The live netcast from ARGFest-o-Con 2007 in San Francisco is ready and waiting for you. Read the show notes at the ARG Netcast web site. Subscribe to the ARG Netcast feed through this link or via iTunes.
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As the wheels of the small commuter plane touched down on the tarmac of San Francisco International Airport, the rush of excitement I felt having arrived for ARGFest-O-Con 2007 was almost overwhelming. It had been less than two years since I had attended the large-scale conference dedicated to alternate reality gaming – the 2005 event in New York City was my first ARGFest – but the anticipation for this event had me giddy as a schoolgirl. As I navigated through the weaving maze of gates and security checkpoints, I knew that in less than an hour, I would be meeting up with people from around the globe, some of which I had seen in late 2005 at the Last Call Poker finale, and some that I had never even had the chance to talk to in the online chat rooms that dot the ARG community landscape.
I had the benefit of arriving in San Francisco within minutes of Unfiction owner Sean Stacey and 42 Entertainment’s Elan Lee. After some careful coordination, we were able to share a cab to the convention’s home, the Holiday Inn Fisherman’s Wharf in northern San Fran. We began to talk, and it was obvious that despite a bit of fatigue, the other two were just as excited about the conference as I was. We chatted as though we had seen each other only days earlier, and as we traversed the streets leading to the hotel, fifteen minutes elapsed before Elan finally said, “Hey, San Francisco is really pretty.†We hadn’t even looked out the window of the cab, too busy talking with each other.
The rest of the evening went by much faster than I would have liked. Arriving at the hotel to see old friends and meet those I had previously talked with online, events quickly led to a wonderful Chinese meal, a regrettable absence from the Cruel 2 B Kind game that over 50 teams enjoyed, and a number of beverages at the hotel lounge. It was great to see people I write with on this site, people like Jackie Kerr and Marie Lamb, people who I had never met with in a real-world setting previously. Smiling faces and loud, raucous cheers littered the gathering place, and the festival moved forward, full tilt.
After over four months of completing puzzles via the Postal Service, participants in the innovative ARG The Committee of the Sedulous Amalgamation (tCotSA) received cryptic notes that eventually decoded to reveal the history and purpose of the organization behind the mailings – the same organization that funded the creation of Deus City’s Time Communication Project.
According to the information revealed through the cryptic mailings, the Committee for Sedulous Amalgamation was established five hundred years ago to protect fragments of Nostradamus’ folio. They then funded Adam Brackin’s Time Communication project and charged its members to join the agents of Deus City and collect the missing pieces of the Nostradamus’ work.
Further investigation reveals additional parallels between the two games. An arithmetic symbol used by the Deus City PM, known as “Hank Eggrem,” appears on many tCotSA messages, including its trailhead. tCotSA also makes reference to the death of one of its members, which parallels Alexis Wright Sr’s plane crash in Alabama from the Deus City story.
The impact of this merging of games remains to be seen, as both ARGs have employed very different gameplay styles, with Deus City relying heavily on character interaction while tCoSA utilized “snail mail” to great effect. A similar merger of ongoing games happened in the past with Wildfire Industries and Synagoga. Watching these two communities interact will be an interesting study in merging gaming cultures, whether the games merge completely or continue running concurrent plotlines.
DeusCity resources:
Click Here for the Deus City website
Click Here for the unfiction forum thread
Click Here for the Deus City wiki
The Committee of the Sedulous Amalgamation
Click Here for the tCotSA unfiction forum thread
Click Here for the tCotSA story so far
It’s a whole new world for the ARG Netcast series. We have our spiffy new website, and a whole new attitude. It’s like Extreme Makeover, ARG style! Episode 14‘s panel, hosted by ARGnet‘s Jonathan Waite, includes Jessica Price, Marie Lamb, Jackie Kerr, and Sean C. Stacey. Subscribe to the ARG Netcast feed through this link or via iTunes.
Head over to the new site for all of the details. Please note: because of the move to the new site, the iTunes podcast number has changed, so many of you regular subscribers will need to update your bookmarks in iTunes.
Editor’s Note: Big thanks to Geoff May for contributing this article about the recently-launched Dr. Pepper marketing campaign. Geoff is a former ARGNet staff writer, and we are thankful for this timely article.
Is there a drink you’d be willing to purchase and drink for a full month to get the chance to win up to $1,000,000? What if it weren’t a matter of chance, but of skill and problem solving?
Recently, Cadbury Schweppes PLC ran a marketing campaign for the Dr.Pepper brand that would take its followers potentially to every corner of North America (and beyond), both physically and virtually. Dr.Pepper’s “The Hunt For More” campaign could be considered a great success, though YMMV. Following the marketing theme of Dr.Pepper’s unique 23 flavored pop, the ‘Hunt’ campaign would get people all over the US and Canada hunting down 23 physical coins for guaranteed $$$ – ultimately ending in a flurry of controversial press.
Over the course of 30 days from Jan 21 to Feb 21, Dr.Pepper bottles were disappearing off shelves faster than usual, making it a hunt in itself to find them before they disappeared, and not every store carrying the brand had the specially labeled bottles. It was a frantic race for players to have a unique code in their possession every day, and it was a lot of pop to drink.
The clue portion of the hunt was very much a game of skill. There was no luck involved or random draw – just be the first to either find your region’s physical coin, or report the location of the virtual one. To balance this game of skill, players were also given the option to use the code not to retrieve a clue, but for a chance to win an instant prize.
Swirling around the announcement of Nine Inch Nail’s upcoming album, Year Zero, are stories of mysterious finds related to the album: songs “leaked” on thumb drives left in bathrooms during concerts, unsettling websites and videos haunted by an ominous presence, and glimpses into a dystopian future not far removed from our own.
Unfolding from the websites, songs, and videos is a tale of oppression, injustice, and revolution. Fed up with increasing violence, civil unrest and terrorism, an unelected U.S. Government created a Bureau of Morality and restarted the nation’s clock at Year Zero. The First Amendment is now a thing of the past and the authorities have their thumb firmly positioned over all matters pertaining to art and culture. The quasi-totalitarian administration also utilizes the power of reactionary religious organizations to ensure that U.S. citizens are kept under tight control.
If history tells us anything, however, it is that such a restrictive regime cannot last forever. A resistance has been formed to speak out against the government’s oppressive intervention into its citizens’ lives. Using codes, flyers, USB drives left in restrooms across the world, spectrograms on MP3 songs, and a handful of websites, the faithful (or fanatics, depending on your point of view) are spreading their message and gathering in secret to discuss the latest salvos in their ongoing battle against The Man.
But there’s more going on here than just freedom fighters arrayed against the full tide of an overbearing and illegitimate leadership. A hand-like creature has been seen walking the desert, slipping downwards to earth from the heavens. The sightings started after a drug, Parepin, was added to the water in an effort to prevent bioterrorist attacks. Is it a hallucination? Divine intervention? The Angel of Death? Or, as clever Unfiction players recently suggested, might the Presence be a cross-temporal manifestation of the players themselves?
With speculation that this might be the latest production from 42 Entertainment, curiosity about the way the story is being told (is this a flashback hidden between clips of music, a la The Handmaid’s Tale? And how is it being transmitted back in time to 2007?) and a claim from Trent Reznor that this is not “some gimmick to get you to buy a record…this IS the art form,” which is “just getting started,” interest is high. The scheduled release of the Year Zero album is 4/17/07. Until then do not drink the water.
Get talking on the Unforums, or start at the sources: anotherversionofthetruth.com and www.iamtryingtobelieve.com
scp afterworld
postcurious
meow wolf
curators request
masquerade nyc
simulacra