Category: Update (Page 8 of 42)

Conspiracy for Good: Into the Belly of the Beast to Confront Blackwell Briggs

August 5, 2010 / Michael Andersen

Image courtesy of stevecadman

This past May, Tim Kring launched Conspiracy for Good, and as the summer comes to a close, the events of the past few months are coming to a head for one final event this weekend in London. If you can make it to Bloomsbury Square Gardens in London on August 7, register to play now, and this article should get you up to speed with what you need to know to join in the adventure.

Conspiracy for Good can best be described as an amalgamation of an alternate reality game, a street theater show, and a social movement. Players have been charged with the task of bringing down Blackwell Briggs, an evil global security firm with a penchant for kidnapping and skullduggery. Players willing to risk attracting Blackwell Briggs’ ire joined up with the Conspiracy for Good, an organization of socially-minded individuals committed to opposing the company’s excess.

Using a series of free mobile games available at Nokia’s Ovi Store, players were given the opportunity to hack into the Babbage 1.6.1 website to extract valuable pieces of intelligence, break into the Blackwell Briggs servers, and hack a series of CCTV cameras across London to help smuggle Nadirah, a key Conspiracy for Good member seeking to build a library for children in Zambia, into the city. The final mobile game lead to the next stage of Conspiracy for Good:Â a series of four live “Actions” occuring weekly in London. Participants at each Action are provided with a Nokia phone with pre-installed software to help complete the task.

Dastardly We Lost Our Gold Pirates Start Revealing Location of Misplaced Booty

August 1, 2010 / Jane Doh

The We Lost Our Gold treasure hunt has begun in earnest with the first episode of the weekly web series released today. As ARGNet reported last month, these absent-minded pirates buried their treasure of ten thousand gold-colored US dollar coins somewhere in New York City but can’t remember where they hid it. This eight-part web series will contain clues to the location of the pirate’s chest, and whoever finds it, keeps it.

Episode One introduces some vital information about the possible location of the chest, as the crew tries to retrace their steps through New York, beginning with the Balto Statue in Central Park, then on to locations like “Cape Shakespeare” and “Columbus Rock.” Meanwhile, the pirate-and-ninja crew struggles to find a way to prevent spies from learning too much by using codes, including “Morris” code and Japanese numbers. A series of interrupted flashbacks provide key background information about the crew and its unlikely journey through the Big Apple. The episodes to come will continue to piece together the crew’s journey through New York City, presumably ending with the final location of the pirate booty.

UPDATE: Dexter Game On More Than Just A SCVNGR Hunt

August 1, 2010 / Celina Beach

When it was first announced, Dexter Game On appeared to be nothing more than a fun adventure through the streets of San Diego during Comic-Con, hopefully leading to either Dexter swag or DVDs. However, once players reached the last SCVNGR location, a “kill room” was found containing what appeared to be evidence of torture and murder . . . and several cleverly hidden clues written on the room’s mirrors that lead to the Sleep Superbly site. Upon first entering the room, visitors were shown an introduction video by Dee Pratt, an FBI agent who also goes by the name Serial Huntress, explaining her unique method of crowdsourcing to catch serial killers, the latest one being the “Infinity Killer.” Pratt suspects the Infinity Killer is responsible for the kill room and the murder that apparently occurred within, as the room bears his hallmark, the infinity symbol, on one of the mirrors.

Since then, a lot of activity has occurred, including weekly updates from Serial Huntress on her website; information on the Infinity Killer on the SleepSuberbly site; and even more sites and Twitter feeds . . . and a number of puzzles to solve. To get involved in the hunt, check out the game thread on Unfiction. For a quick summary of the game so far, refer to this excellent post.

Breathe Revived as Recurring Event

June 8, 2010 / Lewis Murphy

Yomi Ayeni’s Breathe was an interactive experience taking place over 3 weeks in October 2009, resulting in the creation of a movie released in 3 parts. At its height, it included immersive live events such as a club night following an initiation ceremony for a secretive, clandestine society. The game attracted a dedicated core following as well as a more general audience attending events such as the club night. Now,Â Expanding Universe has plans to transform the experience into a recurring event either later in 2010 or in early 2011.

