Category: Features (Page 31 of 37)

My ARGFest

March 5, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

As the wheels of the small commuter plane touched down on the tarmac of San Francisco International Airport, the rush of excitement I felt having arrived for ARGFest-O-Con 2007 was almost overwhelming. It had been less than two years since I had attended the large-scale conference dedicated to alternate reality gaming â€“ the 2005 event in New York City was my first ARGFest â€“ but the anticipation for this event had me giddy as a schoolgirl. As I navigated through the weaving maze of gates and security checkpoints, I knew that in less than an hour, I would be meeting up with people from around the globe, some of which I had seen in late 2005 at the Last Call Poker finale, and some that I had never even had the chance to talk to in the online chat rooms that dot the ARG community landscape.

I had the benefit of arriving in San Francisco within minutes of Unfiction owner Sean Stacey and 42 Entertainmentâ€™s Elan Lee. After some careful coordination, we were able to share a cab to the conventionâ€™s home, the Holiday Inn Fishermanâ€™s Wharf in northern San Fran. We began to talk, and it was obvious that despite a bit of fatigue, the other two were just as excited about the conference as I was. We chatted as though we had seen each other only days earlier, and as we traversed the streets leading to the hotel, fifteen minutes elapsed before Elan finally said, â€œHey, San Francisco is really pretty.â€ We hadnâ€™t even looked out the window of the cab, too busy talking with each other.

The rest of the evening went by much faster than I would have liked. Arriving at the hotel to see old friends and meet those I had previously talked with online, events quickly led to a wonderful Chinese meal, a regrettable absence from the Cruel 2 B Kind game that over 50 teams enjoyed, and a number of beverages at the hotel lounge. It was great to see people I write with on this site, people like Jackie Kerr and Marie Lamb, people who I had never met with in a real-world setting previously. Smiling faces and loud, raucous cheers littered the gathering place, and the festival moved forward, full tilt.

Perplex City: How the Cube Was Found

February 18, 2007 / Andy Darley

Editor’s note: This article is reprinted with permission from the Unfiction forums (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) and from Andy’s own website. Thanks to Andy for allowing us to reprint this fantastic story, in his own words. The photo for this article can be found on Andy’s Flick stream.

I’d like to say the reason I found the Cube was because I solved all the meta puzzles, cracked the number strings, and have all the answers. Alas, no. None of us did. As far as I’m aware, the reason all of us who were involved in the endgame found ourselves in Rockingham Forest is because cjr22 and Chippy nailed the amorphous blobs as being the Jurassic strata, which led by a series of inevitable steps to the Jurassic Way and the red kite centre on Forestry Commission land at Fineshade Wood.

There were more elegant ways of getting there that didn’t involve the Library of Babel, according to Kurt later, but we were at lunch when he told me and six people were talking at once (including Violet, loudly) so the details haven’t stuck. But I’ll do my best to talk about what we missed later. (TIAG – I mean, of course, the writers who scripted kurtnviolet.)

I’ve been thinking about why it was me that found the Cube and not one of the teams that came so close, and I’ve come up with a combination of four reasons. One is obviously luck: it didn’t take luck to find it, but it took luck not to be beaten to it and luck not to be chased away by the Forestry Commission, other players or inquisitive children. Two more reasons are archaeological training and some literal mindedness, of which more later. The fourth reason is lifestyle: I am self employed and am currently working Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I could afford both the time and the petrol to visit the woods from London on both Thursday and Friday, when others were stuck behind desks, or scraping together the money for a weekend visit with friends.

Embrace Feedback… at Arm’s Length

February 9, 2007 / Will Emigh

Being a Puppet Master is a hard, often thankless job. If you do things wrong, your players complain about the content you’ve put out. If you do things right, they tell you that there isn’t enough content. Dealing with the inevitable crises under this sort of scrutiny and feedback is draining.

When I worked on Ares Station, I woke from a nightmare about our players. They were huge, fuzzy spiders, chasing after me through endless hallways. Finally, I made it to a helicopter and jumped aboard, only to have the spiders jump up and pull it down. In desperation, I tossed a spherical puzzle to the ground. They converged on it, allowing me to escape. From then on, any player who complained or demanded content from us was labeled a ‘Puzzle Spider’.

In an odd way, my nightmare made things easier. When our players got into the story or said good things about what we were doing, I let it give me a boost of energy. When our players criticized, I pretended it came from Puzzle Spiders to make it easier to take. After all, Puzzle Spiders don’t mean things personally. They’re just voracious consumers of good puzzles and story. As a PM, you can take their interest as a compliment. After all, if your story wasn’t any good, they’d move on to something else.

2006 In Review: Alternate Reality Gaming

January 6, 2007 / The ARGNet Staff

By Jessica Price and Jonathan Waite

As another year has come and gone, looking back at 2006 shows that it was a good year to be involved in alternate reality gaming. All in all, the year saw the genre receiving ever greater mainstream recognition, evolving in ways both anticipated and surprising, and adapting enthusiastically to an ever-increasing variety of platforms, media and participants. It also saw major changes here at ARGNet, as we rebranded ourselves, added some new staff members, and initiated the ARG Netcast. We were also proud to bring our readers coverage from SXSW and were ecstatic to be a network partner for PICNIC ’06. The ARG community continued to grow, as Unfiction hit 10,000 members and Immersion Unlimited went over the 1300 member mark. In addition to longer-running corporate games like Perplex City, Studio Cypher, and Edoc Laundry, there were a number of well-executed and enthusiastically-received large scale indie games. It seems like the year has gone quite quickly, but not without some major stories and exciting developments. So, without further ado, here are the highlights, events, games, and trends that caught our attention.

The ARGNet Staff Gift Buying Guide

December 16, 2006 / The ARGNet Staff

In a world where c|net, GeeksOn and the Parents’ Choice Foundation have their own holiday gift guide, why not ARGNet as well? Our staff has been hard at work doing their own holiday shopping, but that hasn’t stopped them from contributing some gift ideas for the special ARGonaut in your life. Here are their picks for 2006:

The Hour of Needing a Title for This Article – Cathy’s Book Answers Call, Delivers Hot, Extra-large Pizza Pie of Awesome

October 3, 2006 / Jackie Kerr

I have a secret that I wasn’t planning on sharing. It’s almost too embarrassing to put into type on a site such as this, but my dedication to the readership is too great for me not to – and so I entrust you with this meaty nugget of shame: when I first read Cathy’s Book, I didn’t look at the evidence packet AT ALL. Even worse? I didn’t even go onto the internet and hunt for websites OR dial the phone numbers. Faced with the chance to read a book while surfing the internet and playing with a metric crap-ton of awesome evidence – a dream of mine, really, as I can barely keep my head together long enough to complete anything linear in one shot – I managed to overcome my attention deficit, which usually compels me to do all three of the above mentioned activities while also watching TV, for 2 hours as I read (and finished) the text of Cathy’s Book.

So there you have it: I am a Bad ARGer. I failed in my mission to hunt, explore, and solve, instead drooling excitedly over only one part of a narrative specifically MADE for hunting, exploring and solving: the static text. Simply because it is That Good. On the second, third and fourth readings, the narrative only gets better with the internet presence and the evidence packet adding fine layers of buttercream frosting onto an already scrumptious, many-tiered cake of delicious prose. Cathy’s Book is an absolute treat to read: narratively and visually striking, the text melds magically with the tactile pleasure of picking up bits of newsprint and old photographs and the intellectual pleasure of seeking new information on the internet and dialing in to someone else’s voicemail, hearing their messages.