefully they have their problems fixed.
On today’s Attack of the Show on G4TV, alternate reality gaming will be the focus of The Loop, according to the show’s blog. ARGNet will have representation during the discussion as our very own Jessica Price will appear to discuss matters with 42 Entertainment‘s Elan Lee. The blog at G4 mentions the recent Why So Serious event as one of the “saving graces” at this year’s Comic-Con, and poses the question, “[A]re ARGs in general an effective means of advertisement?”
Elan was previously featured on Episode 28 of the ARG Netcast series, of which Jessica was a panelist, so this won’t be the first time the two go on-air to discuss ARGs. As well, we’re pretty sure that folks at G4 don’t know that Jessica and Elan also share a place in Cruel 2 B Kind history.
If you have G4TV on your dial, Attack of the Show airs at 7 pm ET (4 pm PT), repeats through the night, and clips are available at the G4TV web site.
While we’re a little extremely late in reporting this story, I figured the word about a Sammeeeees sequel would spread through the ARG community like wildfire, given that the original game was looked upon with so much admiration. And hey, we did mention (on episode 26 of the ARG Netcast series) that there was an “apparent sequel” back in early June. Oh, and speaking of the netcasts, perhaps you tuned into episode 31, where we devoted much of the show to konamouse’s spirited discussion of the game? Huh? Did you do that? Did you?
Okay, all excuses aside, the game is still going on strong. The aforementioned (and totally awesome) konamouse has strung together one of the best Story So Far threads you’ll ever see at the Unfiction forums, and her website and email listing ain’t half bad either. The Sammeeeees puppetmasters were kind enough to fill in the backstory in one fell swoop with an early post at Happy Rogers’ Livejournal. It looks like there are still many, many opportunities to get involved in this intricate, interactive experience, so get your beer and burritos Under Nedd’s Bed and get involved!
Use our IRC Chat Applet to connect to other players in #sammeeeees, and be sure to keep us up to date on how The Wrath of Alan Johnson is going.
simulacra
black watchmen
scp afterworld
undertone
curators request
meow wolf