Category: Rumors (Page 7 of 18)

Ditch the Tech: Potential Dollhouse ARG for the Hiatus

November 10, 2009 / Michael Andersen

ditchthetech In its second season on air, Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse has reportedly been averaging fewer than 3 million viewers per episode. In light of these figures, Fox decided to put the show on hiatus until December 4th, after November sweeps. Undeterred, Whedon posted the following commentary on Whedonesque:

“Howzabout that schedule? Well, I’m not as depressed as everyone else. We weren’t about to rock sweeps anyway, and though there’s a chilly November, December is CRAZY. It’s like an Advent calendar of episodes! We get November to try to spread the word (which I’ll be leaning on Fox to do, though it’s hard to imagine them doing as good a job as the WhyIWatch guy) and then December is pure gluttony. Plus the episodes line up extremely well in these pairs, and we’ll have an absurdly appropriate lead-in.”

It appears as though people desperate for moreÂ Dollhouse content will not be forced toÂ wait until the show returnsÂ from its hiatusÂ December 4th. Yesterday, Dollhouse fans noticed a new website for Rossum Corporation, the organization responsible for Dollhouses around the world. In addition to advertising an attractive 5-year paid internship for “candidates of superior genetic disposition,” Rossum Corporation provides details about its ongoing Senate investigation. Even the website’s Terms & Conditions strives to establish its authenticity, noting that “all agents shall remain the property of the Company at all times.”

Levi’s G.O. IV Fortune Treasure Hunt: Who Was Grayson Ozias IV?

October 3, 2009 / Michael Andersen

goforth Back in July, advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy Portland unveiled a new direction for Levi’s with its Go Forth campaign. Drawing heavily upon the poetry of Walt Whitman and the frontier spirit, the campaign seeks to bolster flagging spirits (and blue jean sales) with tag lines such as “strike up for the new world,” “this country was not built by men in suits” and “will work for better times.” While Advertising Age remains skeptical about whether the “bootstraps ethic will find a receptive audience in a dustbowl economy,” the chance to discover $100,000 in buried treasure might help convince people to “Go Forth.”

In two days, the hunt for Grayson Ozias IV’s treasure begins as part of Levi’s online component to the campaign. Details about the G.O. IV Fortune experience are scarce, as the contest rules were not available at the time of this article. However, you can get a feel for the interactive component by checking out New Americans: A Portrait of a Country, a collection of user-generated text, images, audio, and video responding to challenges such as “take a picture of you high-fiving a parking attendant” and “re-create Old Glory for today’s America.”

The aptly named G.O. (the) Fourth has a twitter account, and you can sign up for notifications on the countdown page. It remains to be seen whether the hunt for Grayson Ozias’ fortune will tell an engaging story.

A New “Trick” from Universal Studios: Evelyn Offscreen Presents a Real Treat

October 2, 2009 / Carie Ward

EvelynOffscreen Halloween is fast approaching, bringing with it costumes, candy, and the macabre. If you live in Orlando, it appears as though Universal Studios is bringing one final “treat” to your homes with the launch of its horror-themed alternate reality game Evelyn Offscreen, a new “interactive Halloween adventure” that is being run to promote Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights.

Evelyn Crane is a classic horror movie actress who has been in seclusion for the past 37 years, after an incident where a movie critic called her “too old”. Ever since then, Evelyn has been searching for the secret of eternal youth so that she can reclaim her old glory as an actress. Based on her facination with Elizabeth Bathory (the Hungarian countess who, as legend has it, bathed in the blood of hundreds of murdered young girls in order to retain her youth), it would appear as if Evelyn might just go to any sort of lengths in order to reclaim her beauty, youth and position. A perfect sort of story for Halloween.

If that wasn’t enough, there is also the mystery surrounding a series of deaths at the Universal Palace Theater, where many of Evelyn Crane’s movies have been shown. Julian Browning was the usher at the Palace Theater from 1922 until 1940, when he was found hanged behind the screen at the theater. Ever since then, he has been reported to be “present” at many of the other tragedies that have befallen workers and patrons of the Palace Theater.

