Page 104 of 198

GAME LAUNCH: Conspiracy Asylum

January 26, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

After only a few weeks since the end of Deus City, the fine folks at Fundi Games are back at it again with Conspiracy Asylum File Zero. Our very own Sean C. Stacey had reported two weeks ago on the hint that the puppetmasters left for the players late in November, and noted that the game would be launching around the first of February.

However, here we are five days short of the end of January, looking at new content and open registration on the trailhead site. Currently, the forum-style web site has one entry — “File 1 – Aliens: ‘Are we really alone?’ — which players can comment on, once they register and log in. Once logged in, players are able to offer their theories to either prove or disprove the conspiracy video.

The original beta video is still available on YouTube, although it has changed locations since our previous story. We will provide updates here at ARGNet as more is discovered about the game.

Discussion at Unfiction forums

Eldritch Errors Launches Book Three, Officially

January 25, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

Let the speculation end! After last week’s article from Michelle Senderhauf and mention on episodes 46 and 47 of the ARG Netcast series, we turn to Schmeldritch for definitive word regarding the launch of Book Three of Eldritch Errors, the long-running Lovecraftian alternate reality game. In the January 23rd entry on the developer’s blog, Brian Clark points to a post on the Unfiction forums (as well as back to here, thankyouverymuch) as a clear indication that festivities have begun for the third installment of the experience.

Clark also notes that he is setting the bar even higher for this new stage of game play, stating, “My expectations for ‘Red Moon Rising’ are obviously higher than they were even for ‘Scream in the Mountains’,” adding, “May I recommend that experienced participants change their tin foil hats daily during Book Three and leave it at that?” If this tickles your fancy and you wish to get caught up with everything that has happened thus far, head over to EldritchErrors.com. Clark acknowledges the new people who may want to jump on board by promising, “Don’t worry that Eldritch Errors has been going since last April, Book Three was developed with you in mind. It was also developed with Book One participants in mind, as well, so you’ll have lots to discover together.”

Harvard Business Review: ARG Business is Good Business

January 25, 2008 / Michael Andersen

The Harvard Business Review has spoken: alternate reality gaming may very well be the future of business. As part of its annual “Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas” issue, the magazine addressed the potential of alternate reality gaming to reshape the business world.

The article, written by Jane McGonigal, addresses the benefits of capitalizing on collective intelligence in the workplace. No stranger to forecasting the future, Jane predicts that

eventually, games will become the go-to tools for launching internal initiatives, or they will rally global teams of outside â€œexpert playersâ€ to engage in business forecasting. Ultimately, ARGs will involve customers in inventing new products and services or in testing companiesâ€™ market assumptions.

In the article, Jane pulls on her experience behind the scenes with World Without Oil to demonstrate the potential of the genre. During the alternate reality game, players faced with a peak oil crisis sent in over a thousand blog posts, videos, podcasts and other submissions chronicling the potential effects and evaluating potential alternative strategies during an oil crisis.

So it’s time to clean up your resumes, spruce up your cover letters, and add a section for ARG experience — because the new media literacy you develop with every passing cipher you solve and each domain registration you pull up might help land your dream job someday.

Have you caught the Abrams virus yet?

January 22, 2008 / Geoff May

Producer/Director JJ Abrams is on a viral rampage this year, it seems. Hot on the tail of Cloverfield’s big screen debute, was the premiere of the initial teaser trailer for the 11th installment in the Star Trek film franchise. Reportedly, the movie will carry only the name “Star Trek”, as it returns to the academy days of our beloved Enterprise crew. The teaser can be seen on the official website. But as beautiful as it is, that is not the reason for this article.

If you navigate to the official website, scroll down to the “Under Construction” label. See the little red dot beside it? Click it. Yes, you’ve just found another viral website. JJ is known for tying common threads between his creative productions – his unique drink Slusho! being the most prominent example. Slusho has made cameo appearances in Alias, Heroes, and Kenan and Kel. But recently he’s taken a liking to extending his works beyond their base medium, into the internet world, and the real world.

If you’re familiar with the TV show Lost (also an Abrams production), there was a very well received extended reality called The Lost Experience which ran along the TV show. Currently leading up to the North American airing of season 4 is another campaign called Find 815. You’ve been living under a rock if you haven’t heard of the viral campaign surrounding the months leading up to the premiere of Cloverfield (which also, by the way, has a backstory around the development of the Slusho drink and its secret ingredient Seabed’s Nectar).

