Category: Info (Page 6 of 16)

Dos Equis Cargo Hunt: The Most Interesting Man in the World Is Hiring

June 30, 2010 / Jane Doh

The Most Interesting Man in the World is the charming gentleman spokesperson for Dos Equis beer, and he is looking for five Personal Collectionneurs for a “research trip” in Mexico. But, there’s a problem: as the Most Interesting Man was transporting his amazing collection of treasures, the plane’s engine failed, and he had to “parachute” all his exotic goods, scattering them all around North America. Prove your mettle to the Most Interesting Man in the World by helping him recover his lost artifacts in the Dos Equis Cargo Hunt.

Since the Most Interesting Man in the World first appeared in 2009, he’s gathered a bit of a cult following. As described in this Slate article, the “well-made, amusing ads . . . somehow manage to blend absurd humor with suave sophistication.” The clever one-liners that accompany the retro/vintage footage of “The Man” in action are pithy, entertaining, and yes, maybe a little bit sexy. Â (“He can speak French… in Russian.”) Last year, Dos Equis also ran a companion extended experience project, The Most Interesting Academy, which might not have been as well-received as “The Man” himself.

By signing up at the Dos Equis Cargo Hunt site, players become “Cargo Hunters” and can collect virtual treasures in several ways: through the Cargo Hunter’s map on theÂ website, through codes on specially marked Dos Equis packaging, and at special promotional events this summer. So far, there was at least one event in May, there wasÂ another Cargo Hunt event on June 30th in San Antonio, withÂ more events near Houston in the future, promoted through a local radio station.

Local Summer Reading ARG: The Mystery Guest

June 8, 2010 / Jane Doh

Last month, the Finksburg Library in Carroll County, Maryland, started its second alternate reality game tied to its summer reading program. The Mystery Guest is a strange, out-of-place fellow who has fallen out from the pages of a book, and local teens in Finksburg are trying to find a way to put him back. They tried using an iron (ouch!) and stuffing him in, but nothing is working.

Will young Finskburg readers be able to uncover the Mystery Guest’s identity and return him to wherever he came from? You can follow the adventure at The Mystery Guest blog shared by tweeners Kitty, Alyson, and Caroline and the “voice of reason”â€”the Librarian.

Last year, the Finksburg Library hosted its first alternate reality game, Find Chesia, which centered on a 14-year-old girl whose parents had gone missing on an archaeological dig. The game itself was created by small teams of young local teenagers.

In The Mystery Guest, local players can win limited edition gold Library Bucks and other prizes for answering the Librarian’s challenges. The overall story is linked with Carroll County Public Library System’sÂ summer reading program. Teens can use Library Bucks to buy things at the Auction Wrap-Up Party on August 21st to be held at the Westminster Branch Library. The Mystery Guest adventure ends August 14th.

For more information about the Finksburg Library’s outreach programs, check out its Facebook fan page and its Twitter profile.

ARG Tools for iPhone: Pocket-Sized Power

June 7, 2010 / Jane Doh

ARGTools Netninja.com released the ARG Tools iPhone app this weekâ€”a well thought-out collection of tools, resources, and links for alternate reality gamers of all levels. Included in this free app are helpful interactive tools for solving substitution ciphers, base64 encoding, VignÃ¨re ciphers, and much more. The homegrown app also features cheat sheets for other reference materials, such as English word frequencies.

While this might seem intimidating, newcomers to ARGs can really benefit from the informative panels explaining many of the interactive tools. Puppetmasters may find many of the utilities, such as the countdown timer decoder, useful for creating and running ARGs.

According to developer Brian Enigma’s blog, ARG Tools is “a bit of a niche utility, aimed mainly toward puzzle solvers and ARG players, specifically with an eye toward live events”â€”the native iPhone app can be run offline once installed, except for the Google search bar and pre-built links leading to key ARG community and news resources.