The events should hover in between the full experience and a normal movie screening. While the film will still be shown in its original three parts, attendees will be encouraged to visit websites and explore the story in various ways between showings of the filmed episodes. Participants will have access to a portal specifically created for the event, where various sections of the wider story will be unlocked in a calendar format as the movie progresses. These may include websites, phone numbers, extra video content and more, some of which will be exclusive to the events. The live events of Breathe’s initial run were fully filmed in anticipation of such redistribution, and with the permission from those involved, may also be used as part of the storytelling platform.

Attendees will be encouraged to discuss their findings in groups; Yomi believes that this will further understanding of the story as a whole, as individuals can bring their different perspectives and findings to the discussion. Much as participants of the original experience were able to act as “beacons” to bring the experiential parts of the story to the wider audience, it is hoped that people discovering different story areas and content can come together to discuss these as a whole. These exploration and discussion sessions will help to preserve the wider and richer experience of the story to supplement the absence of real-time events. At the end of the full screening, there will be a wider talk and Q&A session with the audience to cement understanding of the story.

Cocorico! For ARGs in France: A Point of View on Supernatural Oddities

May 29, 2010 / Nadia Elmrabet

Â«Â JC, my brother, I havenâ€™t forgotten you. Goodbye â€“ FredÂ Â».

This message, hidden in an encrypted note found in a Parisian hotel room, finally gave some closure for JC, the protagonist in Supernatural Oddities.Â JC embarked on a journey to investigate the supernatural after his brother JC disappeared 20 years ago, driven by the mottoÂ : “Supernatural is Normal!” Â On April 29th, JC discovered that Fred became a matchmaking angel, and that they would probably never see each other again.Â Nicolas, one of the players of the Finding Fred alternate reality game joined JC, his mother-in-law Simone, and his wife Muriel in the hotel room for the discovery.Â A few days later, the community watched the epilogue to the ten-day long investigation on JCâ€™s mockumentary webisode Life Really Is a Funny Thing, guest-starring Nicolas as a full-fledged character in the fiction.

Jane Doh introduced ARGNet readers to the Finding Fred ARG, part of the Supernatural Oddities transmedia projectÂ produced by Happy Fannie in partnership with Orange.Â In recent years, Orange, a French public telecommunications company, has moved its core business model from selling telecommunications pipes to global production in the mobile, web, and content sectors.

Sandrine Girbal, co-founder of Happy Fannie and executive producer of the project, explains that “Supernatural Oddities is the first transmedia fiction project for TV, Internet and social media in France. We partnered with Orange who wanted to take part in this experiment. They also wanted to try and find original content for their cable TV Channels, Orange CinÃ©ma Series / Choc.” Â She explains that the main challenge was to change viewersâ€™ habitsÂ :

Fiction is a very formal genre in France, very few attempts have been made these last years to change that. Supernatural Oddities is our attempt to cater to an audience hungry for more interaction with the fiction and the characters! Supernatural Odditiesâ€™ challenge consisted of a 4-month real time story developed for several media platforms. More than a simple TV program available on different platforms, our wish was to go further in terms of storytelling.

An Arcade Classic Comes to Life, Secret Blueprints Revealed

May 17, 2010 / Geoff May

An important and much hyped event in the Flynn Lives! ARG came to fruition May 6th–the public unveiling of Encom International’s online version of their 1981 arcade classic “Space Paranoids,” which debuted at San Diego’s Comic Con 2009 for the Flynn’s Arcade event.

As a prelude to its release, a special countdown teased the game’s release. Players who visited the countdown splash page were able to click and destroy Recognizers that appeared and hovered across the screen. It served merely as a timewaster, but if players had the patience to keep clicking and destroy 99 Recognizers, they received a badge on FlynnLives.com. By persisting further and destroying 999, they received another badge.Â Finally, when the countdown ended on May 6th, Encom published their much-anticipated Space Paranoids Online arcade game, just as Alan Bradley had announced.