So the question is, will Abrams be providing another extended experience or alternate reality game related to the Star Trek franchise leading up to the movie’s release? Or will this turn out just to be another typical viral marketing campaign? Personally, I would love to see a Slusho! cameo appearance in the movie. Imagine: Kirk and Spock order a Slusho from a bar at the Academy. And Guinan serves it to them.

At the very least, we have a new website – a relatively covert website, which seems to be showing ‘streaming video’ from the construction site of the Enterprise NCC-1701. What will the days ahead reveal to us? We have nearly a whole year to find out. JJ knows how to bait and taunt his target market, so expect a lot of mystery and viral advertising.

Live long, and drink Slusho.

Official website
NCC-1701.com Trailhead
Discussion at Unfiction
Resource wiki

ACME Creates an ARG: Not Just an Anvil Company Anymore

January 21, 2008 / Michael Andersen

Aporia Cross-Media Entertainment has released the trailer for their new alternate reality game code-named “Aporia Agathon”, scheduled to run for a year, starting in the summer of 2008.

Aporia CME, formerly known as Naked Rabbit Studios, developed Ny Takma, a science fiction themed alternate reality game running from September to November of 2006. The team has not been idle in the intervening months, and promise a unique user interface that will, according to Jason Chrest, use “an existing medium that just has not yet been used within the ARG/CF genre.”

Through a tip posted at Despoiler, Jason elaborates that the game will pull from genres ranging “from world history, to sci-fi, to conspiracy, drama, and more.” The text of the message also includes a hidden message revealing a bit more about the mysterious interface under development.

The trailer, set to the soothing sound of Cecil Grant’s classic hit “I Wonder”, introduces the character “GC” as he composes a letter to his dearest love. A series of flashbacks depict his escape from an unknown pursuer by train.

Stay tuned to ARGNet for updates on this and other games.

Cloverfield is Out — What Now?

January 20, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

Editor’s Note: This article is spoiler-free, for those who haven’t see the movie yet. However, outgoing links may contain spoiler information.

Who was to know that when J.J. Abrams launched the first trailer for what we now know as Cloverfield that the buzz surrounding the movie would be so powerful that the famous Mann Chinese Theater in Los Angeles would have a special midnight showing of the film? Well, we won’t say “told you so!” — in fact, we didn’t tell you much, except that there were curious web sites to be found in July of last year, and that the Ethan Haas viral web site was officially unconnected to the 1-18-08 mystery. Thankfully, there are many resources out there for fans of the movie to get caught up on what’s happened in the web campaign so far, in case (like me) you decide that today is the day you finally take a look at some of this stuff.

I began this morning by taking a look through the Cloverfield forum section at Unfiction. I thanked my lucky stars when I came across this post by TheRabbit, which summarizes the story so far, chronologically, and links to all of the relevant sites. It’s easy to follow and helps to connect some of the dots that Abrams and his crew have left along the trail. Essentially, the experience seems to be a tale of the effect of environmental misdoings, which may or may not be connected to a secret ingredient in a popular beverage. I highly recommend reading the post, which looks to be a work in progress.

From there, I surfed over to cloverfieldclues.com which has been an ongoing archive of news regarding the movie and the online experience. The owner of the site, Dennis Acevedo, was recently interviewed on the NPR show “All Things Considered” as part of a feature on the movie and the buzz that was built along the way — our own Sean C. Stacey was also interviewed, but his contribution never made it to the final edit. The Cloverfield Clues web site offers readers a chance to view archives of the in-game web sites as well, which was handy to see today, as many of the sites are “under construction” after the U.S. release of the film.

Onward I went, to the Cloverfield wiki at Despoiler, which is another great source of information and archived items. Wikis seem to be the easiest way to compile info into a trail, and this one is as comprehensive as one would hope. User contributions help to keep facts organized, while discussion is relegated to tabbed Talk pages. The latest news page has documented the recent changes to the game’s web sites, and updates are ongoing.

So now that we’re all caught up, what now? Will the experience keep going, now that the movie is out? Will we see an extended reality that further explains events as they happened in the film? Or is this it for the Cloverfield web presence? While no one knows for sure — except Abrams and his creative team, of course — it seems to be a shame if all of this goes fades into the ether.