Category: News (Page 82 of 183)

Citizens of Virtue

October 20, 2008 / Geoff May

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the “Citizens of Virtue,” and they sure seem to be up to some shady practices. In this ARG-that-campaigns-against-ARGs, the C.O.V. are a fundamentalist Christian group that may or may not be holding some individuals captive while also apparently lying about their business practices. Citizens of Virtue is part of an Alternate Reality Game created by Rob Bell and Don Golden, as a promotion for their latest book – Jesus Wants to Save Christians. Yes, it is in fact of a rare breed – the Christian ARG.

Our first encounter with the C.O.V. came from an email we received in late September from a Ms. Savannah Merks, listed as the Public Relations Specialist for the group. In the email was a press release which claimed, among other things, that, “[a] sweeping wave of ‘alternate reality’ games is steering our nation down a dangerous path, according to the Citizens of Virtue (C.O.V.), a Christian organization dedicated to improving Christian lifestyles around the world.” Merks herself noted that, “[w]ith alternate reality games, literally millions of people could be caught up simultaneously in a mind-altering swirl of confused thinking.” Yeah, imagine that!

Since then, we’ve received a number of game tips pointing us to the game, and while it was part of the discussion in episode 63 of the ARG Netcasts, we know we’re a bit behind on getting involved in this one. However, we know that the community discussion at the Unfiction forums will help those who wish to get started, and we’re pretty sure that anyone there will be glad to help get you up to speed!

We’ve got more information about the plot, the book tie-in, and a few interesting images of swag cards we received in the mail after the hump, so click on through!

SuperStruct: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It… And We Feel Fine!

October 17, 2008 / Celina Beach

The year is 2019, and the world is caught in the grips of several SuperThreats, fighting for it’s very survival – but the citizen/players of this world aren’t taking it lying down. They’re creating survival plans, researching the SuperThreats, searching for allies, and making SuperStructures – plans and organizations created to survive, and combat, the SuperThreats – and in the end, helping to save the world!

Such is the premise of Superstruct , the new “massively multiplayer forecasting game” by the Institute for the Future (IftF), an “independent, nonprofit research group with over 40 years of forecasting experience”. The game’s Director of Game Research & Development is a familiar name to the ARG-Faithful: Jane McGonigal, fresh off her “Find The Lost Ring” success. With SuperStruct, the IftF gives players a possible scenario of what life is like in the year 2019, and players tell them how they’re coping, surviving, or even thriving, in that world.

So far, the players are doing just that – via blogs, wikis, discussions, they are creating their future personas and shaping the world of 2019. There are a lot of players participating in the shaping – 127 “Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals” (or SEHIs) in the first hour, and almost 1000 in the first 24 hours after launch. The site experienced a brief outage, which was restored in a matter of hours, and more than 1900 players had signed up by Day 2. At last count, 4481 players have registered.

Surviving in IftF’s 2019 isn’t easy. The 5 SuperThreats are daunting – Quarantine (of people infected with a contagious respiratory disease), Ravenous (hunger caused by widespread food shortages), Outlaw Planet (hackers and criminals causing major disruption in vital networks and the political process), Generation Exile (natural disasters forcing people to migrate seeking refuge), and Power Struggle (conflicts between the oil-rich countries against alternative energy sources). It is the task of the SEHIs to form Superstructures in order to combat and survive the global threats. So far, the SEHI’s *are* surviving, and apparently very successfully. In the 10 days since Superstruct launched, players have added 5 years to our survival horizon.

There is a mild competitive aspect to the game as well – players can earn “badges” by completing tasks and missions in relation to the Threats. Winning badges and other recognitions can lead to several honors, which will be selected and awarded by an A-list of celebrities, such as Tim Kring (Heroes), Warren Ellis (comic and Science Fiction author), and Ze Frank (Internet comedian).

What’s it all for? Besides being plain good fun, at the end of its six-week run, the IftF will release the official “Superstruct Report,” detailing insights gained and best tactics discovered for surviving future threats and creating superstructures. The report is expected to be released in April 2009 and will be emailed to all registered players. Even after the official game is over, the Superstruct site will remain live and open in archival form, for players to share their accomplishments with friends and family.

So, think you have what it takes to survive in the harsh world of 2019? Think the future needs what you have to offer? You have about 4 weeks to prove it, so get going! Superstruct is scheduled to end its run on November 17, so get in there and save the world!

PICNIC ’08, part three: Social network fatigue and visual asset collections

October 15, 2008 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

Editor’s Note: DaniÃ«l van Gool, an administrator at the Unfiction forums, was on the scene at PICNIC ’08 on behalf of ARGNet. We were impressed with DaniÃ«l’s work covering PICNIC ’07 and, as media partners of the annual cross-media festival, were invited to a number of special events in addition to the speaker sessions. This is the third part of DaniÃ«l’s comprehensive look at this year’s event, still focused on the first day of conference speakers (the first part is here and the second part here). All pictures are courtesy of DaniÃ«l as well.

Next up on the first day’s schedule was Stefan Agamanolis, formerly of MIT, now working at Distance Lab, devising creative ways to deal with distance, giving a talk called Duelling the Distance. His rather bizarre but interesting address concerned itself with the communication analogy of fast-food versus slow-food: it’s efficiency versus quality, generic versus personalized, and so on. A mobile phone has the same ‘design mentality’ as fast food, meaning it facilitates ‘anywhere, anytime’ versus specific communication, it’s generic, and it’s the same device for any type of situation.

