As we reported a few days ago, Book Three of Eldritch Errors has officially launched. The ARG has started off with plans for three nearly concurrent live events in Sacramento, New York City and Austin. Several players had a clandestine meeting with an in-game contact last night at the first event in Sacramento. The remaining two events are scheduled to happen tonight at 8pm.
Check out the Sentry Outpost or Unfiction to follow the action!
Hey, we like to think that we’re pretty tech-savvy individuals here at ARGNet, with at least one of us owning one of those sorta-new-fangled iPod Touch device thingies. Well, on a whim this weekend, I decided to adapt a WordPress plugin called iWPhone into our Movable Type installation, which you can see at iphone.argn.com. Heck, that interface might be the preferred view for people who don’t use Apple devices!
We are going to be moving things over to WordPress in 2008, but are having CSS issues, so it’s still a work in progress. Rest assured, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve the site, both visually and with functionality. If you fine, fine readers ever some across a problem with the site, shoot us a message and let us know about it.
After only a few weeks since the end of Deus City, the fine folks at Fundi Games are back at it again with Conspiracy Asylum File Zero. Our very own Sean C. Stacey had reported two weeks ago on the hint that the puppetmasters left for the players late in November, and noted that the game would be launching around the first of February.
However, here we are five days short of the end of January, looking at new content and open registration on the trailhead site. Currently, the forum-style web site has one entry — “File 1 – Aliens: ‘Are we really alone?’ — which players can comment on, once they register and log in. Once logged in, players are able to offer their theories to either prove or disprove the conspiracy video.
The original beta video is still available on YouTube, although it has changed locations since our previous story. We will provide updates here at ARGNet as more is discovered about the game.
Let the speculation end! After last week’s article from Michelle Senderhauf and mention on episodes 46 and 47 of the ARG Netcast series, we turn to Schmeldritch for definitive word regarding the launch of Book Three of Eldritch Errors, the long-running Lovecraftian alternate reality game. In the January 23rd entry on the developer’s blog, Brian Clark points to a post on the Unfiction forums (as well as back to here, thankyouverymuch) as a clear indication that festivities have begun for the third installment of the experience.
Clark also notes that he is setting the bar even higher for this new stage of game play, stating, “My expectations for ‘Red Moon Rising’ are obviously higher than they were even for ‘Scream in the Mountains’,” adding, “May I recommend that experienced participants change their tin foil hats daily during Book Three and leave it at that?” If this tickles your fancy and you wish to get caught up with everything that has happened thus far, head over to EldritchErrors.com. Clark acknowledges the new people who may want to jump on board by promising, “Don’t worry that Eldritch Errors has been going since last April, Book Three was developed with you in mind. It was also developed with Book One participants in mind, as well, so you’ll have lots to discover together.”
The Harvard Business Review has spoken: alternate reality gaming may very well be the future of business. As part of its annual “Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas” issue, the magazine addressed the potential of alternate reality gaming to reshape the business world.
The article, written by Jane McGonigal, addresses the benefits of capitalizing on collective intelligence in the workplace. No stranger to forecasting the future, Jane predicts that
eventually, games will become the go-to tools for launching internal initiatives, or they will rally global teams of outside “expert players†to engage in business forecasting. Ultimately, ARGs will involve customers in inventing new products and services or in testing companies’ market assumptions.
In the article, Jane pulls on her experience behind the scenes with World Without Oil to demonstrate the potential of the genre. During the alternate reality game, players faced with a peak oil crisis sent in over a thousand blog posts, videos, podcasts and other submissions chronicling the potential effects and evaluating potential alternative strategies during an oil crisis.
So it’s time to clean up your resumes, spruce up your cover letters, and add a section for ARG experience — because the new media literacy you develop with every passing cipher you solve and each domain registration you pull up might help land your dream job someday.
Producer/Director JJ Abrams is on a viral rampage this year, it seems. Hot on the tail of Cloverfield’s big screen debute, was the premiere of the initial teaser trailer for the 11th installment in the Star Trek film franchise. Reportedly, the movie will carry only the name “Star Trek”, as it returns to the academy days of our beloved Enterprise crew. The teaser can be seen on the official website. But as beautiful as it is, that is not the reason for this article.
If you navigate to the official website, scroll down to the “Under Construction” label. See the little red dot beside it? Click it. Yes, you’ve just found another viral website. JJ is known for tying common threads between his creative productions – his unique drink Slusho! being the most prominent example. Slusho has made cameo appearances in Alias, Heroes, and Kenan and Kel. But recently he’s taken a liking to extending his works beyond their base medium, into the internet world, and the real world.
If you’re familiar with the TV show Lost (also an Abrams production), there was a very well received extended reality called The Lost Experience which ran along the TV show. Currently leading up to the North American airing of season 4 is another campaign called Find 815. You’ve been living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the viral campaign surrounding the months leading up to the premiere of Cloverfield (which also, by the way, has a backstory around the development of the Slusho drink and its secret ingredient Seabed’s Nectar).
So the question is, will Abrams be providing another extended experience or alternate reality game related to the Star Trek franchise leading up to the movie’s release? Or will this turn out just to be another typical viral marketing campaign? Personally, I would love to see a Slusho! cameo appearance in the movie. Imagine: Kirk and Spock order a Slusho from a bar at the Academy. And Guinan serves it to them.
At the very least, we have a new website – a relatively covert website, which seems to be showing ‘streaming video’ from the construction site of the Enterprise NCC-1701. What will the days ahead reveal to us? We have nearly a whole year to find out. JJ knows how to bait and taunt his target market, so expect a lot of mystery and viral advertising.
Live long, and drink Slusho.
Official website
NCC-1701.com Trailhead
Discussion at Unfiction
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