Author: Jonathan Waite (Page 3 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.

Stop TARP ARG protests to rock SXSW?

March 14, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

It would seem that there is trouble brewing at the SXSW Interactive festival in Austin this week, and it’s a very persistent kind of trouble – protesters. On March 11th, Steve Peters posted the following on his Twitter account: Hmm, some group is protesting our SXSWi panel?? RT @StopTarpARG Alternate Realities are set to destroy our children. Visiting the Twitter account for StopTarpARG leads to their web site, stoptarparg.com. Once your eyes have adjusted to the multi-font experience at that site, the message sinks in: there’s a new ARG set to launch at SXSW, called TARP ARG 2009 for the kids, and according to StopTarpARG, it’s a government-sponsored attempt at brainwashing the minds of America’s children in the face of hard economic times.

Of course, the folks behind TARP ARG 2009 for the kids see it differently, claiming to be part of the economic bailout assistance program in the U.S. while promising to build a “direct interface with [their] targeted child audience.” Brian Cain’s name is all over this, and a simple Googling leads back to Campfire, the company behind many of the most popular ARGs of all time. Brian is going to be at SXSW Interactive on the same panel as Steve Peters, so we assume this is related to the hijacking of the panel Steve alluded to in the recent press release about his new company, No Mimes Media.

For those curious enough to sort through this madness, StopTarpARG has set up a phone number (866-397-7406) where Brian Cain’s apparent manifesto can be heard, while the TARP ARG folks have an email address where people can ask their questions. It would also seem that events are starting already, two days before the scheduled panel discussion, as our own Michael Andersen has outlined recently in the Unfiction forum discussion thread for Stop TARP ARG. In my opinion, this should be a fun way of showcasing alternate reality gaming, and I’m sad that I can’t attend the event myself. We’ll keep up with the Tweets and the shenanigans leading up to and following the panel discussion, so stay tuned.

Our down time, explained

March 13, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

network_cables If you’ve arrived at the site in the past few hours and had some trouble connecting, there’s a good reason. Our lovely (and I’m not being snarky, I do like them a lot) hosts at Dreamhost have been responding to my support emails about intermittent downtime today, and they have offered to move the site to a newer server!

This hopefully means fewer problems and improved uptime, and if there are any problems along the way, they’ll be helping out with that as well. So, if you find the site hard to get to in the next 72 hours, it’s a temporary effect of a more permanent solution.

No Mimes Media: New company, familiar faces

March 13, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

nomimes While the news hasn’t been all peaches and cream in the world, what with companies finding themselves in financial trouble and the what not, here’s a feel-good story for fans of alternate reality games: a new start-up called No Mimes Media has been officially launched, and there are some pretty heavy-duty names attached to the “full-media company.” We received a press release late last night, and here are the details:

No Mimes Media is a collaboration between “[f]ormer 42Entertainment creatives Behnam Karbassi, Maureen McHugh and Steve Peters,” which will be based out of Los Angeles and Austin. The company bills itself as one that “produces engaging cross-platform narrative entertainment, popularly known as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), to support a wide-range of projects including feature films, television, games and original content.” You may know the trio of Karbassi, McHugh and Peters for their work on large-scale ARGs like Why So Serious and Year Zero while under contract with 42Entertainment. You may also know Steve Peters as the original owner of ARGNet (then ARGN). Needless to say, this is a very experienced, savvy group of creative designers, and it appears that they have hit the ground running, as they are already reaching out to project partners for opportunities.

Perhaps by design, this announcement comes days before a panel scheduled at SXSW Interactive, entitled You’re Living in Your Own Private Branded Entertainment Experience. The panel includes Peters, who hints in the press release that the panel may be hijacked, commenting, “Weâ€™ll be announcing something thatâ€™s sort of an ARG wrapped in enigma wrapped in an ARG; and itâ€™s not without controversy, let me tell you!â€ More controversial than a nearly naked man with temporary tattoos? Sounds juicy! Hopefully, we will have someone on hand to take in the panel and relate their experiences here in the days to come.

Editor’s note: Article title revised after initial publication.

