Category: Update (Page 13 of 41)

A Second Look at Coral Cross: When Life Imitates ARG

May 15, 2009 / Michael Andersen

coralcross2009 Back in April, the Hawaii State Department of Heath kicked off a public engagement initiative to raise awareness about the state’s pandemic priorities. The planned campaign included community meetings, a live TV panel, and Coral Cross: an alternate reality game.

Things have changed.

News reports providing detailed coverage on the recent outbreak of the H1N1 virus, commonly referred to as “swine flu”, have impressed upon the global community the dangers of a pandemic outbreak. In the ensuing frenzy, the Egyptian government slaughtered pigs. To date, there are ten confirmed cases of H1N1 in Hawaii. There no longer appears to be a need to raise awareness about the threat of pandemics. People are aware.

Skynet Research: Resist or be Terminated

March 27, 2009 / Robbie Smith

This past Tuesday, Twitter birds that were following Skynet Research got several frantic messages advising them to ignore the “audio interference” on the Skynet homepage. Skynet, apparently afraid that the Twitter-verse would not get the word out fast enough, followed up with a mass e-mail warning visitors of “technical difficulties” that had created said audio interference while reassuring all that the problem would soon be fixed. Skynet also pointed out that the rumors circulating on resistorbeterminated.com were false and should be disregarded.

Skynet’s calming efforts had quite the opposite effect as visitors flooded both sites, discovering that the audio interference was no interference at all, but rather a distorted message. Upon slowing down the audio, players made a startling discovery: — the audio was, in fact, a message from a military unit named Recon Unit Strider Three reporting in and requesting extraction after coming under fire during a recon mission on Skynet “Tech Com Units.”

Audio interference indeed.

Rachael Webster Is Calling Me a Liar: Meet Her at GDC

March 19, 2009 / Michael Andersen

Remember how I insisted a few months ago that Rachael Webster, the video game blogger behind PixelVixen707.com, was fake? The folks at GameSetWatch and I were convinced she was all part of an elaborate yet eloquent ruse to get people to buy JC Hutchins’ new book, Personal Effects: Dark Art.

Rachael Webster called us out. She’s real, and she’s willing to prove it.

Rachael Webster will be attending the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco next week shaking hands and passing out business cards. The first ten people to crack the puzzle on the back of the card and email a picture of themself holding the card to [email protected] will receive “something cool” from her friend Jessica.

During last week’s ARG Netcast, JC Hutchins talked about his work on the transmedia novel Personal Effects: Dark Art. Explaining the debate over Rachael Webster, Hutchins told us that “Rachael is Rachael. Rachael is real in a way that is really kind of brainbending and really cool…Rachael is as real as you want her to be.”

As for me, I’ll believe it when I see it. So if you receive the business card seen above from a snarky woman at the Game Developer’s Conference, convince her to take a picture with you, and send it to us at [email protected]. And if I’m wrong, I’ll commit myself to Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital.

Click Here for our previous coverage on Rachael Webster and Personal Effects: Dark Art

JC Hutchins thinks you should be taken to the brink and committed

March 9, 2009 / Michael Andersen

brinkvale Last November, podcast novelist and author JC Hutchins spoke with ARGNet about his upcoming transmedia novel Personal Effects: Dark Art, produced by Smith & Tinker. In the interview, Hutchins explained that a number of online-based transmedia experiences would be released prior to the book’s release that would leverage his strengths as both a storyteller and a podcaster. Earlier this weekend, Hutchins announced that he was seeking volunteers interested in becoming committed…to an insane asylum.

By visiting JCHutchins.net/thebrink, volunteers can commit themselves to Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital. After filling out their patient profile, volunteers receive their admittance papers and are eligible to submit their “art assignments” to Brinkvale’s art therapist and Personal Effects protagonist Zach Taylor. Submissions will appear in The Brink’s patient gallery. The first assignment, Your Mad World, is already available.

Skynet Researchâ€™s Glowing Gift

February 24, 2009 / Robbie Smith

Remember Skynet Research? On Friday the 13th the mysterious Terminator site went live, and users who had previously signed up for updates returned to find a fully functional website with company bios, contact information, testimonials and outreach efforts. There was also a robotic community page that detailed Skynetâ€™s Enhancement Module 101, a product guaranteed to improve the functionality of any robot. Of course, being a proper ARGamer I requested a module with little hope of anything actually happening, but then the whispers started over on the Unfiction forums, where some members claimed they had actually gotten an Enhancement Module in the mail. Incredulous, I went about my business until today, when I found a small box in the mail from Skynet Research.

Tucked inside the box was the Enhancement Module in all its glory. While in all actuality it is just a piece of flickering plastic, I still found myself upset I didnâ€™t have a robot to attach it to. The paperwork seemed to hint at the fact that Skynet would take over any robot that was â€œenhancedâ€ and I dearly wanted to see the carnage that would follow from such a hostile takeover.

All Enhancement Modules aside, the accompanying paperwork included proof without a doubt that Skynet Research is an ARG for the Terminator: Salvation film that will hit theaters on May 22nd, a date the installation sheet reiterated for its readers. While the puppetmasters acknowledged that the module was a â€œThank youâ€ for playing along, they still encouraged players to take part in the ARG and submit user-created videos detailing their newly enhanced robots.

The next phase of Heroes Evolutions is the iStory

February 10, 2009 / Jonathan Waite

heroes_evolutions_istory

Editor’s note: This article deals with the television show Heroes. If you are not up to date with the most recent episode, and you don’t want to be spoiled by details, you may want to turn back now.

So there I was, watching Heroes on NBC tonight, when I saw a commercial about Rachel. Rachel, as the ad told me, somehow survived the explosion at Pinehearst that marked the end of ‘volume three’ or the series. As curious people often do, I headed over to the Heroes web site at NBC to see what the deal was, hoping for a return to what was formerly known as Heroes 360, which became Heroes Evolutions. I had not had the opportunity to play along with the original experience, and as I’m still a huge Heroes fan, I thought that now would be a good time to jump back into the ARG. While what I found wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, it’s still a pretty cool experience for fans of the show.

Enter the iStory titled The Private. Described on the web site as an “ongoing, interactive story,” players will be given the chance to play along with the choose-your-own-adventure style narrative, as the choices they make will determine the outcome of the story and its characters. This appears to be a game that players can jump into at any time, as all new players start at the first “book” of the series, and progress can be saved in the player profile.

heroes_istory_characters I had a chance to play through the first story tonight — there have been four published to date — and was impressed by both the narrative and the artwork. Within the story, there was a Morse Code puzzle, and while the choices were few and far between, there’s a great deal of potential here for future chapters of the story. Combine this aspect of the Evolutions experience with a web series called The Recruit, a series of graphic novels and season walkthroughs and it appears to be a robust expansion of the universe laid out within the boundaries of the weekly hour-long action show. Again, it may not be the type of interaction the typical ARG player might expect, but it deserves a second (and third, and fourth…) look from anyone who wants to more about Hiro, Peter and Claire the cheerleader.