Category: News (Page 35 of 183)

Socks Inc. Introduces Players to a World of Sockcraft

May 12, 2011 / Kris Nordgren

Prepare to work your socks off at Socks Inc.,Â the factory that makes Believe.Â Socks Inc. is the largest employer of sock puppets in the world and if you play your cards right, you too could be hired, starting today. To complete your employment application,Â create a sock puppet,Â go the Socks Inc. website, and register to join the fun. Socks Inc. is the second alternate reality game to come from Awkward Hug, following up on their romantic comedy Must Love Robots.Â Over the coming months,Â Socks Inc., lovingly referred to as “World of Sockcraft” by Awkward Hug’s lead game designer Jim Babb,Â plans on sending you and your sock puppet on countless storytelling missions that will keep you on your toes.

The main storyline of Socks Inc. is explored in Mr. Barnsworth’s office, the boss at Socks, Inc. Other themes, stories and missions Â are available in the company’s other departments: so far, these include Athletics, Groundskeeping, Politics, Waste Management, and Research & Development. The webpage has a few empty slots left for future departments and added content. Socks Inc. employees are sent out into a world of storytelling adventures, which are usually introduced by one of the many colourful characters running the different departments. Once you have accepted a mission, you and your sock puppet avatar need to go into the real world to complete it, and this is where the potential for creativity kicks in.

Given the task of recording your sock puppet rapping, you could just download the beat and rap a few lines. Or, you could spend days building a set and directing a full-blown music video. Whatever you come up with, the next step is to upload your picture or video onto theÂ Socks Inc. site, where it becomes visible on your profile page and can get responses from other players. If you happen to have made a particularly embarrassing attempt, there is also an option to make your video private so only you can view it. As you complete each mission, you unlock more adventures, stories, and badges. Progress is measured on a gauge and a progress bar on your profile page.Â Co-developer Julie Coniglio confirmed that the game is scalable, with new online content being planned as well as future live events.

Win a Pocket Movie Camera Through Socks Inc. Twitter Contest

May 12, 2011 / Michael Andersen

To coincide with the launch of Socks, Inc., Awkward Hug has found it in their hearts to offer ARGNet readers a chance to win all the tools necessary to join the fun in style. So put your talents at tweeting to the test for a chance to take home a portable movie camera and Super Awesome Sock Making kit.

The Socks, Inc. Twitter Contest
Socks, Incorporated needs your help to come up with tweet sized commercial tag-lines for the game! They will award a Super Awesome Sock Puppet making kit complete with a Sanyo Full HD 1080 Pocket Movie Camera to the person (or sock) with the best Socks, Inc. themed Tweet. Mr. Barnsworth is taking time from his busy schedule of hanging out with underwear models to judge the contest himself!

To enter the Socks, Inc. Twitter contest, all you need to do is:

Write and Tweet a commercial tagline for Socks, Inc.; and
Make sure to include the Socks, Inc. website, http://socksinc.com, and the hashtag #argn

Mr. Barnsworth will be judging on creativity, so go nuts!

The deadline for submissions is Thursday, May 19th, 2011 at 11:59PM EST. ARGNet and Awkward Hug will contact potential winners via twitter on May 23rd. Read on for the Official Rules.

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A Walk Through Westeros: Retracing “The Maester’s Path”

May 3, 2011 / Michael Andersen

Images courtesy of Campfire

On Sunday, April 24th, HBO’s newest show, Game of Thrones, brought viewers into the world of Westeros, a land flush with political machinations and magic. Based on George R.R. Martin’s highly acclaimed Song of Ice and Fire book series, the franchise came pre-packaged with a committed fan base that has been somewhat patiently waiting for the next installment for six years. With Game of Thrones, HBO hopes to replicate the success of True Blood, their previous foray in fantasy adaptations. To help that along, the studio turned to Campfire, the advertising agency behind True Blood‘s Blood Copy alternate reality game.

With True Blood, Campfire introduced the town of Bon Temps to audiences through a narrative that guided them through the introduction of vampires to human society. However, a similar tactic was out of the question for Game of Thrones, due toÂ Martin’s openly protective stance towards the characters and worlds he creates. Since one of the goals of the campaign was to reassure fan communities that Game of Thrones was staying true to its source material, Campfire chose to focus on the world of Westeros itself through The Maester’s Path. As Campfire’s Executive Creative Director Mike Monello explains,

The work we did with True Blood was really an exercise with building a fan culture for the show, [and] what HBO has seen is how that really helped sustain the show. For Game of Thrones, a lot of this work was designed to facilitate the fan culture that was growing around the show and have HBO be a part of that, to have the fans know that HBO respected that . . . there’s more to fan culture than just “put the show on the air.”

