Category: Update (Page 20 of 41)

Launching Into ’08: New Games and New Beginnings

December 31, 2007 / Brandie Minchew

As our planet careens into yet another lap around the Sun, puppetmasters are waiting gleefully in their lairs, cackling behind their respective curtains, fingers poised to hit the big red LAUNCH button at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2008. All around the world, ARG players will be clinging to their F5 buttons or obsessively checking their email for the new year’s first hint of activity in the world of chaotic fiction. January’s schedule is crowded with launches, relaunches, and continuations of new and ongoing games and experiences.Â We’d like to give you a quick peek at what’s in store for you in 2008.

The Lost Experience â€“ Relaunching 12/31/07
A press release on the ABC media website declared that on December 31, Oceanic Airlines would be resuming flights service to several cities. Contact your travel agent now!

What is this Game? – Launching 1/1/08
What is this Game?, an ARG and contest promoting What is this Movie? by Staff of the Magi Productions, begins on 1-1-2008 at midnight. Players may register here to participate (must be 18 or older by January 1, 2008). According to Magi’s press release, “What is this Game requires player interaction, quick thinking, puzzle solving skills, countless hours of dedication, and in the end a journey to the Grand Prize.”

QU13E
Last Halloween, QU13E rose from the grave. A few members of unFiction began exchanging emails and receiving clues from QU13E’s shadowy inhabitants. After solving a puzzle in the source code of the QU13E website, players noted that 1/1/08 was set to be the launch day of this mysterious game.

The Dark Knight
Who knows what the Joker’s next prank will be? This time, it might be PIE! The next phase of The Dark Knight kicks off early in the new year, so keep your eyes peeled and your forks at the ready.

Cloverfield
ZOMG! 1-18-08 is less than three weeks away! Avid followers of Cloverfield’s viral marketing will finally get to experience the Cloverfield monster on the big screen.

Eldritch Errors: Book 3
What lies ahead for the Sentries and the Dreamers in a post-Scream world? No exact date has been hinted at for the opening of Book 3, but players speculate that new activity on Eldritch Errors will begin sometime in the new year.

The Joker’s latest task is a Piece of Cake

December 5, 2007 / Geoff May

It’s been a while since we’ve reported on the alternate reality game for the upcoming movie The Dark Knight, but that doesn’t mean that the action has stopped. In fact, on December 4th, after a long trail of tasks, websites and information spawning from a Halloween countdown from late October, fans of Batman and players of the marketing campaign were treated to a day-long, frenzied scavenger hunt set up by “the Joker”.

At noon EST, the mysterious countdown that was previously featured on Whysoserious.com was replaced by a strange carnival-style booth, in typical Joker fashion. A note attached instructed viewers to travel to specific real-world addresses to pick up a ‘very special treat’ under the name Robin Banks (get it? Robbing Banks? hahaha!)

Players quickly determined that the addresses were bakeries, strewn across the United States. At first, six addresses were attached to dirty stuffed animals hanging in the booth, but every hour on the hour, another five to seven addresses were hung. Within five hours, all twenty-two addresses had been revealed, as players scrambled to each location to pick up the ‘treat’.

It was discovered that the Joker had left cakes at each bakery, and lo and behold, the cakes had phone numbers written on them in icing! Even more interesting was how, when the number was called, the cake itself rang! Players found that after digging furiously into the cake, there was an evidence bag filled with goodies – a cell phone and charger, a Joker playing card, and a note which instructed the person to call a different phone number.

Once all the cakes had been found and the phones had been used to call the new numbers, the game page opened to reveal the new Batman: Dark Knight movie poster, and another special treat – invitations to IMAX screenings in five cities (New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Toronto) on Thursday and Friday night, Dec 6th and 7th.

All Things Must Come to a Close: The End of a Few ARGs

November 26, 2007 / Michael Andersen

They say that news often comes in threes, and recent events in the world of alternate reality gaming proves that the old adage still has teeth. Over the past few days, both Deus City and Red Monday came to a close, and it appears as though Chain Factor may be wrapping up soon as well.

After more than a year of gameplay, Deus City concluded last Tuesday with the release of a thirteen-part story detailing the end of the Time Communications project. Adam Brackin (the real person, not the in-game character) intends to release his dissertation based on the game, and anticipates its publication in late-spring, promising “pretty charts and graphs” from behind the curtain. ARGNet has reported extensively on Deus City in the past. The PM Chat has not been scheduled yet.

The alternate reality game Red Monday came to a close this morning with the release of the first “podiobook” in a five-part mini-series produced by StarKnight Productions. Although only the first chapter is free, the podiobook’s creator J. Marcus Xavier has promised that the faithful followers of the Red Monday ARG will be able to listen to the mini-series for free.

The game generated mild controversy through its launch at the Podcast and New Media Expo in Ontario, California where the podiobook’s creator J. Marcus Xavier passed out red envelopes marked “CLASSIFIED” that referred to the website Red-Monday.com. Following several complaints that the promotion was disturbing convention-goers, the head of the expo Tim Bourguin ejected Xavier from the premises. Bourguin later went on to refer to the launch as the “perfect example of marketing gone bad.”

