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UPDATE: Oceanic Air Flies Again

January 1, 2008 / Jonathan Waite

SPOILER ALERT — This article reveals information that may nor may not have meant to be found by now. Read at your own risk.

As we reported yesterday, there’s a new alternate reality game starting up for acclaimed television series Lost, known as Find 815. According to the Lostpedia, the action revolves around Sam Thomas, a former employee of fictional Oceanic Airlines who is discouraged by the lack of progress in the search for Oceanic flight 815. For those unaware of what this all means, the simplest explanation is that many of the castaways on the TV show were on the doomed flight, which has driven the plot and mythology of the series, soon entering its fourth season.

Players of the game have discovered a wide range of content connected to the game, including web sites, email, a voicemail number, various videos and even a few hidden secrets. As with any new ARG, players are dissecting every aspect of the game, and in the process, discoveries have been made in the last 24 hours that indicate that certain game elements aren’t as secure or hidden as the game designers might have hoped for. In the instance of a guest post on the Unfiction forums, a directory was apparently left unprotected, allowing a player to gain access to game assets. Another issue that defies explanation, for now, is why the mysterious login form at the front of the Maxwell Group web site is actually hosted on find815.com.

The game is expected to run until late January, when season four of Lost kicks off. We’ll keep an eye on things as this new experience marches on.

Various Links:
Find 815 – Trailhead
The Maxwell Group web site
Recording of outgoing voicemail (link leads to recording, not official site)
NetNinja archive of game videos

Comments not working? Our bad…

December 31, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

So, if you are the type of person to comment on articles here at ARGNet, thank you. If you are the type of person who tries to comment and then notices that their comment fails to show up, we apologize. Some of the comments from the last month (or, in some cases, two months) slipped by us and landed in the junk comments bin. We were able to go back through the queue and publish some of those comments tonight, so if you were one of those people who thought we were censoring your point of view, we apologize (again). The way our comments are approved and published is something we have to explore in the next few weeks, so hopefully this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.

Have a happy new year — see you in 2008!

Launching Into ’08: New Games and New Beginnings

December 31, 2007 / Brandie Minchew

As our planet careens into yet another lap around the Sun, puppetmasters are waiting gleefully in their lairs, cackling behind their respective curtains, fingers poised to hit the big red LAUNCH button at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2008. All around the world, ARG players will be clinging to their F5 buttons or obsessively checking their email for the new year’s first hint of activity in the world of chaotic fiction. January’s schedule is crowded with launches, relaunches, and continuations of new and ongoing games and experiences.Â We’d like to give you a quick peek at what’s in store for you in 2008.

The Lost Experience â€“ Relaunching 12/31/07
A press release on the ABC media website declared that on December 31, Oceanic Airlines would be resuming flights service to several cities. Contact your travel agent now!

What is this Game? – Launching 1/1/08
What is this Game?, an ARG and contest promoting What is this Movie? by Staff of the Magi Productions, begins on 1-1-2008 at midnight. Players may register here to participate (must be 18 or older by January 1, 2008). According to Magi’s press release, “What is this Game requires player interaction, quick thinking, puzzle solving skills, countless hours of dedication, and in the end a journey to the Grand Prize.”

QU13E
Last Halloween, QU13E rose from the grave. A few members of unFiction began exchanging emails and receiving clues from QU13E’s shadowy inhabitants. After solving a puzzle in the source code of the QU13E website, players noted that 1/1/08 was set to be the launch day of this mysterious game.

The Dark Knight
Who knows what the Joker’s next prank will be? This time, it might be PIE! The next phase of The Dark Knight kicks off early in the new year, so keep your eyes peeled and your forks at the ready.

Cloverfield
ZOMG! 1-18-08 is less than three weeks away! Avid followers of Cloverfield’s viral marketing will finally get to experience the Cloverfield monster on the big screen.

Eldritch Errors: Book 3
What lies ahead for the Sentries and the Dreamers in a post-Scream world? No exact date has been hinted at for the opening of Book 3, but players speculate that new activity on Eldritch Errors will begin sometime in the new year.

39 Clues: Tidings of Good Cheer for a Former Scholastic Book Club Addict

December 29, 2007 / Michael Andersen

A recent New York Times article announced a new and exciting venture by Scholastic, Inc, the largest publisher and distributor of children’s books and related products to home and school.

Starting in September of 2008, Scholastic will publish “39 Clues”, a cross-media experience centered around ten books released over the course of 24 months. Scholastic is pulling some of the top childrens authors published under the brand, including Rick Riordan, Gordan Korman, Peter Lerangis, and Jude Watson.

According to the article in the Times, the plot of “39 Clues” will revolve around Amy and Dan Cahill, two adolescent members of the world’s most powerful clan, as they compete against other branches of their family to collect 39 clues that lead to ultimate power.

