Category: Announcements (Page 10 of 16)

Open Call for Writers – ARGNet Wants YOU!

January 30, 2007 / Jackie Kerr

With all of the news coming out regarding alternate reality games, we are hoping to find a few good men and women to assist us in writing articles and features for our web site.

If you are someone who is dependable, honest, and willing to write an article for ARGNet once a month, we’re looking for you. The submission guidelines are as follows:

Write a 100-150 word blurb-style article on any currently running game. For recent examples, see The Case of the Gumshoe Radio Play and The Trouble With Tropes.
Write a 400-500 word feature article about any of these topics: 1) a game, current or historical; 2) an interesting story or aspect of the ARG community; 3) a topic of interest to the ARGNet readership; 4) being a puppetmaster or behind-the-scenes game creator.

Submissions need to be sent in to [email protected] by 11:59 pm (CST, GMT -6) by this Friday, February 2nd, 2007. Naturally, spelling and grammar count, and a submission does not guarantee an invite to join the ARGNet staff.

We’re also interested in identifying key members of the community who would be willing and able to act as researchers and stringers for currently running ARGs. If you’re an avid player and have time to provide ARGNet staff members with highlight reels of games, but not enough time to dedicate to writing entire articles, we still want you! Send an email to [email protected] and we’ll add you to our growing list of community researchers.

Belated Welcomes, and an Open Call For Writers

January 19, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

As the genre of alternate reality gaming continues to grow, so does ARGNet. Last year, we welcomed the additions of five new staff writers, and while we officially announced the addition of three in April, we were remiss in failing to officially welcome Nicko Demeter and Jessica Price to our staff in the latter stages of 2006. As faithful readers (you all are, aren’t you?) you’ll have already had an opportunity to enjoy Nicko’s articles on topics like Stranger Adventures and Perplex City, while Jessica has written about Ny Takma and Sammeeeees and was a driving force behind the 2006 Year in Review. Although they’ve both been kicking around our staff lounge for a while, partaking of our wonderful buffet of nachos, we want to officially welcome these two bright, enthusiastic writers to our staff.

If you’ve not visited the ARGNet web site recently — perhaps you subscribe to our RSS feed instead — this month has been one of the busiest periods in ARG history. Our What’s Hot section has ten games we’re currently keeping tabs on, and there are a few more which are starting to show up on our radar as well. With all of the news coming out regarding ARGs, we are hoping to find a few good men and women to assist us in writing articles and features for our web site. Therefore, starting today, I am putting out an open call for writers, in the hopes that there are still people out there who don’t mind a little bit of volunteer work in exchange for worldwide notoriety and fame. Okay, maybe not fame, but definitely notoriety.

If you are someone who is dependable, honest, and willing to write an article for ARGNet once a month, we’re looking for you. The submission guidelines are as follows:

Write a 100-150 word blurb-style article on any currently running game. For recent examples, see The Case of the Gumshoe Radio Play and The Trouble With Tropes.
Write a 400-500 word feature article about any of these topics: 1) a game, current or historical; 2) an interesting story or aspect of the ARG community; 3) a topic of interest to the ARGNet readership; 4) being a puppetmaster or behind-the-scenes game creator.

Submissions need to be sent in to [email protected] by 11:59 pm (CST, GMT -6) on Friday, February 2nd, 2007. Naturally, spelling and grammar count, and a submission does not guarantee an invite to join the ARGNet staff. However, we’re confident that through this process, we’ll be able to expand on our award-winning* team of journalists**, so if you’ve always wanted to be a part of our dynamic*** squad of writers, here’s your chance.

* No awards have been given to ARGNet in the past. This is simply a precognitive statement.
** The definition of “journalist” is broad enough for us to use this term liberally.
*** Dynamic doesn’t even begin to describe our staff.

ARGNet: A New Frontier

October 23, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Mark this day on your calendars, folks, because today ARGN becomes ARGNet. And from now on, we’re reporting news. Forget about the fact that we’ve been reporting the news for a long, long time now — today, ARG news becomes our only mission. Not that being the largest, most complete alternate reality gaming affiliate site wasn’t great and all, but we’ve moved past that stage in life, and are ready for the future.

