Category: News (Page 118 of 183)

ARGFest Panel Videos on YouTube

March 11, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

Without the work of Ben Wochinski (encoding and uploading), Celina Beach (filming) and Sean C. Stacey (transcribing), among others, these videos would not have been made possible. A huge thanks to everyone who worked hard to get these videos up and available.

The 2007 ARGFest-o-Con in San Francisco had some brilliant speakers, and now you can watch the panel discussion from the comfort of your own homes! Click on the YouTube link above to get to the playlist that contains all of the videos that were recorded in San Fran, including:

The Introduction
Panel 1: Developing an ARG
Panel 2: Running an ARG, Part 1
Panel 3: Roundtable with 42 Entertainment
Panel 4: Running an ARG, Part 2
Panel 5: Defining ARGs and the Future of ARG
Keynote Presentation: Sean Stewart and Elan Lee, 42 Entertainment

Some of the videos had to be split due to length of discussion, but everything that the panelists discussed is right there on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Also, transcriptions are currently in the process of being completed at the ARGFest-o-Con wiki, and if any of you have a few extra minutes through the day, help them out by transcribing a few minutes of video.

The 2007 ScreenBurn Festival

March 8, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

We are happy to announce that ARGNet is an official media sponsor of the 2007 ScreenBurn festival, taking place at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival this weekend in Austin, Texas. The ScreenBurn festival is an initiative dedicated to providing programming about the newest developments in the gaming community, and we are honored that the festival’s coordinators are recognizing alternate reality gaming as an important piece of the gaming landscape. The festival will run from March 9th through the 13th, and will feature panelists many ARG fans are already familiar with. Brian Clark from GMD Studios and Tony Walsh from secretlair.com will be there, as well as Evan Jones from Stitch Media and Dan Hon from Mind Candy Design. We are fortunate to have representation at the festival as well, as staff writer Brooke Thompson (representing giantmice.com) will be talking on the panel entitled, “ARG! The Attack of The Alternate Reality Games,” which will be moderated by Alice Taylor of the Wonderland blog.

For those looking for a more robust experience (you know, the kind that goes beyond the realm of ARG), you’ll be happy to know that, according to the ScreenBurn website, “panels cover topics such as blogging, business models, content creation, digital convergence, e-learning, entrepreneurism, open source, ubiquitous computing, web design, web hacks and web standards.” With such a depth of topics and panels, the festival should be one of the can’t-miss events of the year.

So, with all of those superstars in attendance, how do you get in on the festivities? Easy! You show up at the door of the Convention Center in Austin, and you pay your money to get in. For the sheer amount of panel discussion and events taking place this year, the $350 cost for the weekend is a bargain. So, if you want in on one of the greatest cutting-edge festivals of the year, get down to Austin and get in to SXSW Interactive. Oh, and if you see Brian, Evan, Dan, Tony or Brooke, say hi for us.

“I’m a WHATmaster?” The Lonelygirl15 Creators Appear at ARGfest-o-Con to Tell Us Why They Love Their Fans in Spite of Themselves

March 7, 2007 / Marie Lamb

A week before a much publicized appearance at SXSW, Lonelygirl15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, and Glenn Rubenstein, the Puppetmaster for the official Lonelygirl15 ARG, OpAphid, appeared at ARGfest-o-Con to talk about the Lonelygirl15 phenomenon and their introduction to the alternate reality of fame, fans, and the internet community’s dogged pursuit of information.

The Creators (as they label their forum posts on the Lonelygirl15 website) never intended to get into ARGs at all. Miles said they just wanted to “tell an interesting story on YouTube.” There were no puzzles at first, just the mystery about whether Bree was real, and if not, who was behind it all. They didn’t count on the fan community’s voracious appetite for information–“Is this a game, and if so, what are we supposed to solve?” Since there weren’t really any clues in the story itself, the community focused on finding the people behind the story, trying to figure out who they were.

