Category: News (Page 104 of 183)

Holy blue jumping spiders!

October 20, 2007 / Geoff May

What happens when you receive an email that looks like spam, smells like spam, and reads like spam, but isn’t flagged as spam? Why, you take it to the ARG community, of course! Starting the week of October 9th, several people began receiving strange emails from someone called “Jumping Spider”. The emails in and of themselves seemed very random and made no sense. They contained a portion of a story, gibberish text, and broken sentences. I received one of these emails, and were it not for the fact that it wasn’t selling a product, I may not have taken notice of it at all. But thankfully, others at the Unfiction forums reported receiving the same email.

The email’s subject read: “Zetria Atrian and the Sparrow-Clam“, and contained what looked to be the first portion of a short story about a girl named Zetria, who in a dreamlike setting, watched a sparrow land softly on a sandy shore and turn into a clam, with which she began a fairly philosophical conversation, before it burrowed away.

The latter part of the email contains inconveniently cut lines of text that appears to be snipped from a chat session. And, amongst the narrative and the disjointed text, the email contains strings of random characters. It was quickly determined that the not-so-random characters are encoded in ROT-17 (see here for a brief explanation of ROT coding) and, when decoded, revealed what can only be described as computer commands, such as MAILSTART, FILELOAD, TRANSFERERROR, COREDUMP, and so on . It appears that whoever this “Jumping Spider” is, the emails are being created by some form of software, sending out portions of various texts.

Most bogglingly, however, is a code that’s appearing in each email, containing 12 characters – 3 sets of one number between 0 and 3, and three letters.

It’s Coming…It’s Coming…It’s Here! Ditch Witch Releases the Zahn

October 17, 2007 / Michael Andersen

For the last month, we knew it was coming. But until yesterday, we didn’t know exactly what “it” was. A series of Google Advertisements led to Itscoming.us, a website depicting a shed stranded in the middle of a moonlit field. Scattered throughout the eerily ominous environment were numerous clues hinting at what “it” was…but now, the truth is revealed. “It” is the newly released Zahn series of trenchers by Ditch Witch.

For those of you who, like myself, thought a trencher was only good for making authentic sandwiches, let me clarify. A trencher is a piece of heavy-duty construction machinery that digs trenches. And Ditch Witch, the Oklahoma-based industry leader in underground construction equipment, opted to launch their new line of trenchers virally. Targeted advertisements directed towards people searching for construction equipment ostensibly stumbled across the teaser page and hunted through a haunting environment in search of blueprint fragments to the new product as well as audio, video, and written clues periodically updated. The clues alluded to something hidden within the rickety shed in the middle of the screen…something powerful and awe-inspiring.

It remains to be seen whether Ditch Witch’s campaign succeeded in attracting the audience it desired. But in a market saturated with media and entertainment companies and large corporations attempting to reach as many people as possible, it’s refreshing to find a company using viral strategies to target a narrow audience.

Click Here to find a Ditch Witch dealer near you, with affordable financing available.

Part Three – PICNIC ’07 – Three days of cross-media madness in Amsterdam

October 16, 2007 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

Editor’s Note: Daniel is an administrator at the Unfiction forums and was part of the team that created the Project MU Archive Book. He was on the scene at PICNIC ’07 as a representative of the ARG community and was kind enough to submit a report on his experiences. This is part three of the report. We thank Daniel for his support of ARGNet and his wonderful report and pictures.

On to the Friday then, which, like last year, was divided into three separate â€˜tracksâ€™: Feel, Make and Play. Being on a mission to report on PICNIC for ARGNet, and not having encountered a lot of ARG-related topics yet, I naturally chose the Play track. It kicked off with a keynote address by Katie Salen, who is, among other things, executive director of the Gamelab Institute of Play. If you listened to episode 37 of the ARG Netcast series, you might have heard that the panelists were all especially looking forward to this presentation. Maybe this raised the bar a little too high, because I was fairly disappointed in Salenâ€™s talk, but I think this had a lot to do with its length: it was only 30 minutes, which was just enough time to put forward some interesting notions, but not nearly enough to give an in-depth look at them. However, here are a couple of the things that stuck with me:

When designing a game, keep asking yourself, â€œWhat does the game want?â€ i.e. what does it desire or require from the player? Sometimes a game might surprise you in this area. Just as poker is a game that requires lying (bluffing), other games require collaboration. Keep in mind what you want your game to require and make sure that what you add to the game fits with how you expect the players to behave.
Thereâ€™s the aspect of lusory (playful) attitude. If a game encourages players to take on an active attitude, you do not necessarily need to design or create as much yourself, as players will bring a lot to the game already. It is important, however, to keep in mind that this works best when thereâ€™s a transactional relationship between the game and its players: the players give to the game, but it they should also receive something back from the game in exchange for their input.

Salen ended her presentation with a nice example that demonstrated all the theoretical points she addressed: Karaoke Ice. Itâ€™s a project she did in the past which features a person in a giant squirrel suit driving around in an ice-cream truck which doubles as a karaoke bar. At first, onlookers were given free popsicles, but then they were invited to get into the back of the truck to do some karaoke. Against the expectations of most, people turned out to be more than willing to perform a few songs. One of Salenâ€™s conclusions was that players of a game are generally willing to go along with, say, an alternate reality, if they understand that the point is that they are part of an experience.