So, what is this crazy future I speak of? Well, for starters, ARGNet now becomes your largest and most complete news resource available for players of online collaborative Alternate Reality Games (or so our About page says). We’re going to move away from being that kind of network and move towards being this kind of network. You know, less like Cisco and more like CNN. Now, this doesn’t really change much, but even small changes can be revolutionary in scale, so we’re happy to make this announcement and officially shift gears to becoming a dedicated news source. We hope you like the changes we have in store, starting with tonight, and invite your comments and suggestions.

PICNIC ’06 Cross Media Week Is Here!

September 26, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Well, it is finally here – PICNIC ’06 is mere days away, and we have three ARGN community members at the conference, ready to report on events as they unfold. Sean C. Stacey (SpaceBass) and Brooke Thompson (imbri), long-time ARG community members and contributing writers to ARGN, are on location in Amsterdam and are eagerly anticipating the opening of the event later today (or tomorrow, depending on what time zone you are in). Joining them as an interpreter and associate is DaniÃ«l van Gool (giskard) who we are very fortunate to have on board for this project. ARGN is once again proud to be an official network partner of PICNIC ’06 Cross Media Week and we hope that any of you who are in attendance are able to catch up with Sean, Brooke and DaniÃ«l in their travels over the next few days.

If you’d like to keep tabs on the crew and want to get in touch with them, they have set up a thread at the unFiction forums dedicated to social gatherings at PICNIC (click here). If you can’t make it to see them or the event, check back here in the next few days, as we should have updates soon.

Scheduled Maintenance = Down Time

September 11, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Here’s a FYI: Our host has scheduled maintenance for tonight which will result in our site being down for the duration of the work, which they say will be between 30 and 45 minutes. The work will begin at 10pm PDT (1 am EDT).

PICNIC ’06 Cross Media Week

August 5, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

As we announced earlier this week through our Announcement Email list, the Alternate Reality Gaming Network is proud to be named as a network partner for the PICNIC ’06 Cross Media Week event. PICNIC ’06 is Amsterdam’s new annual event focused on creativity in cross media content and technology, specifically in the fields of entertainment and communication. The event will take place from September 27 – 29 at the Westergasfabriek, a cultural facility located in a former gas factory in Amsterdam. PICNIC â€™06 will include a conference for paying delegates as well as a public program which includes lectures, an exhibition, art installations and parties. PICNIC â€™06 is being supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, the City of Amsterdam and a variety of corporate and service partners. For complete information about the event, visit www.crossmediaweek.org.

PICNIC â€™06 organisers are expecting approximately 1000 delegates from Europe, North America and Asia. Speakers will include top creatives and entrepreneurs such as Michael B. Johnson, Moving Picture Group Lead at Pixar Animation Studios, Simon Guild, President and Chief Executive of MTV Networks Europe, John de Mol, Co-Founder of Endemol and Founder of Talpa, Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist, Philip Rosedale, Founder of Linden Lab/Second Life, Jamie Kantrowitz, Senior VP Marketing Europe at MySpace, Lorraine Twohill, Marketing Director in Europe for Google, Marko Ahtisaari, Director of Design Strategy, Nokia, Reinier Evers, Founder of Trendwatching.com, Dan Gillmor, Founder and Director of the Center for Citizen Media, Marc Canter, Founder and CEO of Broadband Mechanics, Joseph Jaffe, Author of â€œLife after the 30-Second Spotâ€, Matt Locke, Head of Innovation at BBC New Media & Technology, Emile Aarts, Vice President and Scientific Program Director at Philips Research Laboratories, and many more. You can read more about the network partners at the PICNIC ’06 web site.

If you want to attend the event, we have great news for you. As a network partner, we are able to pass on a discount to our subscribers for three-day passes as well as single-day passes. Simply register by clicking here, then when prompted, use the promotion code provided to you through the Announcement List (click here to subscribe, if you haven’t already). That will enable you to get a total conference pass for â‚¬ 500 plus VAT (normal rate: â‚¬ 750 plus VAT), or a day pass for â‚¬ 300 (good for either Thursday, September 28th or Friday, September 29th).