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Nowheremen – It’s Dangerous to Run a Wiki

January 12, 2008 / Michael Andersen

Back in August when I wrote about 401WTF, the extended experience for Ashton Kutcher’s new reality television show “Room 401”, I predicted the rather simplistic game might expand into something more. It turns out my prediction was correct, as the Wonderland blog reports the impending launch of Nowheremen.net, “a new community-based social entertainment experience that utilizes the full Web 2.0 medium of platforms to reveal the story behind the mysterious disappearance of a brilliant computer science student, Derek Border.” Apparently, the final clue from the Room 401 experience led players to itkeepsgoing.com. The first 300 players to send their contact information to the website received the next clue in the mail which led to the Nowheremen website, an article about Derek Francis Border’s disappearance.

One of the complaints I had with the game was its general lack of purpose, as the puzzle trail lacked a cohesive plot to tie the various puzzles together. It looks like I’ll have to eat those words, as Derek Francis Border (derekfb) was the creator of the wiki and responsible for posting the show’s episodes on YouTube. Both the ARG and web series revolve around tracking him down.

The timing of this game is rather fortuitous, as an extended experience designed to compliment and coexist with a cable reality televison show guides participants directly to an online web series with relatively high production values, premiering during the WGA strike. It remains to be seen whether this is one of the first of many collaborative efforts by workers displaced in the industry shakeup, or a network-based effort to expand into new media. Whatever the case, the first episode goes live January 22nd, so catch up on the plot and keep your eyes peeled.

Click Here for the discussion at UnFiction
Click Here for the wiki

Image courtesy of CSchmitt7166

The Hills are alive… No, really, they’re alive!

January 11, 2008 / Marie Lamb

From intrepid Unfiction denizen and player, Rowan, comes this interesting news, which we’ve condensed from her excellent forum post:

During my long hours of watching college football bowl games, I kept noticing weird TV ads. There was a blinking alert with a voice over stating that despite rumors online, the Winter X Games would still be taking place. The ad also linked to a website: http://www.winterxrumoralert.com/

The Winter X Rumor site has some tantalizing information. A earth moving machine went missing. An X Games competitor would not be attending. A video clip of someone almost being eaten by the mountain. The most interesting bit is that it links to another website ( http://www.buttermilkisalive.com/ ) run by a geology professor who is convinced that the Buttermilk mountain is undergoing extreme seismological events and is unsafe.

Buttermilk Is Alive has a bunch of background information detailing how Dr. Jim Vaile is upset that people aren’t taking him more seriously. The site has also been ‘newly redesigned’ so that only some of his older entries are now on the site. He has a bunch of links, most to what I take as real world websites, although at least one link is to a nonexistent website. There’s also some commented out ‘entries’ that you can see in the source that look to be pre-written blurbs that are ready to be updated to the sight. Oh, and there’s a commented out ‘Blogroll’ with a list of names – none of which I had much luck in Googling. He also links to a blog, which he calls a forum, where you can leave comments: http://buttermilkisalive.wordpress.com/

The Buttermilk Blog has been quietly updating ever since I first found it. Beyond calling for people to help prove that Buttermilk is dangerous (but due to natural phenomenon – not aliens or magical stuff) there really wasn’t much of a catch. Today the website updated with a new entry talking about an email from a disgruntled reader by the name of Rusty. The email links to Rusty’s blog (http://www.rustytruth.com/ )which is, well, one of those whacked out conspiracy websites you come across on the web every now and then.

edit: Google has now indexed a Flicker page of Benji “Ben” Beale (one of the commented out blog roll names.)

Early on, Rusty’s blog appeared to be the victim of a hack that left a trojan in one of the comments. That blog has now been cleaned, so feel free to surf on.

Rowan also has started a guide for the game.

