Category: Update (Page 22 of 41)

UPDATE: Comic-Con and whysoserious.com

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A quick update, for those following along at home: The countdown on whysoserious.com has ended, and a large group of participants have begun to play along with what appears to be a treasure hunt/puzzle trail. Those active on the ground need to either have Internet access, or help from friends that are able to solve online clues. A toll-free number (1-800-395-9646) was given to players at the Con, which leads to the next step in the trail (audio can be heard here). You can watch progress and play along at the following web sites:

Trailhead (you need the code from the audio delivered through the 800 number)
Surveillance
Wannabes (not sure what this is for yet, although chances are it will be a leaderboard of some kind)

Stay tuned — there will be more to come, including a summary of the day’s events, later on ARGNet.

Why So Serious?

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Hey everyone! I have BREAKING NEWS here from Comic-Com!

Purchasing some overpriced “Stargate Atlantis Collector Edition” bottled water, I received a VERY unusual dollar bill in change.

George’s face has been obscured and replaced with a… can it be… somewhat JOKER-like face, and the caption below reads “WHYSOSERIOUS”.

This, of course, leads us to www.whysoserious.com – could the Joker be looking for recruits?

Join the puzzly goodness at http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/ or online IRC in #unfiction!

Odina Nova Event Scheduled for Today

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Odina Nova, but thanks to a tip we received last week, we can report that the game is still on, and there is a major event scheduled to happen today. This comes as good news to the players still hanging on, as activity over the last month has been sporadic at best.

Esteed at the Unfiction forums has found a new web site at which some of the game’s mysteries are revealed. According to the tip we received, this is the path towards the “final push” of the game, and that new players can catch up with the game’s story quickly with the information on this new site. There has been progress during the course of the day, so check in with the Unfiction thread for updates as well.

Click here (or here) for our previous coverage of Odina Nova.

World Without Oil: The Post-Game Press Release

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Voleine Amilcar at ITVS for this update!

wwo_logo.jpg(San Francisco—July 12, 2007)—At the end of the 32nd week of the global oil shock, things were looking up. Gasoline prices stabilized in the U.S. – at around $5.60 a gallon, down from a high over $7. Companies were starting to hire again – but more than 2 million people had lost their jobs. Cities were beginning to address more than $1 billion in damage from riots and civil disorder. And in some of the FEMA camps set up outside metro areas, handfuls of people were leaving agricultural work to return home. But among the citizen-journalists chronicling the crisis at www.worldwithoutoil.org, the watchword was caution. “It should be clear of all of us,” warned Blueski, a blogger in America’s heartland, “that this is just a taste of what is to come.”

Produced by the design team at Writerguy, WORLD WITHOUT OIL leveraged the power of people connected by the Internet to imagine the actual events of an oil shortage, document them and innovate solutions. As the event concluded, the grassroots website at www.worldwithoutoil.org had captured a vivid and visceral picture of what our next oil shock might look like, in the form of 1,500 blog pages, videos, images and audio clips documenting the crisis. “We provided the narrative skeleton,” WWO Creative Director Ken Eklund said. “The players fleshed out the story of this alternate reality game.”

Continue reading

Live from Ludium II

Editor’s Note: ARGNet’s Michelle Senderhauf is attending and reporting from the Ludium II conference, put on by Indiana University’s Synthetic Worlds Initiative.

This is Michelle Senderhauf reporting live from the Ludium II conference at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. The conference is being run in game format which is interesting since the conference itself is about developing principles for sensible video game policy.

The Ludium game has two goals –

1. to develop a set of policies regarding synthetic worlds that will be sent to real world governments and
2. vote a single person as our de facto spokesperson for the ideas in the platform.

We’re in the second day of the Ludium conference and the group has reached a point where we 33 nominated policy statements and 3 nominees for the Speaker.

Of interest to ARG players, the conference has had its share of intrigue. Several “spies” are playing the game and are trying to derail the process. Also “reporters” are roaming the hall trying to get a scoop. Also, several of the conference attendees or players have thrown a wrench into the puppetmasters’ plans. Overnight, several players tried to merge members from their opposing groups into one large group. A response for this was not written in the game rules that were originally laid out so the puppetmasters were sent scrambling.

These events have brought up many interesting questions. If you’re using a serious game to solve a real world problem at some point or at what point do you abandon the game framework? Is there a point where the game becomes unimportant? Or even a hindrance? Many of the conference attendees agree that the game has definitely had a positive effect. It has successfully facilitated discussions in an organized fashion and allowed for a democratic decision-making process.

What will be the result? We won’t know until the end of the conference. Stay tuned!

Breaking News: Perplex City Season 2 Delayed Indefinitely

Earlier today it was revealed on the Perplex City game site that the expected June relaunch of the popular alternate reality game would “no longer be possible.” Season two was scheduled to be released this month, but the statement on the site makes reference to the quality of the experience, and how Mind Candy believes in holding off on releases until “they’re ready and… [they’re] entirely happy with them.”

The landscape of Mind Candy itself has also undergone major changes, as Story Team members Adrian Hon, Andrea Phillips, David Varela and Naomi Alderman, as well as COO Dan Hon, have all left the company within the last 48 hours. In blog posts, Dan Hon notes that he wants “to try something new,” while his brother Adrian remarks that “it’s time… to move on.” Phillips and Alderman echoed sentiments of celebration, sadness and thankfulness for the players of PXC, and Varela chose the Unfiction forums to sum up his thoughts on the turn of events.

Details are still emerging, so watch ARGNet for further details. The story will be part of the discussion on the upcoming 26th episode of the ARG Netcast as well.

Thanks to Brian Enigma at Netninja for the summary post and links.

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