The Numb3rs alternate reality game Chain Factor also appears to be nearing its conclusion, with all but three KeyCodes and four ShutdownKeys discovered. Participants in the ARG element of the game are working to shut down the system, hopefully saving me from untold hours of casual gameplay. Consider yourself warned: the Chain Factor flash game remains unspeakably addictive.

In the wake of this cavalcade of completion, you may find yourself searching for a new game, such as the newest chapter in the Dark Knight ARG. Something that may interest you is Mur Lafferty’s podiobook Playing For Keeps,which has grabbed my attention lately, and not just because I can’t get enough of Mur’s revisionist look at super powered society. Mur encourages listeners to expand on her superhero-strewn universe by contributing to “Stories of the Third Wave”, utilizing story expansion mechanisms the aspiring PM might want to consider.

Once again…
Click Here to check out Deus City
Click Here to check out Red Monday
Click Here to check out Chain Factor
Click Here to check out the Dark Knight ARG
Click Here to check out Playing for Keeps

Does Tom Tooman hail from Jericho, KS?

November 16, 2007 / Michelle Senderhauf

It started with a handwritten message on notebook paper and some barcode stickers found in the mailboxes of Sean Stacey and other alternate reality gaming players. These clues led to a website which showed nothing but an entry box and blank submit button. It was described by one player of the game, xnbomb, as “wonderfully devoid of anything encouraging, which in itself is encouraging”. Eventually, after picking through the clues provided for them, the players entered the correct password and were rewarded with a black and white map of the midwest.

What kind of ARG could possibly come out of a sheet of notebook paper, some barcodes and a map of the midwest? Well, an ARG for a major network television show, of course! A source close to the game has confirmed that the Tom Tooman ARG is an official product for the CBS television show, Jericho.

Over the past three months, things have been slowly ramping up in the Tom Tooman ARG. The midwestern map went through several changes, finally giving an elusive message which included the words, “Are you bored yet?”. While some of the more impatient players may have responded with a “yes” to that question and moved on, those who knew the adage about what comes to those who wait were rewarded with several new meaty updates. New websites were found including one for the Sakanas, Kansas community newspaper where players discovered that the midwest had been hit by several atomic bombs. Another website, for Black Hills Radio Control, has allowed players to scan the radio waves looking for communications from survivors of the attack.

Book Two of Eldritch Errors comes and goes, PM chat tonight!

November 7, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

Now that Book Two of Eldritch Errors has wrapped up, the people behind the curtain are eager to get together with ARG players to talk about things, and so tonight at 9 pm ET, you can join Brian Clark, Brooke Thompson and a few other distinguished guests in the #stfeline room on the Chat-Solutions IRC network (irc.chat-solutions.org). If you’ve never accessed IRC chat before, you can use our handy-dandy chat applet here at the web site — simply pick the room from the drop-down list and give yourself a nickname, and join in the fun!

In case you’re not up to speed on all things EE, the puppetmasters have their own behind-the-scenes blog at Schmeldritch.com, where they have commented on a very interesting (and somewhat creeptastic) three-day live event that occurred late in October. While we missed the boat on live coverage (sorry!) you can read all about it at Sentry Outpost, the in-game forums for EE, through Biff’s summary post, as well as Mapmaker’s four-part detailed recap (part 1, 2, 3 and 4). From all accounts, it was a nerve-wracking, intense, unforgettable experience.

Why So Serious, Halloween Edition

October 30, 2007 / Michael Andersen

At the stroke of midnight (Eastern time, GMT -4) on Halloween, the newest chapter in 42 Entertainment‘s alternate reality game promoting the release of the movie “The Dark Knight” launched. Over the past few weeks, the website WhySoSerious.com depicted a slowly rotting Halloween pumpkin with a diminishing candle.

Just minutes ago, as the candle burnt out, the page changed to show 49 small pieces of paper on a worktable. Each piece links to a puzzle involving a US city. A note from the Joker says,

“Hey, clowns! Ready to do what you’re told? First, don’t start before daylight. With a police force this corrupt, it’s not safe to be out at night, and anyway, you won’t be able to see the things you want to find.

Follow all of my directions to the letter and send photos of what you find.

I’ll make it worth your while, I promise – for what that’s worth…

The campaign to promote the new Batman movie started in May with a handful of Joker playing cards discovered in a California comic book store, and led to a massive email campaign to reveal the new face of the Joker. Later in July, strange dollar bills were distributed at Comic-Con that led 140 lucky participants on a scavenger hunt throughout the city of San Diego. Now, it appears the scavenger hunt has expanded on a national scale as participants are encouraged to solve a series of puzzles and send in photographs.

Check back at ARGNet for updates as the story develops.

Click Here for the discussion at UnFiction.
Click Here for ARGNet columnist Geoff May’s wiki for the Dark Knight ARG.