Author: Jonathan Waite (Page 7 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.

PICNIC 08 is days away

September 21, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

Picnic 08 Logo My oh my, how the time flies. We are on the edge of our seats as PICNIC 08 fast approaches, now only three days away. As we have told you before, those of you lucky enough to be in the Amsterdam area with a few days to kill can still register for this cross-media conference at a discount rate. We are fortunate to have received an invite for the partner/speaker breakfast, and are fairly confident that DaniÃ«l van Gool will be on scene to meet and greet with industry leaders, visionaries and those that will shape the future.

We’ll be bringing you coverage of the event in the next few days, so keep it tuned right here for the latest news on PICNIC 08!

Game Launch: I Am Blind

September 15, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

I Am Blind logo We got a weird call late last week that, at first, I couldn’t figure out. After asking the staff to help decipher, they discovered that the breathy, computer-generated voice was telling us us that we were “alone in the darkness” and instructing us to send our mailing address to [email protected].

Moments ago, we sent our snail mail addy to that email, so we’ll see what happens. While you wait, why not head over to iamblind.org and mouse over the center image, where multiple voices seem to be filling in the blank in the statement, “The last thing I want to see is _____.”

* * *

Aha, a quick update! That email we sent just a few minutes ago bounced back. We tried with two other addresses, fearing that Gmail was the problem, but alas, even an email from my ISP-hosted address came back with an error. Guess we won’t be getting a Christmas card from the I Am Blind folks. Aw, shucks.

Okay, we get it! Fringe has an ARG!

September 14, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

Image from the Fringe TV show

The much ballyhooed J.J. Abrams television series Fringe kicked off earlier this week, and with it came an update to a web site connected to the show, which in turn prompted quite a few of you to send in game tips about the apparent alternate reality game. We’ve heard you loud and clear, which may please The Powers That Be behind the game, since a viral campaign is only as good as the word of mouth advertising it generates. So, what’s the deal with this Massive Dynamic corporation anyway? And what does it have to do with FBI agents, six-fingered hand prints and something called The Pattern?

Honestly, there’s no clear answer to the variety of connections between the web site, which is assumed to be the trailhead into the game, and the broadcast of the pilot episode of the hotly anticipated TV show. Perhaps it’s best to look at a chronology of events before jumping into what might just be a blockbuster ARG.

On June 17, Jenna Wortham at the utterly fantastic Underwire blog at wired.com revealed that a rough cut of the show’s pilot had made its way onto the BitTorrent file sharing network. In the show, it’s obvious that Massive Dynamic will be a focus of the story.

Later in the month of June, a puzzle of sorts showed up at the official show web site, as documented by deletia at the Unfiction forums. Combined with subtle-but-mysterious messages in the show’s trailers, and given that other Abrams productions (such as Lost and Cloverfield) have used the Internet as a hype promotion mechanism in the past, ARG players felt that familiar twinge of curiosity.

In July, animated advertisements started showing up on television, and the Massive Dynamic web site went live with an ‘under contruction’ page featuring the MD logo and the message: “Updating Our Site. Updating Your Life.”

On August 4, a comic was handed out at ComicCon that introduced “The Pattern, which was also a big part of the leaked pilot. Attendees of the conference were also invited to “find the pattern’, a scavenger hunt that began at the web site explortheimpossibilities.com (which had been discovered in July and now redirects to Hadley Media) and was documented by PostLarval at the Unfiction forums.

This takes us to September 9, when the series premiered in North America. We have details on what’s happened since then after the jump, and here’s a spoiler: there’s an employee login to be cracked.

We’re helping to create the future at PICNIC ’08

September 3, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

PICNIC 08 Logo Back in 2006, a cross-media festival in Amsterdam called PICNIC ’06 caught the eye of our friend and cohort Sean C. Stacey. Billing itself as the “first ever annual event for people interested and involved in cross media content and technology in Europe, North America and Asia,” speakers included John de Mol, Philip Rosedale and Craig Newmark. It also included a presentation by the ARG IGDA SIG, who talked about their first published white paper. The conference was a smashing success, and plans were made for the following year’s festival.

In 2007, PICNIC ’07 expanded on the format of the previous year, incorporating nightly entertainment, partner events and a Green Challenge with their speaker presentations. Sir Richard Branson got involved with the Green Challenge, and visionaries such as Cory Doctorow, Walt Mossberg and Dennis Crowley delivered speeches and participated in discussion panels. Our man on the scene, Daniel van Gool, was especially impressed by a trio of speakers — Eduardo Dias, David Polinchock and Jeroen Mol, who collaborated on a presentation called “Augmented Reality for Advertisers.”