Visitors to Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights will be able to visit the Universal Palace Theater via the Silver Screams haunted house in the theme park. The Evelyn Offscreen website promises that live scenes will be playing in Orlando, Florida, but whether this means just in the Silver Screams haunted house or possibly elsewhere remains to be seen. However the online campaign will be available to everyone, so even if you can’t get scared half to death at the Halloween Horror Nights, you can still get scared in your own living room.

Click Here for the Evelyn Offscreen website
Click Here for Evelyn Crane’s twitter
Click Here for Evelyn Crane’s blog
Click Here for information on the Universal Palace Hotel

Halo ODST: Discovering Sadie’s Story

September 15, 2009 / Geoff May

“Prepare To Drop”
Those words have been resounding through the gaming community for months, and the clashing drums of excited gamers are growing as the release date for Halo 3: ODST draws nearer. But there’s something more in this video game release that’s attracting attention.

Back in 2004, an ARG milestone was achieved with the launch of a defining marketing campaign for the genre. Before Halo 2 was released, a mysterious URL appeared momentarily in a promotional trailer, leading the way to the discovery of another world, another story within the Halo universe. The campaign became known as “I Love Bees“. That campaign is what introduced me to the world of ARGs. Already being an enormous Halo fan, the combination of the Halo science fiction universe with this method of story-telling had me immediately hooked.

Chrysopteron / Superintendent With each iteration of the Halo video game franchise, there has been some form of extended experience, viral campaign, or ARG. For Halo 3 it was Iris. Bungie even produced their own relatively localized mysteries, such as the Cortana Letters leading up to Halo: Combat Evolved, and other strange A.I. users posting and interacting on the Bungie.net forums like The Smuggler and The Superintendent. Bungie had created a diverse, dynamic, and vast universe in which many stories could be told beyond the video game genre.

Sure enough, Halo 3: ODST will have a unique extended experience of its own. Or rather, an embedded tangential experience, for lack of a better term. Within the game, players will be able to uncover bits and pieces of a separate story arc throughout the campaign. This story is being called “Sadie’s Story“. Created by Fourth Wall Studios in partnership with Bungie Studios‘ Joe Staten and Ashley Wood, it’s an audio drama (not unlike the radio drama revealed in I Love Bees) that utilizes comic-book style story-telling and will reveal an exciting mystery throughout the campaign, told from the perspective of Sadie- a New Mombasa civilian, and her experience through the ordeal leading up to New Mombasa’s destruction. It’s reported to contain even more voice acting than ODST itself.

The End… is the Beginning?

August 10, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

theihc You know when you get that feeling that you should have done something last week but you forget what it was? Today was one of those days for me, but luckily a little birdie reminded me about The Institute for Human Continuity, an ARG that launched (gasp!) in November 2008 in connection with the movie 2012. While this campaign has been going for ten months now, activity has been ramping up in recent weeks, with a letter making its way into ARGFest-o-Con 2009 swag bags, as detailed on the Unfiction forums by our own Celina Beach.

We have it on good authority that things are about to get very, very interesting in the next few HOURS, so head on over to theIHC.com (currently redirecting to instituteforhumancontinuity.org) and get your ticket for the survival lottery before it’s too late!

Electron Innovations Inc: Much Ado About a Paperweight

April 10, 2009 / Michael Andersen

electronic-innovations

Earlier today, I received a press release from Cray Cook promoting the launch of her new company, Electron Innovations, Inc. The company purportedly aims to compete with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) to provide affordable computers to children with their EI2 model. The EI2 team plans on searching for talented individuals to join their team as the development process advances into the production stage. Before you start dusting off your resumes and polishing your cover letters, this appears to be the launch of a new alternate reality game.

Cray Cook and Bertram Bosworth just finished moving into their new offices in Plano, mere miles away from the University of Texas at Dallas. During the moving process, they discovered a strange metal box that was initially mistaken for a paperweight with the letters “MMCLXIX” on one side, and a series of gold dots on another. A crumpled page of schematics seems to indicate that the cube is some form of electrical device. The pair are currently attempting to find some way to interface with the device. Ms. Cook is currently searching for an old Apple II to see if the interface is based on 8-bit MOS 6502 technology.