Sorry for the late-breaking update, but we’ve just found about a puppetmaster chat for Eldritch Errors, which recently wrapped up the first stage of its game. You can join the chat via IRC (chat applets here or at Unfiction) in the #stfeline room, starting at 9:30 pm ET/6:30 pm PT. This will hopefully be an opportunity to have your questions answered by the team of creators and designers before they disappear back into the mists of Book Two. Someone with a terrible sense of pun-humor might say, “I’ll B Seeing U there!” but there is no one on our staff willing to sink to that level of wit, so just show up, okay?
Category: News (Page 106 of 183)
After almost five months of game play, Book One of Eldritch Errors has come to a close. What began in April with mysterious Craigslist postings and targeted snail mail ended with a live event in Atlanta last Monday, during which a hard drive and boarding pass were found in a room which included three “shrouded ‘figures’ that looked about 4-5 feet tall,” according to this account by sapagoo at the Sentry Outpost in-game message boards. As an epilogue to this climactic event, several additional Craigslists postings have been discovered, where it has been noted that B.A. St. Feline, the psychic character who runs BSeeingU, is experiencing “excruciating pain. Oh, and there were a series of grotesque and disturbing photos uploaded to a player’s personal web site without his consent (or so he says). If this seems confusing out of context, the story-so-far at the Eldritch Errors web site might be a good place to catch up on recent events, as well as the fan-run BSUWiki.
With loose ends being tied up and a break in the action forthcoming, the puppetmasters have come out from the other side of the curtain to talk about the game so far at Schmeldritch, a behind-the-scenes blog. So far, one post has revealed how the recipients of the mailed packages were chosen, and a chapter one credits list is up as well. Game creator Brian Clark describes the site as, “something that happens in between the episodes of Eldritch,” and as “an opportunity to share some tidbits from behind the scenes and some “how to” tutorials for other immersive narrativists dissecting the production.”
After months of development and testing, the new social networking game Casablanca launches today. As a winner of mtvU and Cisco’s Digital Incubator 2.0 competition, the four NYU University students behind the game received a $30,000 grant towards the development of the game.
Set in the city of Casablanca during World War II, players are assigned roles working for the Resistance or Occupation forces. While Resistance forces are striving to create large networks of contacts, Occupation forces are attempting to infiltrate the Resistance cells. Resistance forces can check to see if their network is compromised seven times during the course of the game. NYU students engaged in the beta-test of the game went to extreme lengths to ensure the sanctity of their networks and communications, including the establishment of password-protected websites. Gameplay can proceed on the website as well as through a special text-messaging service.
The real appeal of Casablanca is its scalability. The crew behind Casablanca encourage groups to play Casablanca as an ice-breaker or for team-building, combining the gameplay with live meet-ups. Anyone interested in facilitating a local running of the game merely needs to contact the staff, load up the email addresses of prospective players onto the site, and choose the duration of the game. Promotional materials are available upon request.
For the second year in a row, ARGNet is pleased to be partnered with the PICNIC cross-media conference! PICNIC’07 takes place at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam from September 25th through the 29th, during which a wide variety of events and discussion will take place. This year’s festivities also include a Come Out and Play event — London and New York have also been COaP sites. Last year, Sean C. Stacey and Brooke Thompson represented ARGNet at the conference, and provided a number of articles outlining the presentations and events that took place at PICNIC’06, and Sean will be returning this year, so expect more of the same top-notch reporting as last year!
PICNIC at Night, one of the festival’s special features, is a series of concerts and exhibitions that include various aspects of cross-media entertainment, from live music by worldwide artists to virtual worlds and groundbreaking animation. These special evening events are sponsored by companies such as Red Bull and Heineken, as well as the Creative Commons organization, and should deliver enjoyable, entertaining experiences to attendees.
Jane McGonigal is a busy woman. She has worked on award-winning alternate reality games including I Love Bees, Last Call Poker, and World Without Oil. Along with Ian Bogost, she introduced benevolent assassination through Cruel 2 B Kind to unsuspecting cities around the world. Independently and as a member of The Institute for the Future, Jane has published countless articles exploring alternate reality games and collaborative play.
And now, according to her blog, all she wants is our help finding her husband, Kiyash.
Jane’s husband will be attending Burning Man, an “annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance.” The event will be held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada from August 27th to September 3rd. Over 40,000 attendees are expected at the festival this year, so finding Kiyash will be a challenge. But then, the ARG community has faced tougher odds before.
Jane’s instructions tell potential participants of the Secret Burning Man Game to look for a six-foot-three man who will likely be wearing an orange jumpsuit, goggles, and/or a white muslin head wrap. Tell him that “Jane says hi” or something equally nice. Perhaps “Jane says you look dashing in your orange jumpsuit.”
And if you manage to beat the odds and find Kiyash, please leave us a comment with the details.
A recently leaked article, supposedly posted to Microsoft’s internal news site, appears to verify the dreaded truth — Halo 3’s Iris “spiral marketing campaign” has come to its official end. The article, which was posted to the Unfiction forums with permission from the author, reveals the end date of August 16th, which coincides with the opening of Iris’ fifth and final server, or “episode”. It also details the campaign’s goals, achievements, challenges and failures. Undoubtedly, the primary point of dissension this article raises is the challenge undertaken to provide a “low-key, low budget campaign [which] does more with less, whetting the appetite of the blockbuster video game’s fanatical followers.”
The article reveals that Iris was developed by “more than 50 people from 20 Microsoft teams [who] contributed time, coding expertise, and industry contacts.” The attempt was ultimately to provide a grand marketing scheme incurring little cost while attaining “critical mass” — defined in the article as getting “interview requests from The Wall Street Journal”. “It’s about breaking out of the hardcore and getting into the mainstream,” said Aaron Elliott, online marketing manager for Xbox Global Marketing (also listed as one of the ‘founders’ of the Society of the Ancients, an in-game organization that appeared at the beginning, but was never heard from again).
Strictly speaking, given the resources used to produce the campaign and the costs (or lack thereof) incurred, Iris may be considered an impressive success. However, if one includes the overall sentiment of the demographic that was actually actively playing or following Iris, one might say that their reach had exceeded their grasp. They seem to have ignored (or miscalculated) an inherent factor in the kind of campaign they were hoping to produce – most players had expectations, whether misplaced or not, of another I Love Bees. That potential was lost, and while the production may have been impressive to some, it failed dramatically in achieving what could have been achieved quite easily.
postcurious
black watchmen
welcome home
subtext game
escape rooms
generation loss