This brings us to 2008, and another installment of the popular cross-media festival. Things kick off on September 24th, and once again ARGNet is a proud media sponsor of the event. This year’s conference will feature a wide range of speakers which include Jyri EngEstrÃ¶m, a co-founder of social networking site Jaiku, Martin de Ronde of the Onebiggame charity, and Kara Swisher from AllThingsD.com, a tech and media web site. There are also special events planned for each day of the festival, such as book releases and breakfast sessions with speakers, and PICNIC Labs, which are “practical workshops that challenge you to re-imagine your business, develop new products and services, refine ideas and formats and come up with creative business concepts.” Daniel van Gool will once again attend the conference for ARGNet, and we’re looking forward to more of his stellar reporting and analysis.

You too can attend PICNIC ’08, and because you are such wonderful, loyal readers of this little news site, you get a discount! So, if you plan on being in the Westergasfabriek area of Amsterdam and want to save a few bucks on attendance costs, click the link below for details on how to register and to find out how to apply the discount code.

Lonelygirl15 sequel proves that resistance isn’t futile after all

August 28, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

LG15: Resistance logo

“The fountain of youth is real. It’s in the blood of innocent girls scattered across the world. They’re hunted, murdered, sucked dry of their precious lifesblood. We are The Resistance. We fight to protect and save these girls.” (from LG15: The Resistance)

When we first met Bree, the original lonely girl of YouTube fame, it was clear that there was more to the seemingly innocent girl than met the eye. After all, after only a handful of webisodes, clues tucked into them revealed Bree’s affinity for the occult, and exposed the darker reality hidden behind Bree’s seraphic surface. Now, two years later, the series continues down a path that is more Hannibal Lecter than High School Musical.

Yesterday afternoon, we received word that EQAL, the company behind LG15 and Kate Modern, is preparing a sequel to begin in September. For ARG fans, we have exclusive news that there is, indeed, an alternate reality game – now playing and full of surprises – preceding the launch of the debut video.

According to an inside source close to the project, the game includes assets that go beyond the online videos which have become a signature of the brand. In the mix are crowleycollection.com, lifesbloodlabs.com and verduspharma.com/press/, the latter of which outlines a legal battle between a pharmaceutical company and an experimental R&D sub-division gone rogue. Of the three, the one we connected with the LG15 mythology immediately was the Crowley Collection site, as it was the picture of occultist Aleister Crowley which began the speculation about the truth behind Bree.

As a bonus for our readers, we can reveal that entering the code 1103 at the Crowley site will yield information important to the game. This code was interlaced in fliers handed out at ComicCon and at various comic book stores, and has only been delivered to a handful of LG15 fans — we’re the first news site to reveal this code.

For those interested in following along until the new video series kicks off, there are a number of threads on the Lonelygirl15 forums, such as this thread, discussing how to get into crowleycollection.com, and this thread, which documents many of the developments of the last few weeks.

Lonelygirl15 producer to launch Scary City this week

August 24, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

Scary City logo As lonelygirl15 proved, the new age of storytelling is upon us, and according to a recent article, a web-based endeavor by one of its key production staff is going to be a very big deal. Earlier last week, Unfiction forums member jlr1001 posted a link to an article at ThugLifeArmy about Scary City, which will include two separate but interrelated editions of the series running in the US and Japan. The international effort doesn’t stop there, as there may be possible expansion into Korea, Israel, the UK, France, and Thailand.

The article points out the extravagant cost of the Scary City web site, which was designed by IMJ at a reported cost of $1.4 million, which may or may not be part of the overal project budget of $5.2 million. Another press release reveals details about casting, as videos will be released on August 26th describing he process of getting a part on the show.

Oh, and as for any alternate reality gaming elements, Yumiko Aoyagi (formerly the executive producer for lonelygirl15) reveals that the web site will “include interactive online Alternative Reality Games,” according to the ThugLifeArmy article. Wait… games with an S? That sounds intriguing, especially with the international elements involved — it could mean that a Japanese ARG could run concurrently with an English ARG, with intertwining plots or characters. As things start to kick off in two short days, we’ll keep our eyes and ears on Scary City.