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B Seeing U

April 17, 2007 / Michelle Senderhauf

B.A. Saint Feline will tell you the truth, whether you want to hear it or not. She’s not a cat person, even though strays follow her wherever she goes. She’s a struggling actor. She’s an honest psychic. She’s an old soul. She also has been dreaming about a burning city, filled with smoke, flames and various ARG community members. Yep, that’s right – we’re going to burn, baby, burn.

Unless, of course, we figure out the mystery surrounding B.A. Saint Feline and her website, www.bseeingu.com. B.A. has been sending packages to the people she sees in her dreams, which include several loose pages from H. P. Lovecraft and various sea monster books (and unsolved puzzles too!). She seems to be searching for more fellow dreamers using craiglist posts in several cities.

To find out more, check out the thread over at the unForums or join in on the fun in the chat-Solutions irc channel #stfeline.

Welcome to our Recently Added Staff!

April 14, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

As the steady stream of news concerning alternate reality news continues to keep us very busy here at ARGNet, we are pleased to announce the addition of six staff members since we put out our open call for writers in January. Joining us are Jessie Greene, Michael Andersen, Brian Clark, Will Emigh, Geoff May and Andy Darley — be sure to check out their work at our author archive, and to read their bios at our staff page.

Transformers: Truth in Disguise

April 6, 2007 / Geoff May

Imagine:

Little Timmy’s at home on a warm Saturday afternoon, playing away the time with his brand new Optimus Prime transformer and a few of his partners in crime, like Ironhide, Ratchet, and Bumblebee. Timmy’s got some Decepticons, too — Megatron, Barricade, and Starscream — and he has buckets of fun imitating the sepulchral voice of the villains while his toys battle it out for the fate of the galaxy! Hardly an uncommon scene, Unfiction member b_dann_b relates: “I am a loyal fan of the transformers – watched them since I was born and will always remember the day my dad brought me an optimus prime toy as my first transformer.”

But little does Timmy know how close to the truth he is. Those toys Timmy’s playing with, those cartoons he loves to watch, even that lunch pail he carries around daily with the lunch his mother prepared for him…all of it is a cover-up. Far from being mere fictional entertainment, it’s counter-information, with the sole purpose of distracting us from the truth by hiding it in front of our very eyes. And that live-action Transformers movie that you’ve certainly heard about, slated for a July release? That’s part of it too.

Perplex City Murder Becomes “Cold Case”? Perplex City Stories Faces Delay

April 1, 2007 / Michael Andersen

Earlier this week, Mind Candy announced that the launch of Perplex City Stories will be delayed until June, pushing back its original April release by two months. The delay will allow the Mind Candy team to build a gaming engine that allows for what Director of Play/Executive Producer Adrian Hon describes as “single-player replayable ARGs, and massively multiplayer ARGs simultaneously” in addition to allowing for extensive pre-launch testing. The video trailer on the Perplex City Stories site indicates the plot will involve a brutal murder in a Perplex City bar.

Although Perplex City Stories will be delayed, the first wave of Perplex City Season Two cards became available from Firebox at the beginning of March, and We Love Puzzles, a related website with a variety of games and puzzles is currently live.

Adrian Hon is scheduled to be a panelist on Episode 19 of the ARG Netcast series. Discussion topics will include Perplex City Season Two, among other topical ARG news.

ARGFest 2007: 42 Entertainment Roundtable Discussion — The Big Picture

March 31, 2007 / Jessica Price

After a number of panels featuring discussion between independent puppetmasters and members of different design companies, 42 Entertainment‘s Jim Stewartson (Chief Technology Officer), Elan Lee (Co-Founder, Vice President of Experience Design), Sean Stewart (Co-Founder, Creative Director), Steve Peters (Game Designer) and Michael Borys (Visual Design Director) sat down for a roundtable discussion, moderated by Kristen Rutherford, about how their team works together.

Stewart began the roundtable with a discussion of a chemistry puzzle in the Beast that was intended to look “cool and spooky” but be relatively easy to solve, and 42’s subsequent efforts to reproduce that effect in their other games. One of these attempts was Flea++, the “programming” language used in I Love Bees. In a similar vein, players would “teach” the character of the Sleeping Princess to speak as she cobbled together words and phrases from their emails and replied to them. Stewart’s favorite draft reply was “I want a cupcake.” Lee told him they couldn’t use it because it was too ambiguous — it could be a call to action for the players. According to Stewart, one of Lee’s main roles within the company is removing ambiguity from what the players see (Stewart’s summary: the creative process at 42 consists mainly of Lee saying, “That’s really good but can we have another draft?”).

Why We Eat Strangers’ Candy:Â A Reflection on the ARGFest 2007 Keynote by 42 Entertainment

March 30, 2007 / Nicko Demeter

“Delivering a keynote address to this audience is really difficult.Â What can we talk about?Â We can’t talk about anything we’ve done in the past because you were all there experiencing it. We can’t talk about anything we’re working on right now because that would ruin the fun and the mystery of the experience. We can’t talk about anything we have planned for the future because frankly, you are the competition. All that’s left is self-deprecation and the elephant in the room…trust.” — Elan Lee

Those words kicked off one of the most fulfilling experiences of the ARGFest weekend, according to many of the participants. The keynote address by Sean Stewart and Elan Lee not only educated the audience (composed of players, puppetmasters, aspiring puppetmasters and other interested parties) but it also provided memorable insights into the successful games that helped establish 42 Entertainment as one of alternate reality gaming’s lead design companies.

Early on, the speakers noted that alternate reality gaming has a unique cability to evolve at any given time in accordance with the audience’s wishes.Â That characteristic allows mistakes to be quickly assimilated into the game in a way that avoids the perception of failure (“Yeah, we meant to do that!”).

The discussion was split into three main sections:

— How is trust established?
— Why should puppetmasters care if the players trust them?
— Why do ARGs require trust?