In Greg’s case, this meant a surprising amount of information about his personal life was dug up and posted online. The first thing found was the registered trademark Greg’s father had applied for as the team’s lawyer. Then within a few weeks, it was his father’s name, his mother’s name, his sister (who superficially has a lot in common with the character of Bree), and eventually even his wedding pictures became the stuff of internet posts. “It became frightening,” he admitted. “I’d wake up wondering what was going to be on the website next.” His wife, who was the person answering Bree’s email, was caught in an online trap and revealed to be an employee of Creative Artists Agency.

Games That Alter Reality

March 6, 2007 / Brooke Thompson

If you’ve ever played a game through to the end, you know that strange mix of excitement and depression that hits as you realize that the characters that you’ve loved for the last few weeks or months have completed their story leaving you with no more websites to obsessively check or forums to read or fellow players to talk with. It’s bittersweet and it’s what I call the ARG Hangover. I woke up with a doozy of one on Monday morning. ARGfest was over and here I was still in San Francisco.

I suppose that I shouldn’t complain. I’m here for the Game Developers Conference (GDC). It’s a huge and amazing conference that’s the highlight of the year for many game folk. But it is no ARGfest and after such an amazing weekend, I wasn’t expecting much. Boy, was I surprised.

It’s something to sit in a conference room filled with ARG folk – everyone there knows about the magic of Alternate Reality Gaming. We can get excited and discuss or debate the nuances in a way that only those familiar can. It’s filled with our own experiences and, even, biases. It’s something completely different to sit in a conference room filled with folks with a passing awareness, with experiences completely different. And, when the panelist in the front of the room is discussing the power of Alternate Reality Games to alter our own reality for better, it’s absolutely inspiring as you look over the crowd and see their eyes get bigger, their curiosity aroused.

The Sedulous Amalgamation of Alexis Wright, Senior

March 3, 2007 / Michael Andersen

After over four months of completing puzzles via the Postal Service, participants in the innovative ARG The Committee of the Sedulous Amalgamation (tCotSA) received cryptic notes that eventually decoded to reveal the history and purpose of the organization behind the mailings – the same organization that funded the creation of Deus Cityâ€™s Time Communication Project.

According to the information revealed through the cryptic mailings, the Committee for Sedulous Amalgamation was established five hundred years ago to protect fragments of Nostradamusâ€™ folio. They then funded Adam Brackinâ€™s Time Communication project and charged its members to join the agents of Deus City and collect the missing pieces of the Nostradamus’ work.

Further investigation reveals additional parallels between the two games. An arithmetic symbol used by the Deus City PM, known as “Hank Eggrem,” appears on many tCotSA messages, including its trailhead. tCotSA also makes reference to the death of one of its members, which parallels Alexis Wright Srâ€™s plane crash in Alabama from the Deus City story.

The impact of this merging of games remains to be seen, as both ARGs have employed very different gameplay styles, with Deus City relying heavily on character interaction while tCoSA utilized “snail mail” to great effect. A similar merger of ongoing games happened in the past with Wildfire Industries and Synagoga. Watching these two communities interact will be an interesting study in merging gaming cultures, whether the games merge completely or continue running concurrent plotlines.

DeusCity resources:
Click Here for the Deus City website
Click Here for the unfiction forum thread
Click Here for the Deus City wiki
The Committee of the Sedulous Amalgamation
Click Here for the tCotSA unfiction forum thread
Click Here for the tCotSA story so far

ARG Netcast, Episode 14: Cow Farts

February 28, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

It’s a whole new world for the ARG Netcast series. We have our spiffy new website, and a whole new attitude. It’s like Extreme Makeover, ARG style! Episode 14‘s panel, hosted by ARGnet‘s Jonathan Waite, includes Jessica Price, Marie Lamb, Jackie Kerr, and Sean C. Stacey. Subscribe to the ARG Netcast feed through this link or via iTunes.

Head over to the new site for all of the details. Please note: because of the move to the new site, the iTunes podcast number has changed, so many of you regular subscribers will need to update your bookmarks in iTunes.