Category: Features (Page 23 of 37)

ComicCon Wrapup Part 2 – The IHC

August 13, 2009 / Celina Beach

IHC As reported earlier, The Institute for Human Continuity (or IHC), a promotion for the movie “2012”,Â went live in November of last year, and visitors to their website were offered the ability to enter a Global Survival Lottery for a spot in one of their “initiatives” to save at least a portion of humanity from the global cataclysm occurring December 21, 2012. Here is a brief run-down of game activity leading up to the event at ComicCon:

– December 21, 2009: lottery ticket holders were sent an email from Dr. SorÃ«n Ulfert, PhD, the Communications Director for the IHC, announcing the launch of the full IHC website in a few weeks and an upcoming discussion with Dr. Ulfert in February. Questions for this discussion could be submitted through Dr. Ulfert’s Twitter or email. Also launched was a wiki page for The IHC.

– January 2009: The full IHC site launched and contained a lot more information – disaster scenarios, news and press info, and details regarding the IHC’s “initiatives” to help preserve mankind after the 12/21/2012 disaster. Also around this time, a new site was discovered – This Is The End, a rebuttal site to the IHC’s, written by a character named Charlie Frost (portrayed by actor Woody Harrelson). Charlie’s opinion is that NO ONE is going to survive The End, and that the IHC, while mostly harmless, are just fooling people. Along with amusing blog posts are very funny videos explaining the nature of the disaster and why no one will survive. Charlie also hosts a “radio show” from his Winnebego where he takes phone calls and answers questions.

ComicCon Wrap Up Part 1: Flynn’s Arcade

August 6, 2009 / Celina Beach

It’s been a while since the end of the ARGFest-O-ComicCon Hardcore Summer Tour, and I think I’m finally recovered enough to start recapping some of the crazy events that occurred! For this, the first in a series of Comic-Con 2009 recaps, here is the recap of the live event for the Disney movie, Tron: Legacy – otherwise known as “Flynn Lives!”.

It all started July 21 when players noticed an article on ComingSoon.net that featured an article on Flynn’s Arcade – apparently they had received arcade tokens and a nondescript flash drive with an animated .gif (labeled “Tron3.gif”) loaded on it. Other sites received similar coins and flash drives with other .gifs on them – 5 in total. The .gifs contained scrolling HTML-like code that, when decoded and compiled, displayed a matrix that were then combined with the numbers at the bottom of the .gifs, leading players to www.flynnlives.com. The arcade tokens also had “Home Of Tron” on them, which led to another site: www.homeoftron.com.

A quick background: Kevin Flynn was the main character in the original Tron movie, a visionary who designed a game called Space Paranoids, was fired by ENCOM after a dispute with CEO Ed Dillinger, and was then sucked into the game in order to battle Dillinger’s “program”, the Master Control Program (MCP) alongside fellow programer Alan Bradley’s “program”, Tron. Together they defeat the MCP and Kevin is released back into the “real world”.

Getting Played

June 17, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

Recently, I’ve learned that the author of a article here on ARGNet isn’t who he said he was. According to this post at the Unfiction forum, the person we thought was Martin Aggett isn’t really a person at all; it turns out that Martin Aggett is a persona, a character to be featured in an upcoming alternate reality game. Martin Aggett is, as the person responsible for creating him claims, “a complete work of fiction.” This caused me to take a step back last night, to take time to examine the situation and think about what it means here. This is what I’ve come up with:

Although Martin Aggett isn’t real, the article will stay put. I’m going to trust that the person that wrote the article didn’t have a hidden agenda when he wrote the content, although submitting it in the guise of a future ARG character was… how do I say this… not the best option. The content is still a great read, and I have enjoyed the comments added after publishing it.
Needless to say, I won’t be accepting any more articles from Martin Aggett. Our web site shouldn’t be regarded as “in-game,” and I’m disheartened to find out that we were deceived about the fictional nature of the author before publishing the article. I hope that our readers understand that our goal here at ARGNet is to deliver news and report on games, not to be used as a promotional device for any past, present or future campaign.
We are going to change the byline on the article submitted by Martin Aggett. One of the troubling aspects of this situation is that I asked the person I thought to be Martin what name he wanted for the byline, he said, “Martin Aggett will be fine.” This was only two weeks ago. I had no idea that Martin was a fictional creation, and would have never published the article under that byline had I known.