Programming Alert

January 11, 2008 / Marie Lamb

Tonight on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”, Neda Ulaby talks about Cloverfield–the movie, the promotion and the community. Tune in to your local NPR radio station at 7:00 p.m. EST to hear the show, which we were told will be the second to last segment of the broadcast. The show will also be archived on the NPR website after 8:00 p.m. EST. Unfiction owner and ARGNet staff writer Sean C. Stacey, and Dennis Acevedo of cloverfieldclues.com, were both interviewed for this story.

Rolling Out a Few New Projects: Six to Start and the Channel 4 New Media Lineup

January 10, 2008 / Michael Andersen

Mind Candy may have pulled the plug on Perplex City, but the Hon brothers are back to work at a new company, Six to Start Limited, returning to work on alternate reality gaming. According to Adrian, the name “Six to Start” refers to the classic board games that required players to roll a six before commencing play. Adrian and Dan will be joining forces with James Wallis, the former director of Hogshead Publishing, a hobby-games publisher that you might recognize as one of the expert judges for Let’s Change the Game.

One of the first projects for Six to Start is code-named “The Ministry”, an ARG taking place within a fictional social network. The game is part of Channel 4’s effort to provide engaging educational content to 14-19 year olds. According to a Channel 4 press release, “The Ministry” will be

an online networked game exploring how online privacy and identity apply to real world situations. The game will challenge players to discover how much trust matters online: when you might not know who you’re dealing with, and when information posted online remains persistent and public. Players will network, collaborate and challenge each other from within a fictional social network, using identity as a weapon, and privacy as armor.

In addition to “The Ministry”, Channel 4 will be sponsoring an ARG project by Oil Productions code-named “Route” that focuses on cartography, geography, and genetics, and numerous other cross media experiences. These alternate reality games are part of a larger push by the station to provide educational content to teens through a variety of serious games and new media productions. Alice Taylor, the commissioner for the projects at Channel 4, may be familiar to video game fans through her blog or her work at Kotaku.

Six to Start is currently looking for an experienced Alternate Reality Games producer to round out their staff, although with an application deadline at the end of January, you’d better hurry if you’re interested. As a reminder for our bilingual readers, Jane McGonigal is also looking for a “jr. puppet master” for an upcoming project. In the meantime, I’ll be waiting patiently for a lucky roll of the die to start up one of these exciting new projects.

What’s an xPod?

January 7, 2008 / Geoff May

A new article posted at Canoe.ca (also via Canada.com) hints at an upcoming game from Xenophile Media, tied in with a new show from the Canadian network CBC called jPod, which premieres Tuesday, January 8th (on CBC of course). While much of the show’s online components are typical of the new trend of extended interactivity, the key point is noted in a later paragraph:

“And midway through the season, an alternate reality game dubbed xPod will launch, built by the same company that designed the Emmy Award-winning web game for ReGenesis.”

Now, while we take the term alternate reality game in this context with a grain of salt, Xenophile does have a decent track record with their past projects for Fallen (Ocular Effect) and Regenesis.

What might xPod hold in store for the ARG community? Well, first of all, it will most certainly be geared towards the crowd who would enjoy jPod. Otherwise, it’s too early to tell. xPod is reportedly scheduled to begin sometime in the spring, while the TV series premieres this week. Though it is a Canadian show, it might make its way to the US at some point. So, if jPod appeals to you, then keep an eye out for xPod!

Tinkering in the “Secret Office”: Another Jane McGonigal Project

January 2, 2008 / Michael Andersen

In a recent post on Avant Game, Jane McGonigal mentioned she is hard at work on a super secret project that will funnel ” happiness hacking, collaboration superpowers, amplified individuals, and collective intelligence gaming”, using “a lot of new high-tech toys and tricks”. While Jane didn’t elaborate further on the project, numerous job postings online by Jane and another, as-yet-unidentified team member searching for a bilingual community-organizer-slash-puppetmaster indicate we may find Jane’s “secret project” is an alternate reality game that will run for around six months, starting in February.