So Stefan and his colleagues had been thinking about what ‘slow communication’ would be like and tried to build a system based on those design principles. It would have to be free of distractions, like the concept of a phone booth pushed to an extreme.

What they ended up with were two people, submerged in two different swimming pools, each one’s head encased in a helmet that completely blocked their vision, taste and smell, while the water they floated in diminished their sense of touch. At the same time, their helmet, fitted with ultra-high-quality speakers and a microphone so the two test-subjects could communicate, was attached to three flotation devices so that they wouldn’t have to put effort into staying afloat. They called this concept the iso-phone. The experiment resulted in a lot of gestures under water by people who completely lost track of time.

This is a rather non-practical concept, of course, but it does provide insight into different aspects of the fast vs. slow analogy. We use the same communication device to call our lover as we do to talk to our lawyer or the pizza delivery guy, and this brings up the topic of intimacy. Another setup devised by Distance Lab tried to tackle this topic: a subject wears a ring on their finger that is detected by an overhead camera, which makes you able to draw in the air. The drawings are then communicated through projections of colored light onto someone else, creating an intimate way of communicating. Check out more about this project, dubbed Mutsogoto, on Distance Lab’s website.

Another few less intriguing objects were discussed before Agamanolis finished with a project called Remote Impact, which was described as a ‘boxing interface’ that lets you hit a mattress that’s mounted on a wall, where a silhouette of your opponent (potentially across the world) is projected. This setup proved especially popular on several games-related conferences over the past few months.

Update: Ghosts of a Chance Live Event

October 15, 2008 / Michelle Senderhauf

The Luce Foundation Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is hosting a ghostly scavenger hunt later this month as a part of the Ghosts of a Chance ARG. Attendees will participate in a series of code-breaking, puzzle-solving and ghost-hunting quests designed to help rid the museum of its “mischievous spirits”. The scavenger hunt will take place at the museum on October 25th from noon until 5pm. While exploring the museum, make sure to check out the Ghosts of a Chance art display which showcases art created by players for the ARG.

For those who can’t make it to Washington D.C. for the event, the ghosts of the Smithsonian still need your help! They would like players to work together to create a quilt code to be used during the scavenger hunt.

PICNIC ’08, part two: Aaron Koblin and the importance of data visualization

October 13, 2008 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

Editor’s Note: DaniÃ«l van Gool, an administrator at the Unfiction forums, was on the scene at PICNIC ’08 on behalf of ARGNet. We were impressed with DaniÃ«l’s work covering PICNIC ’07 and, as media partners of the annual cross-media festival, were invited to a number of special events in addition to the speaker sessions. This is the second part of DaniÃ«l’s comprehensive look at this year’s event, still focused on the first day of conference speakers (the first part is here). All pictures are courtesy of DaniÃ«l as well.

Next up was Aaron Koblin, a software developer and artist who works for Google’s Creative Labs and whose work is internationally renowned. He specializes in data visualization, which was another recurring theme through PICNIC’08.

There’s a revolution going on in data visualization, departing from pie-charts and graphs and taking on quite a different, creative route. It took a while for me to figure out why this topic, while interesting, was featured so prominently at a conference like PICNIC, but the theme became apparent after several speakers made it clear that one of the biggest trends on the internet nowadays is the connection between the digital and the physical worlds. Manipulating “virtual objects” online is a thing of the past: interacting with real objects and real data and input from the real world is what’s becoming big. And this is why data visualization is rapidly becoming a hot topic.

Koblin showed us several examples of interesting ways to portray data, including a display of oil production in the form of oil blobs crawling on a map and a very cool graphical representation which illustrated which portions of New York City were communicating via email with recipients around the world. I could write about these demonstrations for a long time, but I realize that, apart from hardly being interesting, they do Koblin’s work no justice, so if you’re interested, visit his website and check out some of his work.

Report from Austin Game Developers’ Conference 2008: In ARGs We Trust

October 13, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

Editor’s note: Brandie was ARGNet’s press presence at this year’s Austin Game Developers Conference. This is the first in a series on her experiences at the conference.

At the Austin GDC‘s only session devoted exclusively to Alternate Reality Games, Elan Lee of Fourth Wall Studios shared his thoughts on trust between ARG designers and players along with anecdotes from some of the most well-known cross-media experiences like AI and I Love Bees. In an interactive, real-time game-story experience, the level of trust between the designers (Puppet Masters, if you will) and the players can have a profound effect on the outcome of the game and the memories the players carry away at the end. “ARGs: Fake Websites, Invented Stories, Automated Phone Calls, and Other Methods to Earn the Trust of a Community” examined the building of trust as an integral part of the game-story experience.

Elan Lee opened the session with a look back at “The Beast” the promotional experience designed for the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Steven Spielberg came to Microsoft and said he wanted to do something promotional that would familiarize his audience with the A.I. world before the movie opened. What evolved from this was a series of websites, puzzles, and events that attracted thousands of dedicated players – who, incidentally, solved several weeks worth of content in a matter of hours. The designers had to scramble to keep adding content, altering the storyline as needed, and even responding to their audience by taking an initially unimportant but player-beloved character (The Red King) and promoting him to the character A-List.

After “The Beast” ended, Elan was surprised to receive three wedding invitations from players who had been deeply affected by their experience with the game. He realized, he said, that something magical was happening, when an audience felt close enough to a total stranger to invite him to participate in their real-life celebrations. “The Beast” and its designers had evoked a trust that transcended the anonymity of the internet and crossed over into the real world. What builds this intense sense of trust? According to Elan, one of the keys to trust is… a magnet.