The result of this thinking was a five-week long sensory exploration of the world that brought the rich lore of Martin’s stories to the forefront in “Stark” relief.

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Current TV’s Participation Tango, Bar Karma

May 2, 2011 / Nathan Maton

An old man stands behind a bar.Â Half butler, half mad scientist, he sports a three-piece gray suit, an all-knowing smile, and the frayed messy grey hair of an aging genius.Â He withdraws a deck of cards labeled with simplistic circles and lines, slowly shuffling the deck before placing a handful of cards in front of a patron at the bar going through a turning point in their life. Every time he touches a card, the card’s face is replaced by a glimpse into one of the patron’s many potential futures.

Welcome to the signature scene fromÂ Bar Karma, a science fiction themed television show on Current TV. This past Friday,Â Bar Karma ended its first season.Â The show features characters from different times and places as they unknowingly enter a bar outside time and space when they have a tough decision to make.Â The show repeatedly asks questions about fate and free will as the barkeep and his small but attractive staff attempts to help each new character while protecting their renegade consultation shop from a mysterious evil entity.Â Each episode’s narrative is created in part by an active portion of theÂ Bar Karma audience that proposes and votes for plots.

Co-produced byÂ former Nickelodeon executive Albie Hect andÂ Sims creator and game industry legendÂ Will Wright, the show is experimental TV on the bleeding edge of interactive storytelling. Â Â “The mission is to extend to the viewing audience an unprecedented amount of input and participation in the development of the series,” says David Cohn, General Manager for Current TV.Â “To create the world’s first community-developed series.”

Transmedia Experts Tell the Story to NABShow Attendees

April 29, 2011 / Celina Beach

For the second year in a row, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show hosted a panel of transmedia luminaries to discuss the state of the industry. This year’s panel, Transmedia: Telling the Story through Narrative Content, Games and Real-World Adventures was hosted by Henry Jenkins (Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California, and author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide) and included Jeff Gomez (President and CEO, Starlight Runner Entertainment), Kim Moses (Executive Producer/Director, Sander/Moses Productions and Slam Internet), Gale Anne Hurd (Executive Producer, The Walking Dead; President, Valhalla Motion Pictures), Danny Bilson (Executive Vice President of Core Games, THQ, Inc.), and Tim Kring (Transmedia Storyteller, Conspiracy for Good, Heroes).

Jenkins started the panel with a definition of transmedia from his book as a starting point for discussion amongst the panelists:

Transmedia Storytelling represents a process by which narrative information is systematically dispersed across multiple media channels for the purposes of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.

Jenkins asserted that the difference between transmedia and other methods is “that each element adds something vital to the mix as a whole” and “expand[s] the canvas on which storytellers work within the entertainment industry.”

Discover History at NYPL and Find the Future

April 13, 2011 / Kris Nordgren

According to Jane McGonigal, gamers tend to read books more than they watch TV. Books give us big ideas and inform our imaginations, create new worlds and take us on amazing adventures. Oddly enough, the place where books are kept and made available, the library, does not usually fill us with the same sense of wonder. The New York Public Library wants to change that perception. The libraryâ€™s goal is to “inspire people around the world to see libraries as a place where they can achieve their dreams and invent their own future” and “show off NYPL as a space for active creation and social collaboration.” To do this, the library has developed Find the Future, an interactive experience that guides visitors through the many artifacts housed at the New York Public Library. The game is directed by Jane McGonigal and her husband Kiyash Monsef, and designed and developed by Playmatics and Natron Baxter Applied Gaming.

Find the Future will initially be played by 500 participants who will be locked into the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building overnight on May 20, 2011. Once inside, players will go on real-world missions by following virtual clues on laptops and smartphones, collaborating online to discover 100 amazing and unique items from the collections of the New York Public Library, like Charles Dickensâ€™ letter opener or a draft version of the Declaration of Independence. After finding each object, they will write a short piece based on the experience, inspiring the future with their personal contribution, which will later be bundled and published in a book. As McGonigal explained to CNN.com, “it really becomes clear that for every moment in history there was a person who set that moment in action — and you could be that person.”