This example was followed by some closing remarks regarding interactivity in play — interactivity only works when itâ€™s meaningful, core interaction must be fun and audience/player expertise should be rewarded. I think these are some excellent points that easily apply to the ARG universe. Interaction for the sake of interaction is meaningless and therefore completely uninteresting. Interaction only enhances play if itâ€™s actually fun and serves a purpose!

Changing the game

October 13, 2007 / Marie Lamb

Given $2600 and the resources of a major charity dedicated to cancer research, could you come up with an alternate reality game to help raise funds for a worthy cause? That’s what Six to Start and Cancer Research UK would like to find out. Adrian Hon, formerly with Mind Candy, announced the unusual contest on Unfiction last month.

Let’s Change the Game is a competition for aspiring ARG designers, with the challenge of coming up with the best game to raise money for Cancer Research UK and awareness of cancer in general. The first step for potential puppetmasters (after putting together a team with a minimum of three people) is to submit a 500-word design summary to the competition website by November 16th. The best summaries will be shortlisted and asked to submit full proposals. Complete details along with rules can be found on the Let’s Change the Game website. Judges include ARG illuminaries Sean Stewart, Rhianna Pratchett and ARGNet’s own Jonathan Waite.

And the EmmyÂ® Goes to…

October 11, 2007 / Marie Lamb

We offer our belated but no less heartfelt congratulations to the team at Xenophile Media, who along with co-creator Matt Wolf were winners of a Primetime EmmyÂ® award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television, presented at last month’s ceremony in Los Angeles. The team got the nod for “The Ocular Effect,” the alternate reality game tied in to the ABC Family television movie, Fallen. Xenophile previously won an International EmmyÂ® for the ReGenesis Extended Reality Game.

The Ocular Effect told the story of Faith Arella, a girl searching for her roots in a
transglobal hunt for clues that started with a mysterious sphere called the Oculus. Players at Unfiction and elsewhere helped Faith find the secret of the Oculus and deciphered other puzzles along the way to help her on her journey.

We are also bursting our buttons with pride here at ARGNet, because our very own Jonathan Waite was a part of the Ocular Effect team. Congrats Jon, and rest of the crew
at Xenophile. We look forward to your future projects with great anticipation!

Stage6 wants to help you find Hope

October 10, 2007 / Michael Andersen

Alternate reality games that use kidnapping as a theme have been subject to varying amounts of controversy over the years. In November 2006, the adult-themed game The Human Pet was temporarily banned from YouTube for its fictional videos about a sadistic kidnapper. Last June, the CourtTV campaign “Save My Husband” faced a similar backlash after encouraging visitors from Cute Overload to help solve a kidnapping case. Now, a new ARG launched on Stage6 (part of the DivX network) is facing its own share of controversy.

San Francisco resident Hope Wilcott is missing. At least, that’s what visitors to Stage6 thought when a mysterious video appeared on the streaming video network’s front page on October 3rd. Posted by Richard Chambers, a user claiming to be Hope’s fiance, the two videos currently available follow Hope’s quest to find out what is wrong with her mother, and document her subsequent disappearance. The story continues to unfold at Richard’s Blogspot page at HopeIsMissing.Blogspot.com. According to Matt Staggs of Skullring.org, this campaign is run by Lance Weiler as a “Horror 2.0 ARG” serving to promote the DVD release of his film “Head Trauma”. The Head Trauma website notes the campaign will encompass “myspace, xbox, twitter, eyespot, stage 6 and opera” leading up to “live cinema games” in 10 cities on October 20th.[

Following a rather heated debate that took place within the video comments on Stage6, the producers edited the video tags to include “cinematic game” and “arg”. In addition, the header on Richard’s blog now prominently labels the project “an alternate reality game”. However, some video viewers continue to raise concerns that this makes light of real Missing Persons cases and the people affected by it. In a response to similar concerns regarding the Save My Husband campaign, Rachel at Behind the Buzz addresses this reaction as an issue of framing, noting “anyone with the slightest acquaintance with any entertainment, books, TV, films, plays etc know that dramatic situations like this are often used for entertainment. Looking at the top TV shows in the US, such as CSI or Law and Order, they use murder, kidnapping and worse as the premise for their entertainment.”

As long as the team behind “Hope is Missing” can find an acceptable compromise to viewer concerns, the game has the potential to be both successful and engaging if the videos are any indication of what to expect. Indeed, the changes that have already been implemented are likely sufficient to help Studio6 and the game producers weather any criticism sent their way.

So, while you keep your eyes peeled for Hope, remember to think twice before calling the police. After all, if Lonelygirl15 has taught us anything about the line between reality and fiction, it’s that the troubled girl in the weird video may very well be an actress from new Zealand looking to make a name for herself.

Click here for the discussion at UnFiction.
Click here to read more ARGNet coverage on the Head Trauma film.