Category: Update (Page 21 of 41)

Guinness Tipping Point ARG Update: I May Be Getting Wasted, But I Won’t Be Getting Rich

October 28, 2007 / Michael Andersen

A post on Spinning Around, a subsidiary of AMV BBDO, indicates that the game requires players to go to the Guinness website to enter codes to gradually unlock the video. The first of eleven unlock codes is already available, revealing a three second snippet from the commercial.

Checking the Game’s Terms of Service reveals that there will be weekly prizes offered starting on November 2nd and running until December 7th. Prizes include Guinness branded glass packs, mugs, pint aprons, pint oven gloves, luxury chocolate truffles, Pint bottle opener key rings, Toucan key rings, Toucan luggage tags, playing cards and egg cup sets for 175 lucky people each week. It also indicates the official name of the campaign is the “Guinness Tipping Point”.

The grand prize for completing all the puzzles is a solid gold domino, awarded randomly to a participant who registers and successfully completes all 11 clues. However, don’t get too excited — the contest portion of this alternate reality game is only open to mainland UK residents over the age of 18.

Click Here to enter your Tipping Point codes and register to win.
Click Here for previous coverage on the Guinness Tipping Point at ARGNet.
Click Here for the UnFiction discussion thread.

Breaking News: Eldricth Errors PM Chat Tonight

September 10, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

Sorry for the late-breaking update, but we’ve just found about a puppetmaster chat for Eldritch Errors, which recently wrapped up the first stage of its game. You can join the chat via IRC (chat applets here or at Unfiction) in the #stfeline room, starting at 9:30 pm ET/6:30 pm PT. This will hopefully be an opportunity to have your questions answered by the team of creators and designers before they disappear back into the mists of Book Two. Someone with a terrible sense of pun-humor might say, “I’ll B Seeing U there!” but there is no one on our staff willing to sink to that level of wit, so just show up, okay?

Welcome to Schmeldritch?

September 6, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

After almost five months of game play, Book One of Eldritch Errors has come to a close. What began in April with mysterious Craigslist postings and targeted snail mail ended with a live event in Atlanta last Monday, during which a hard drive and boarding pass were found in a room which included three “shrouded ‘figures’ that looked about 4-5 feet tall,” according to this account by sapagoo at the Sentry Outpost in-game message boards. As an epilogue to this climactic event, several additional Craigslists postings have been discovered, where it has been noted that B.A. St. Feline, the psychic character who runs BSeeingU, is experiencing “excruciating pain. Oh, and there were a series of grotesque and disturbing photos uploaded to a player’s personal web site without his consent (or so he says). If this seems confusing out of context, the story-so-far at the Eldritch Errors web site might be a good place to catch up on recent events, as well as the fan-run BSUWiki.

With loose ends being tied up and a break in the action forthcoming, the puppetmasters have come out from the other side of the curtain to talk about the game so far at Schmeldritch, a behind-the-scenes blog. So far, one post has revealed how the recipients of the mailed packages were chosen, and a chapter one credits list is up as well. Game creator Brian Clark describes the site as, “something that happens in between the episodes of Eldritch,” and as “an opportunity to share some tidbits from behind the scenes and some “how to” tutorials for other immersive narrativists dissecting the production.”

Pics of the found hard drive
Contents of the hard drive

‘Cause Sooner Or Later, It’s Over…

August 20, 2007 / Geoff May

A recently leaked article, supposedly posted to Microsoft’s internal news site, appears to verify the dreaded truth — Halo 3’s Iris “spiral marketing campaign” has come to its official end. The article, which was posted to the Unfiction forums with permission from the author, reveals the end date of August 16th, which coincides with the opening of Iris’ fifth and final server, or “episode”. It also details the campaign’s goals, achievements, challenges and failures. Undoubtedly, the primary point of dissension this article raises is the challenge undertaken to provide a “low-key, low budget campaign [which] does more with less, whetting the appetite of the blockbuster video game’s fanatical followers.”

The article reveals that Iris was developed by “more than 50 people from 20 Microsoft teams [who] contributed time, coding expertise, and industry contacts.” The attempt was ultimately to provide a grand marketing scheme incurring little cost while attaining “critical mass” — defined in the article as getting “interview requests from The Wall Street Journal”. “It’s about breaking out of the hardcore and getting into the mainstream,” said Aaron Elliott, online marketing manager for Xbox Global Marketing (also listed as one of the ‘founders’ of the Society of the Ancients, an in-game organization that appeared at the beginning, but was never heard from again).

Strictly speaking, given the resources used to produce the campaign and the costs (or lack thereof) incurred, Iris may be considered an impressive success. However, if one includes the overall sentiment of the demographic that was actually actively playing or following Iris, one might say that their reach had exceeded their grasp. They seem to have ignored (or miscalculated) an inherent factor in the kind of campaign they were hoping to produce – most players had expectations, whether misplaced or not, of another I Love Bees. That potential was lost, and while the production may have been impressive to some, it failed dramatically in achieving what could have been achieved quite easily.