Six Minutes to Midnight: Watchmen goes interactive (sort-of)

March 4, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

A mere two days before the release of The Watchmen, the highly anticipated film version of the famous graphic novel, another viral web site has launched, and this time, participants are thrust into the middle of a narrated peek at the six main characters of the story. Six Minutes to Midnight is the latest in a long string of web-based buzz-generating campaigns promoting the film, and has the look and feel similar to Eagle Eye: Freefall, the enjoyable 10-minute experience first discovered in September 2008.

Upon arriving at the site, players are asked to provide their first name and, if they feel up to it, their phone number — so far, U.S. and Canadian numbers have been proven to work. For those that choose the web-only version, the experience kicks off with an introductory video and then jumps into the game, whereas those brave enough to enter their digits are treated to a phone call (complete with a Warner Brothers pre-amble about a do-not-call list, yuck) as the intro video kicks in. Either way, the end result is the same — the player’s job is to enter words into a text box based on what they see within a looping, changing ink blot image. Figure out the correct terms, earn a reward: a video clip montage of each of the six characters, narrated by Rorschach himself (we assume).

The next phase of Heroes Evolutions is the iStory

February 10, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

heroes_evolutions_istory

Editor’s note: This article deals with the television show Heroes. If you are not up to date with the most recent episode, and you don’t want to be spoiled by details, you may want to turn back now.

So there I was, watching Heroes on NBC tonight, when I saw a commercial about Rachel. Rachel, as the ad told me, somehow survived the explosion at Pinehearst that marked the end of ‘volume three’ or the series. As curious people often do, I headed over to the Heroes web site at NBC to see what the deal was, hoping for a return to what was formerly known as Heroes 360, which became Heroes Evolutions. I had not had the opportunity to play along with the original experience, and as I’m still a huge Heroes fan, I thought that now would be a good time to jump back into the ARG. While what I found wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, it’s still a pretty cool experience for fans of the show.

Enter the iStory titled The Private. Described on the web site as an “ongoing, interactive story,” players will be given the chance to play along with the choose-your-own-adventure style narrative, as the choices they make will determine the outcome of the story and its characters. This appears to be a game that players can jump into at any time, as all new players start at the first “book” of the series, and progress can be saved in the player profile.

heroes_istory_characters I had a chance to play through the first story tonight — there have been four published to date — and was impressed by both the narrative and the artwork. Within the story, there was a Morse Code puzzle, and while the choices were few and far between, there’s a great deal of potential here for future chapters of the story. Combine this aspect of the Evolutions experience with a web series called The Recruit, a series of graphic novels and season walkthroughs and it appears to be a robust expansion of the universe laid out within the boundaries of the weekly hour-long action show. Again, it may not be the type of interaction the typical ARG player might expect, but it deserves a second (and third, and fourth…) look from anyone who wants to more about Hiro, Peter and Claire the cheerleader.

Acts of kindness, secret dances keep citizens entertained

February 7, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

akoha_tsdo Not every project we write about here starts with an attractive brunette female in trouble, and in the case of these two campaigns, we don’t even know where the game starts and real life ends. First up, we have Akoha, a company that describes itself as one that believes that “community is not only the lifeblood of our company, but also an ongoing dedication to listening and working with our users to create something special.” Akoma recently made waves at the TED Conference by distributing packs of mission cards in its Inspired Minds series. The cards describe missions tailor-made for kindness, which include giving someone a hero medal, or sharing a book. In the world of community building and social networking, Akoma missions seem like a good way to spread kindness throughout your digital and physical world.

The second project on the list is the Top Secret Dance-Off. We were tipped off about this endeavor through Jane McGonigal’s twitter stream, and many people in the ARG community are participating in the game. The general idea, as described on the web site, is that there is an “underground world of dance quests and dance-offs,” where players can “[d]iscover new dance battlegrounds and develop [their] top secret Choreopowers!” Choreopowers might just be the word of the year, and as such, we encourage those that aren’t afraid to don a mask and complete an dance-based mission to grab your nearest video recording device and get started. Learn all about the rules through a video posted by a very familiar-looking Punky McMonsef, and check out the videos of one of our favorite Cthulhu-loving dancemasters.