Mazda 33 Keys – The soul has been found

June 7, 2009 / Genevieve Cardin

On May 15th, 2009, over 60 participants in the Mazda 33 Keys ARG met in a Montreal warehouse, led by Pat Martin. Their goals: defeating the Unifos (the ARG’s bad guys), liberating Xira and, ultimately, to finally understand that the soul they were given the mission to recover by Reperio was none other than the Zoom Zoom of the new 2010 Mazda 3.

This ultimate stage in the interactive fiction (developed by Doner Canada and 1976 Productions on behalf of Mazda Canada) gathered all the players who had collected the keys — using various clues dispersed online, on television and radio broadcasts, on posters and in the field — to finally find out which of those keys would unlock the coveted car. AmÃ©lie Tremblay was the lucky owner of the winning key. AmÃ©lie and her famliy were very active players in the ARG and managed to find a total of seven keys!

It is obviously quite a satisfaction for the puppetmaster — as well as for the winner! — when that person worked really hard for the prize.

This ARG was developed exclusively for the French speaking market in the province of Quebec and was 1976 Productions’ first experience in the genre, and they got the bug! I met with StÃ©phane Raymond and Guillaume Bilodeau who told me the story behind the Mazda 33 Keys project.

A Particularly ARGish Summer Reading List

June 7, 2009 / Michael Andersen

pileofbooks The idea of cross-media convergence is anything but a new concept. In the introduction to Rethinking Media Change, media studies scholar Henry Jenkins noted that in the 11th century, the Bayeux tapestry “combined both text and images, and was explicated in spoken sermons–a multi-media bridge between the oral culture of the peasants and the learned culture of the monasteries.” Many novelists are rediscovering the joys of crafting stories that go beyond the book in some form.

Back in December, Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo predicted that “[i]n the future and especially in 2009, the books that are popular will be much more interactive between the reader and the book.” Her theory will be tested over the next few months, as a plethora of cross-media books are hitting local retailers near you. If you’re interested in exploring a potential future for the publishing industry, here are a few recommendations of books that use cross-media elements to enrich the narrative.

Cathy’s Ring, by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman

On May 4, Jordan Weisman and Sean Stewart released the third and final book in a series of cross-media novels about an ordinary teenaged girl and her not-so-ordinary boyfriend. Each book comes with an evidence packet that continues the story through a series of clues that the novel’s protagonist encountered, in addition to intricate doodles in the margins. Some clues add depth to the story, while others forshadow the shocking revelations in future books. The first book in the series came under fire from consumer activists for its cross-promotional arrangement with Cover Girl.

Anatomy of an Implosion

June 4, 2009 / Steve Diddle

Editor’s Note: The original byline for this article had to be changed, as have some details in this article. Please see this article for an explanation.

If you’ve been playing indie ARGs for more than a couple days you’ve probably experienced a game that started off with a bang but ended with a whimper and a quiet death rattle. Most of us take a few moments to grieve the loss of the imploded game but quickly get over it and start looking for the start of another game. As someone who is drawn to the idea of creating my own games, I dwell over the loss of a game a little longer and crave a eulogy that helps me understand why the game didn’t reach it’s full potential. One of the biggest challenges in analyzing a failed game is that the creators of failed games rarely come forward afterward to share the behind-the-scenes missteps so that the rest of us can learn from their mistakes. So, with that said, I’d like to share why I stopped playing a recently staged game Tyler Greek (also named PHH Interception) and invite the creators of the game (and anyone else in the community who’s interested) to join the discussion.

Background:
Tyler Greek was the story’s protagonist who led a group of paramilitary soldiers in an alternate timeline where the TR Corporation unleashed an army of â€œsuper soldiersâ€ on the world and destroyed most of the major US cities. Tyler, along with his tech support guy Jacob, were trying to provide humanitarian supplies for survivors and planning a counter-offensive against the TR Corporation minions.

The story was introduced and played out primarily on Twitter, YouTube, and through instant messenger chat clients like Skype and MSN Messenger. There was an attempt to deliver story elements on a TR Corporation website and on Tyler’s MySpace page along with some leaked documents which filled in some of the backstory, but those delivery mechanisms went stale soon after they were discovered.