Right or Wrong, Ethan Haas is a Bit of a Disappointment for ARG Fans

August 2, 2007 / Marie Lamb

The site Ethan Haas Was Right (EHWR) has had a bit of a identity crisis in the last few weeks.

First, it was connected (wrongly, as it turned out) to the mysterious Cloverfield movie project. Then, once people began to accept that it was in fact a separate entity, players started to wonder if it was a trailhead for an alternate reality game. The slick Flash-animated puzzles and grainy interstitial videos were mysterious and intriguing. Careful research led them to new sites, and voice mails and other clues set up expectations for a much larger story to come.

The much anticipated August 1st date has past, and the EHWR website (along with all other associated sites) finally updated late last night with a direct link to www.alphaomegathegame.com, what looks to be the official site for a new tabletop role-playing game called Alpha Omega, developed by a little known company, Mind Storm Labs. To say this is a bit of a letdown for people who were hoping for a true ARG is an understatement. We have here what appears to be a genuine “drink your Ovaltine” promotion. Perhaps this is unfair in some ways because of all the extra attention the site garnered due to the insistent attempts to connect it to Cloverfield, but it is still the case that the people behind EHWR went to lengths to set up several websites with puzzles, release working email addresses with personalized responses as well as auto-responders, and had voice mail boxes for in-game characters that changed messages over time. One player even got a letter hand-delivered to his place of work. You can’t blame players for taking these earmarks of an ARG and trying to run with them.

So what is/was www.ethanhaaswasright.com? Before August 1st it was just a very well designed puzzle trail, with beautifully rendered graphics, some grainy, crackly videos and a few easy to mid-level puzzles that have been well documented elsewhere. At the end of the puzzle trail was a mysterious code word, DIVINUS, and a place to register your name and email address, and a promise of more to come on August 1st. The story background is that the man in the videos, Van Mantra, set up a series of tests (the puzzles) to identify people who would be willing to work with him to spread the word of a 19th century prophet named Ethan Haas and help him save the world. The bad guys in this case appear to be the Mezin, who set up their own website, The Truth of Ethan Haas, and prefer to communicate via the Devanegari script used for the Indian language Hindi. While there have been several game-jacking and/or unofficial fan sites that I won’t link to here, the blogspot site was taken to be authentic because they called themselves the Mezin the day before Van Mantra changed his voicemail recording to say that the Mezin had found him and he needed to go into hiding. Also, Unfiction member theonetruebix (B!x) says he got an email from Van around this time in which Van said that there was one site for truth and one site for deception, which B!x took to mean the blogspot site. It’s a tenuous connection, but the blogspot site didn’t disrupt the game like a game-jacking might attempt to do, and they did at least make a great effort to link readers back to the EHWR site.

Players who are interested in the game up to August 1st can find the highlights at B!x’s blog, OMGWTFEHWR, which traces not only the in-game information, but also his quest to find the people and purpose behind the sites. He was the first player on Unfiction to suspect that EHWR was a promotion for the RPG, and he documents his meta pursuit of the people behind Alpha Omega on the blog in detail. You can also find the original puzzles by clicking the “No I need to see and hear the warnings first” link on the main page of www.ethanhaaswasright.com.

Fans of tabletop RPGs can check out the Alpha Omega site for more information on that game, including upcoming events where the game publishers will be in attendance.

UPDATE: Clowning Around Pays Off at Comic-Con

July 27, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

When Stephen Sondheim wrote Send in the Clowns, chances are good that he didn’t expect anyone to take him at his word. However, for 140 lucky participants, Friday morning at Comic-Con included a chance to become one of the Joker’s gang. If you haven’t met the Joker, perhaps it’d be best if you brushed up on your vigilante hero folklore. As it turns out, the Caped Crusader wasn’t around to stop the mob from taking over the streets of San Diego, moving effortlessly from location to location, many being aided by associates with Internet access, in an audition to fill one of the coveted slots in the Joker’s army. As it turns out, however, the luckiest of the lucky became real unlucky, real quick. Okay, not really — but it makes for a good comic book ending.

Now that I’ve thoroughly confused those of you that haven’t been following along with the happenings at whysoserious.com, let’s backtrack a bit. First, there were a number of uncommon dollar bills making the rounds at the Con last night, leading to the discovery of a creepy looking web site and a countdown. Next came the end of the countdown earlier today (10 am PDT) and a clue for the throngs of people ready for something big to happen. Once the game was on, it was a race that required a coordinated effort between those on the ground and people on the ‘net (unless you carried a Wifi-enabled device with you along the way) that took players to eight different checkpoints over 100 minutes of game play.