Category: Update (Page 13 of 42)

HBO Brings Blood Copy Back From the Dead for True Blood Season 2

May 21, 2009 / Michael Andersen

UPDATE 09/12/2010: Welcome to ARGNet, True Blood fans! The BloodCopy.com website appears to be experiencing server issues due to the finale. If you’re interested in learning more about the viral marketing behind the show, check out our previous coverage, or read about the mysterious package that launched the campaign back in May 2008.

Last year, HBO and Campfire Media created an integrated media campaign to introduce the public to Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire series that included targeted mailings, vials of fake blood, and a fake protest in NYC by the American Vampire League, an organization working to secure equal rights for vampires. HBO summarized the content with a weekly faux-documentary, The Blood Copy Report.

With the season 2 premiere of True Blood scheduled to air June 14th on HBO, vestiges of last year’s viral campaign are beginning to surface. Andrew Kasday, one of the characters behind the website BloodCopy.com, was turned into a vampire, and has “revamped” the site into an expose on human-vampire relations. Andrew has recently hinted that he has a secret reason behind bringing Blood Copy back from the dead.

Building off the success of last year’s Blood Copy Report, many of Andrew’s stories have been picked up by HBO’s vampire news program, The Perspective with Victoria Davis, which is scheduled to run weekly segments until August 18th. While the experience has been relatively passive so far, the decision to air Victoria Davis’ faux-news segment concurrently with True Blood’s air time leaves the possibility for more open.

Click Here to visit BloodCopy.com
Click Here to watch the first edition of The Perspective with Victoria Davis
Click Here to follow Andrew on Twitter

Image courtesy of Jonathan, via Geekologie.com

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.