Download ARG Tools in the iTunes Store. No iPhone? Check outÂ netninja.com for some great low-fi gaming resources, like a one-page wiki markup language cheat sheet and anÂ Emergency ARG Pocket Reference.Â Â Some of these tools are printouts that fit in your pocket. (You have those, right?)

Global Competition Awards Millions to Digital Media and Learning Projects

May 27, 2010 / Jane Doh

This month, winners are being announced for the third annual MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition, who will share over $1.7 million in funding to pioneer the use of games, mobile phone applications, virtual worlds, and social networks in education and learning.

Launched in collaboration with President Obamaâ€™s Educate to Innovate Initiative, the Learning Lab Designer Awards will fund learning environments and digital media-based experiences that encourage young people to grapple with social challenges using activities rooted in the social nature, contexts, and ideas of science, technology, engineering, and math. The Game Changers Awards, to be announced at this month’s Games for Change Festival in New York, will recognize creative levels designed for either LittleBigPlanetâ„¢Â or Sporeâ„¢Â Galactic Adventures that offer young people learning opportunities and engaging game play.Â

Interview with Author Patrick Carman

May 17, 2010 / Michael Andersen

Below is an interview that Michael Andersen conducted with prolific multimedia author Patrick Carman. Over the past few years, Carman has released a number of projects that seek to redefine the novel. In addition to his Skeleton Creek series, Carman wrote The Black Circle, book five in the 39 Clues franchise. Carman released Thirteen Days to Midnight in April and TRACKERS in May.

MA: What lead you to start writing transmedia novels? (Also, is there another term you prefer for the format?)

PC: I’m just going to come right out and say it at the top: Transmedia, as a unifying term, is beyond lame. And it points to a challenge we’re facing in this space: coining a term is a tricky business. What the heck do we call what we’re doing? I tried vBooks (also lame), others have tried Diginovel, iStories, Vook, cross-platform…the list goes on, and I think they all fail to inspire at a level that will bring everyone under one tent. You guys did better with ARG – Alternate Reality Game – it stuck. How’d you do that?

To our credit (and by “our” I mean everyone trying to explode books into the 21^st century landscape) we’re talking about a brand new way of telling stories. We’re probably supposed to fumble around in the dark for awhile, but I think we’re getting closer. My two cents as of today is that we’re basically talking about something that’s been around for a long time, namely multimedia. And really, that’s a pretty good term to describe what’s happening to with these books; they’re becoming something broader, encompassing different medias. It’s interesting that movies and TV shows and web sites don’t have the same challenge. Creators of those mediums aren’t sitting around debating what they should call something when a movie has an ARG and spawns a TV show. It’s simply multimedia. The difference with a project like Skeleton Creek or TRACKERS is that I’m committed to a simple premise those other examples aren’t interested in: for me, the destination is always the book. That means the videos, the games, the web sites – they have a job to do, which is to get young readers turning pages. At PC Studio, where we make all these assets, a video is only as good as the pages it pushes a reader to turn.

Long winded already and I haven’t even exited question number one. The short answer is MULTIMEDIA. That’s what it’s called, that’s what it is.

An Arcade Classic Comes to Life, Secret Blueprints Revealed

May 17, 2010 / Geoff May

An important and much hyped event in the Flynn Lives! ARG came to fruition May 6th–the public unveiling of Encom International’s online version of their 1981 arcade classic “Space Paranoids,” which debuted at San Diego’s Comic Con 2009 for the Flynn’s Arcade event.

As a prelude to its release, a special countdown teased the game’s release. Players who visited the countdown splash page were able to click and destroy Recognizers that appeared and hovered across the screen. It served merely as a timewaster, but if players had the patience to keep clicking and destroy 99 Recognizers, they received a badge on FlynnLives.com. By persisting further and destroying 999, they received another badge.Â Finally, when the countdown ended on May 6th, Encom published their much-anticipated Space Paranoids Online arcade game, just as Alan Bradley had announced.