Tracy van Straaten, Scholastic’s VP of Publicity for the Children’s Book Publishing division, notes that Scholastic’s Lab for Informal Learning is collaborating on the project with “a company that has ARG experience, as well as game designers” in creating this project. This collaboration may include work with GMD Studios, the company that has worked on such games as Art of the Heist and Who is Benjamin Stove, and are currently presenting their project, Eldritch Errors. The experience will extend beyond the books through a website including character blogs, puzzles and mini-games, as well as maps and treasure hunts. Each book will come with six collectible cards that will provide further clues.

Although the project is still months away, both Kotaku and Ian Bogost at Watercooler Games have expressed skepticism regarding the project due to Scholastic’s decision to retain all rights to the intellectual property. Scholastic responded to the criticism, noting that the decision to retain all rights stems from the project’s development through the Scholastic Lab for Informal Learning.

39 Clues has the potential to introduce a younger generation to the world of alternate reality gaming, and Scholastic has the resources to pull it off, especially if the company leverages the resources available through the Scholastic Book Club, their distribution channel in schools worldwide. The bar for transmedia novels has been set rather high by New York Times bestseller Cathy’s Book.

The Joker’s latest task is a Piece of Cake

December 5, 2007 / Geoff May

It’s been a while since we’ve reported on the alternate reality game for the upcoming movie The Dark Knight, but that doesn’t mean that the action has stopped. In fact, on December 4th, after a long trail of tasks, websites and information spawning from a Halloween countdown from late October, fans of Batman and players of the marketing campaign were treated to a day-long, frenzied scavenger hunt set up by “the Joker”.

At noon EST, the mysterious countdown that was previously featured on Whysoserious.com was replaced by a strange carnival-style booth, in typical Joker fashion. A note attached instructed viewers to travel to specific real-world addresses to pick up a ‘very special treat’ under the name Robin Banks (get it? Robbing Banks? hahaha!)

Players quickly determined that the addresses were bakeries, strewn across the United States. At first, six addresses were attached to dirty stuffed animals hanging in the booth, but every hour on the hour, another five to seven addresses were hung. Within five hours, all twenty-two addresses had been revealed, as players scrambled to each location to pick up the ‘treat’.

It was discovered that the Joker had left cakes at each bakery, and lo and behold, the cakes had phone numbers written on them in icing! Even more interesting was how, when the number was called, the cake itself rang! Players found that after digging furiously into the cake, there was an evidence bag filled with goodies – a cell phone and charger, a Joker playing card, and a note which instructed the person to call a different phone number.

Once all the cakes had been found and the phones had been used to call the new numbers, the game page opened to reveal the new Batman: Dark Knight movie poster, and another special treat – invitations to IMAX screenings in five cities (New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Toronto) on Thursday and Friday night, Dec 6th and 7th.

All Things Must Come to a Close: The End of a Few ARGs

November 26, 2007 / Michael Andersen

They say that news often comes in threes, and recent events in the world of alternate reality gaming proves that the old adage still has teeth. Over the past few days, both Deus City and Red Monday came to a close, and it appears as though Chain Factor may be wrapping up soon as well.

After more than a year of gameplay, Deus City concluded last Tuesday with the release of a thirteen-part story detailing the end of the Time Communications project. Adam Brackin (the real person, not the in-game character) intends to release his dissertation based on the game, and anticipates its publication in late-spring, promising “pretty charts and graphs” from behind the curtain. ARGNet has reported extensively on Deus City in the past. The PM Chat has not been scheduled yet.

The alternate reality game Red Monday came to a close this morning with the release of the first “podiobook” in a five-part mini-series produced by StarKnight Productions. Although only the first chapter is free, the podiobook’s creator J. Marcus Xavier has promised that the faithful followers of the Red Monday ARG will be able to listen to the mini-series for free.

The game generated mild controversy through its launch at the Podcast and New Media Expo in Ontario, California where the podiobook’s creator J. Marcus Xavier passed out red envelopes marked “CLASSIFIED” that referred to the website Red-Monday.com. Following several complaints that the promotion was disturbing convention-goers, the head of the expo Tim Bourguin ejected Xavier from the premises. Bourguin later went on to refer to the launch as the “perfect example of marketing gone bad.”

The Numb3rs alternate reality game Chain Factor also appears to be nearing its conclusion, with all but three KeyCodes and four ShutdownKeys discovered. Participants in the ARG element of the game are working to shut down the system, hopefully saving me from untold hours of casual gameplay. Consider yourself warned: the Chain Factor flash game remains unspeakably addictive.

In the wake of this cavalcade of completion, you may find yourself searching for a new game, such as the newest chapter in the Dark Knight ARG. Something that may interest you is Mur Lafferty’s podiobook Playing For Keeps,which has grabbed my attention lately, and not just because I can’t get enough of Mur’s revisionist look at super powered society. Mur encourages listeners to expand on her superhero-strewn universe by contributing to “Stories of the Third Wave”, utilizing story expansion mechanisms the aspiring PM might want to consider.

Once again…
Click Here to check out Deus City
Click Here to check out Red Monday
Click Here to check out Chain Factor
Click Here to check out the Dark Knight ARG
Click Here to check out Playing for Keeps