Category: Rumors (Page 13 of 18)

Zoom In On Ocular Effect

July 10, 2006 / Jackie Kerr

The ARGN Tipline lightbulb flashed this morning, alerting us to a new message arriving at the ARGcave. Our intrepid hero reporters donned their shiny gold catsuits and red swirlie over-the-suit panties, flipped their capes over their shoulders and flew into the internet wild to gather information, like the Thunderbirds but with better marionettes.

They came back with a mysterious website, Ocular Effect. The rather barren site displays a flash movie entitled “spiroclock” – but wait! Is that what we think it is?! IT’S A COUNTDOWN! We hooked Brains up to his new fangled math program and he chugged out an answer – Monday! The countdown clock runs to this upcoming Monday, July 17th! Holy good mathing, Brains!

We then sent Virgil Tracy out to whois the domain. He was amazingly successful and Lady Penelope was most enthused. Virgil gathered intriguing information that leads the ARGNbirds to believe that the magical world of Disney is behind this project. Gordon, not wanting to be out-performed by that pantywaist Virgil, noticed in his investigation that Ocular Effects redirects to 00112358.net, which isn’t registered to Disney, oddly enough.

What may happen on Monday has yet to be discovered — it’s unclear what Disney project is being promoted, and equally hazy what the strange, spinning wheel with the ooglie-booglie, danger music represents, but rest assured, the ARGNbirds are ready, prepped, and pantied to keep you informed of every surprise.

Eon8 Activate!

June 30, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

When something pops up on the radar with enough force to bog down an entire message forum, we generally sit up and take notice. Today, eon8 is the web site that is shaking the ARG world, and it has a familiar feeling to it. If you are lucky enough to be able to access the site (traffic jams are just as nasty on the Internet as in real life, I guess) you will notice the countdown (currently at 0d:01h:30m:37s) as well as a Project Status (currently X13600 Imminent, whatever that means). A link to deployment logs reveals a lot of alphanumeric strings, while the Deployment Tracker is a lovely little link… that I can’t seem to access, yet. Many of the links on the front page go to a password-protected subdomain as well, evidence that this may indeed turn into an ARG.

All of that aside, this is another occasion where it’s not entirely certain what this site has in store, but with the amount of attention it has received so far, we’ll keep an eye out and update when we find out what the X13600 is going on.

:: Discussion at Unfiction forums (connection may be slow due to high volume of traffic)

Update!
So, as it turns out, the entire thing was a social experiment. At 12:00 AM EST, the site reloaded. These are excerpts of the text from the eon8.com site, under a link called “Reveal The Truth”:

SXSW Interactive: Brian Clark of GMD Studios

March 14, 2006 / Dee Cook

ARGN at SXSW

Editor’s note: For those of you who played Art of the Heist last year, or who are currently enjoying Who Is Benjamin Stove?, you might already know about GMD Studios, the driving force behind some of the biggest Alternate Reality Games to date. Brian Clark, who co-founded the company in 1995, has become a valuable and active member of the ARG community. His energy and creativity have helped in taking the genre to new heights, and Dee Cook was lucky enough to sit down with Brian during the SXSW Interactive festival for a few words.

What is your favorite movie?
My favorite movie? Probably my favorite movie of all time would be Bladerunner. [Ed. Note: Possible spoilers for Bladerunner.]

The director’s cut or the original version?
Oh, definitely the director’s cut. No narration, no Mickey Spillane voice-over with the extra wrinkle that the Bladerunner’s a replicant (Oh, no, spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! I spoiled the movie!)

Did you see the narrated version first?
Yes.

Do you think that made you appreciate the second one better?
No. I think once they took the voice-over out, it left more to speculation. Peoples’ motivations and machines’ motivations became less clear. We didn’t need to have Harrison Ford tell us about Rutger Hauer dying. We could just watch that scene and not have to say, “Maybe in the end he valued any life, even his own.” I think that the film company underestimated the intelligence of the film-going public.

I read somewhere that Harrison Ford said he did the narration badly deliberately so they’d have to cut it.
Really? That’s a great detail – a little sabotage.

True, but I don’t know whether it’s an urban myth or not.
Yeah, but it’s interesting.

I Love Bees Two

March 7, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Rumors have been running rampant on various gaming forums of late concerning the emergence of ilovebees2.com, which popped up on our radar sometime last month. While speculation about what the site might be connected to is a hot topic at the UnFiction forums, we have information from a source that the campaign is not connected or related to 4orty 2wo Entertainment, the company behind the original I Love Bees game. As well, Bungie has offically denied any involvement with the web site (3rd paragraph of link). Current speculation points to a fan-based game related to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which ships on March 20th, as much of the content is related to the Elder Scrolls universe.

Pherotones

February 3, 2006 / Brooke Thompson

Pherotones have the potential to transform a friend into something more.

Several weeks ago, Dr. Myra Vanderhood was interviewed by Bruce Stewart for Oâ€™Reilly Emerging Telephony blog about the potential of using ring tones to attract members of the opposite sex. Pherotones are the audio equivalent of pheromones, in which people and animals are attracted or repulsed by upon receiving a fragrant whiff of a potential mate. Dr. Myra Vanderhood discovered that sounds can have a similar effect and is testing her discovery on ring tones.

The interview with Stewart linked to Dr. Vanderhoodâ€™s blog as well as to a wikipedia article (since deleted) on Pherotones and it didnâ€™t take long for the blogosphere to weigh in with fascination and controversy. Once it was discovered that the wikipedia article had been written by McKinney + Silver (the Ad Agency behind Art of the Heist), there was a justifiable frustration over the manipulation of one of the internet’s best resources for commercial and advertising purposes. And, despite their best efforts of hiding their involvement (going as far as to obscure the registration information for the pherotones.com website), it brought McKinney Silver into the fold. When confronted by this, Dr. Vanderhood explained that someone on the board hired them for promotional purposes (great thinking on your feet!) and added a new â€œIs this a marketing campaign” question to the website FAQ.

There is still no word on the actual client, though rumors have it ranging from Qwest (a client of McKinney Silvers) to Stephen Kingâ€™s latest novel, Cell. We do know that the website will be updating (and a wiki of sorts will appear at some point), though the depth of the campaign is still to be determined. However, with the possible interaction (Dr. Vanderhood will chat on AIM and has replied to emails) and the great quick thinking weâ€™ve seen so far, if it goes very deep it should be a fun and well thought out ride.

ARGN verdict: pherotones have the potential to transform the spring gaming season into something more.

Is There Gold In Those Hills?

January 31, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Fans of Survivor, The Apprentice, and Rock Star: INXS will know the name Mark Burnett. He is one of the most successful television producers in recent times, churning out hit reality series after hit reality series. Now, it seems that Burnett wants to apply his talents to another niche — interactive Web programs.

Burnett has teamed up with AOL to bring the treasure-hunt game show “Gold Rush” to the Internet. Details about the game are sketchy at best, but it will require cryptic puzzles to be solved in real-time. Contestants will be able to have “constant interaction with the showâ€™s central treasure hunt,” according to Burnett, and the prize is nothing to scoff at – $1.6 million in gold will be available in 13 locations across the United States.