Author: Jonathan Waite (Page 32 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.

Last Call Poker PM Chat

November 24, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

This weekend marked the end of the highly successful Last Call Poker ARG, which culminated in a large real-world event taking place in Hollywood, California. ARGN, along with UnFiction, are pleased to announce that the LCP Puppetmaster team from 42 Entertainment will be stopping by for a live post-game chat on Wednesday, November 30, 2005 at 7:00 PM PST (10:00 pm EST, 03:00 GMT) on the Chat-Solutions IRC network.

The moderated chat will be taking place in the #lastcall chat room. Attendees will only be able to speak when asking questions. If you have a question and cannot attend the event, please feel free to post your question to the UnFiction forums or email it to ARGN using our Contact page.

PXC Live Event: A Mole Amongst Thee

October 30, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

PXC Live 01 Last Saturday, Perplex City took to the streets in a real-world event that involved both a ground team and an online team. Starting with a trail on an in-game site, players had to coordinate efforts to track the Third Power and obtain a highly valuable keyword. However, after collecting all of the puzzles and meeting back at a central location, players discovered that there was a mole within their group. To top it all off, the mole made a daring escape via helicopter (yes, HELICOPTER) and players were left with what must have been one of the most exciting ARG experiences in their lives. Matthew Turnbull, an active participant on the ground team, gave us permission to reprint his account of the day’s events:

ARGs in Now Playing Magazine

October 24, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

Recently, our very own Steve Peters was part of an interview in Now Playing Magazine called “Meet the Puppetmasters”. Before you go off to your local convenience store in a mad panic, hoping to find the issue there on the magazine rack, check this out — Now Playing has decided to embed an ARG right in the magazine! Without saying too much, those of you who are lucky enough to get a copy of the magazine can look to the page where the article is found. From there, we’re told that there are a series of interactions that players can go through. Neat!

(There’s also a link on their website, and after trying 2267 ways 2 view the content, we had success. Maybe you can as well…)

Thanks to Now Playing Magazine for featuring ARGs in such an interesting article!

Sable & Shuck Winners

October 24, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

Belated congratulations go out to community members Wishi-San and Meak, who were two of the four winners in the Sable & Shuck ARG. A promotional device for Stella Artois beer, the Sable & Shuck ARG ran from September of 2004 until wrapping up in June of this year. Because the final puzzle was never solved, contest organizers announced earlier this month that they would split the grand prize of Â£10946 between the four that “were most worthy of the prize”. That means that Wishi-San and Meak each get a nice Â£2,736.50 slice of the pie. Bravo to them and the other two unidentified winners!

Another Mysterious Countdown

October 15, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

News articles at Team XBox and GameSpot (scroll down to Rumor #2), as well as an anonymous tip to ARGN, have led us to The Lutz World Report, a self-proclaimed “‘truth’ source of the Paranormal and Extraordinary.” But wait — what is that there? Is that… a countdown timer? Counting down to… sometime on October 18th? What could it all mean???

We all know how important countdown timers are in the world of Alternate Reality Gaming — who could forget the launches of I Love Bees and Metacortechs? At the same time, one shouldn’t forget non-ARGs like Our Colony and OrigenXBox360. The moral of the story, as it always is, is to wait and see. We’ll be watching to see what happens on Tuesday with cautious optimism.

Last Call Poker: A Full House?

October 13, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

I know, I know — it’s been forever since we last talked about Last Call Poker. It’s definitely not because of lack of update information — we’ll speak to that in a few minutes. No, the problem is… I had to pry (that’s right, pry) myself away from the poker tables at LCP to make this update happen. So many of us here at ARGN are so thoroughly enjoying the game, that we’ve been setting this update aside while we won monster pots from players the world over. If this means that we’re all going to have to do some soul-searching (and major gambling detox) afterwards, then so be it. But enough of my lilly-livered sniveling — let’s get to the good stuff.