Author: Jonathan Waite (Page 26 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.

Assault on 13th Labour

May 4, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

This came in three weeks ago from the fine folks at Assault on 13th Labour, a movement dedicated to solving Perplex City card #251 :

Perplex City, an Alternate Reality Game based around puzzle cards and storytelling, features one card that has yet to be cracked: an RC-64 encrypted plaintext. We’ve created a distributed client and are looking for people with spare cycles to lend a hand. The program requires .NET or Mono (it works on Linux and OS X, as well as XP). Prizes are on offer for the first solve!

Word on the street is that this looks to be as tough a puzzle as the Alternate Reality Gaming community has come across, and hopefully, with a few more volunteers, the card can finally be solved. Perhaps a little history will be made along the way.

Tweaking ARGN / New Staff

April 16, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

In an ongoing mission to keep this site functional and relevant, we will be making some minor changes to ARGN in the next few weeks. Most of which will go unnoticed by the untrained eye, but some will be evident. The content and focus of the site will remain the same. We have already implemented two changes — the move to a new version of our publishing software, and the addition of comments (time-limited and moderated) to our articles, which started on April 11. We appreciate your ongoing support as we tinker with the way the site operates — feel free to contact us if you have issues with the web site functionality.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to recognize three new staff members who have joined us in the past month — Will Bagby, Marie Lamb, and Michelle Senderhauf. All three are long-time ARG community members with experience behind the curtain as game developers, and we are very fortunate to have them on board.

Studio Cypher To Host IRC Chat

April 16, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

As mentioned last week, a new Alternate Reality Game of sorts is emerging from a company called Studio Cypher. Since the discovery of the game, many members on the Unfiction message boards have been keeping up with ongoing events, so when the web site changed on April 14th, it did not go unnoticed. The site now has two branches — a main section with information on the company itself, including information on previously developed ARGs Ares Station and IDEAS Fest 1906, and a second section on their new game/multi-player novel Cyphers.

The company is taking a slightly different approach with this venture, and has stated that players will be charged a “nominal fee” to become an agent in the game. While the pay-to-play gaming model is hardly a new phenomenon, it is uncommon to find the model applied to Alternate Reality Gaming. However, as the company has been successful with two previous ARG projects, perhaps this is a situation where the players can bank on a quality experience deserving of the fee. In any case, the game creators have announced a pre-game IRC chat which will address “how everything will work,” which will serve as a unique opportunity for players to address out-of-game concerns before the game goes live. The chat will take place on the Chat-solutions IRC network this Tuesday, April 18, at 8 pm Eastern (GMT-5).

Thanks to Magesteff at Unfiction for the information.

The DaVinci Code: Googlefied!

April 13, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Those of you longing for an Alternate Reality Game set in the universe of The DaVinci Code are in for a small, but somewhat satisfying treat. Google has rolled out a code quest tie-in with the upcoming film adaptation of the popular novel by Dan Brown, which involves fabulous fun and prizes for those lucky people in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

If you have read the novel, you’ll know that Brown used puzzles and visual trickery as the story progressed, and hopefully this campaign will offer more of the same. The quest doesn’t start until April 17, so we will take a more comprehensive look at the project once it goes live.

The Fifth Anniversary of The Beast

April 11, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

On April 11, 2001, the murder of Evan Chan caught many people’s attention. Somehow, after the game wound down to an end 12 weeks later, there was the birth (or resurrection, or redefinition, depending on who you talk to) of an entirely new gaming genre we now know as Alternate Reality Gaming. For anyone who got a chance to play The Beast (go to www.cloudmakers.org for more information), the game that revolved around the story in the movie A.I., they were experiencing something that was exciting and new and encapsulating. Even as we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the beginning of The Beast, it’s easy to recall the characters, the puzzles, and the story that captured the imaginations of many and led the way towards a new frontier.

We would like to celebrate this occasion with you, and get your thoughts about what this anniversary means. So, we’re opening up the comment area for this article, in the hopes that our collective spirit brings back the feeling that so many felt when they became part of the Cloudmakers group. Whether you were a lurker or posted 10 messages a day to the Yahoo! group, or were even around at all, your comments are valuable. Please keep in mind that well will be moderating comments to eliminate inappropriate language, so be nice and respectful.

Editor’s Note – We are aware of the format issues concerning the Comments section, and are working hard to solve the problem. In the meantime, scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the comment text box.

Third Wave of Perplex City Cards

April 10, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

It’s been nine months since Perplex City opened its doors to the public, asking for assistance in finding the Receda Cube. Now, with the third wave of playing cards available, players have more clues to help them in their search for the cube — and with it, the $200,000 reward that accompanies its safe return. Players were also treated to a visually stunning redesign of the Perplex City web site in the past week, which has added some valuable resources that open the door for people interested in getting involved with PXC for the first time.

“The world of Perplex City is deeper and more complex than anyone imagined,” stated Michael Smith, CEO of Mind Candy Design, in a press statement released this past week. You don’t have to look very hard to get a sense of what Smith is talking about, as one of the hot new features of the newly renovated web site is the new “Story So Far” section. In this part of the site, information is given that allows all players, whether new to the game or not, a chance to catch up on the events that have taken place so far. It is large in scale and loaded with content, showing that Perplex City isn’t just puzzle cards and blogs.