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ARG Netcast, Episode 7

December 3, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

We bring you a merry netcast,
We bring you a merry netcast,
We bring you a merry netcast,
The last one of the year (maybe)!

Carie Ward, Brooke Thompson, Sean C. Stacey and Jackie Kerr return to sling the ARG dirt with Jonathan Waite. Episode seven is a doozy, clocking in at 1 hour and 7 minutes, but it’s definitely something that’ll warm your heart this holiday season. Subscribe to the ARG Netcast feed through FeedBurner or via iTunes.

Game News

A bit more on the Lost Planet ARG we talked about last week, which Carie wrote about on Wednesday.
Lawn Games For Life is sweeping the U.S. with geocaching and puzzle solving. Not only did Carie write about it for us here, but she also started a guide. You go, girl!
This is also our Puzzle of the Week, as the players need help getting to items left in the Southwestern U.S.
Steve Peters of 42 Entertainment continues on his cross-podcast tour with an exciting and informative interview with GeeksOn.
Enoch of Gatewood is new on the scene, but the story leaves us giggly.
The creator of Hell Is Not Gone asks for help in advertising their game, almost a month after players were first pointed to it. By him.
Jericho may have something ARGish brewing for their off-season, but if they don’t, it’d be a shame.
Second Life Future Salon panel discussion on ARGs took place on the 27th of November, we hope to have access to the audio from that discussion soon.
EDOC Laundry stirs back to some sort of life, partly by accident. Whatever the case, this might be your chance to get in on the ground floor, again.

EVA – The End of the World As We Know It?

December 3, 2006 / Carie Ward

It started (as these things so often do) with a cryptic website: in this case, a MySpace belonging to a mysterious entity calling itself EVA and bearing a disturbing message:

I have returned. Awaken[sic] by disturbance. The sickness of humanity. You have grown undeserving. The preciouse[sic] life you take for granted. a test. To prove your worthiness. to prove your will to live. Ensure your safety. The prophecy. When it is to be. none will be safe. to stop it. Take the challenge

The “challenge” appears to be a seven-round test, with each round based on a different world mythology. The author of the test, Ovdasupal, is challenging us to save Janna, whom he claims is his songstress and soon to be the mother of his child. Ovdasupal is being helped by the Scions of Punishment, who in turn have enlisted the Deceiver, Jonathan, to help them translate certain texts that would help their cause. Working against the Scions and Ovdasupal is EVA. EVA claims he is helping humanity as the Scions wish to bring a punishing purification to the human race. Although EVA also wants to purify humanity, he claims to offer a kinder, gentler purification, and may even give humanity to live if we can prove ourselves.

Steve Peters Gets His Geek On with Geeks On

December 1, 2006 / Jackie Kerr

‘Tis the season to be podcast, fa la la la la, la la go Steve.
Strike the gong and turn on the mic fa la la la la, la la Peters.
GeeksOn Podcast Interviewee fa la la la la la STEVE PETERS.
Talks about some ARGs and Gaming, fa la la la la, la la la la!

Steve Peters of 42 Entertainment sat down with GeeksOn for an extensive podcast interview on his work in Alternate Reality Gaming.

Covered during the nearly hour-long (!) discussion:
Â· Steve’s experience with 42 Entertainment
Â· History and general information about ARGs
Â· I Love Bees
Â· Last Call Poker
Â· Art of the Heist
Â· Technology in ARG production
Â· The 4th wall
Â· The process of producing an ARG
Â· Ninjas
Â· The future of ARGs, including their potential uses and Second Life

GeeksOn produces wonderful, pithy podcasts and their panel discussions are witty and intelligent. They even speak in alien, sometimes. (Oh geek <3) These guys ask some excellent questions about the genre and the discussion is wildly entertaining. Click to Listen

Playing Lawn Games for Life

November 30, 2006 / Carie Ward

What do you get when you combine a cross-country trip with a scavenger hunt, old family stories and a variety of puzzles? The answer is Lawn Games for Life, a new ARG that is running now through the middle of December.

Lawn Games for Life is part of the inheritance that Anna Ravelo has left her favorite niece, Taylor Garcia. The game is a quest to discover an even bigger heirloom: The Fountain of Truth. The Fountain is the â€œmost precious, valuable, and treasured possessionâ€ of the family â€“ and possibly the world.

Taylor, as substitute PM for the late Aunt Anna, has been assigning trials for her extended family members for the past week. Each trial reveals more information about Annaâ€™s past brings us one step closer to finding The Fountain of Truth. The trials also award points to the family who can solve them ahead of their cousins, creating a spirit of competition amidst the cooperative play.

Lawn Games for Life is scheduled to end December 22nd when a live finale will be held in St. Augustine, Florida. Interested players should visit the Trials page to solve puzzles on behalf of their extended family members (who often gather on the LGFL discussion board). There is also a guide designed to help newcomers to the four families get up to speed with puzzle walkthroughs and links to Challenge Pieces won in previous trials.

Trailhead: http://www.lawngamesforlife.com
Discussion at Unfiction: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17510
Guide: http://www.wonderweasels.org/lawngames/guide.html

Exploring Our Future on a Lost Planet

November 29, 2006 / Carie Ward

As any gamer can tell you, game trailers are more than just an opportunity to feast your senses on the latest pre-recorded gameplay designed to tempt you into buying the game when it is finally released. For the keen-eyed gamer, hints of deeper game mythology can often be coaxed out of these trailers, adding to the overall experience of the game.

It was just this type of dedicated gamer who first noticed that there were strange things in the trailers for Lost Planet, a new Xbox 360 game designed by Capcom and scheduled for release in January. Those that watched the first trailers on the Xbox Live Marketplace saw â€œ111â€ and â€œneovenusconstruction.comâ€ flash toward the end, leading them to rush off in search of the next I Love Bees.

These intrepid explorers have been rewarded with the discovery of several slick-looking websites that all share the goal of colonizing new planets (including, in the future, EDN 3 – where Lost Planet is set). While the in-game sites seem to be setting up background stories at present, there are numerous hints that more is still to come, making this an ideal point to join the game. In fact, it has been hinted on the Capcom boards that players have all the information needed to advance the game, so things could start to happen very quickly if they can discover what clues they are missing. Maybe you could be the one to stumble upon that one little bit of information that can blow the game wide open, so what are you waiting for? Be a hero to gamers everywhere and discover the secret.

Trailhead: http://neovenusconstruction.com
List of in-game sites: http://awiser.googlepages.com/home
Discussion at Unfiction: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17446

OpAphid Becomes “Official LonelyGirl15 ARG”

November 28, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Just when you thought the LonelyGirl15 phenomenon had settled down, in walks Cassie. Cassie, an 18 year old YouTube contributor from, um, “right there above you,” first caught the eye of LG15 fans in mid-September when she was mentioned in one of the LonelyGirl15 videos. From there, it’s a little hard to explain, what with the public skepticism about whether “Cassie Is Watching” (the first video in the Cassie series can be found here) was officially tied in with LG15. Weeks passed by with no official confirmation on whether Cassie, Bree and Daniel (the latter two being the main characters of the LG15 videos) were all part of the same story, which left fans wondering whether Cassie was another creation by the makers of LG15 or some sort of story hijacking attempt.

Then, on October 21, things took a turn for the… even more strange and confusing. Somehow, a YouTube user named OpAphid became intertwined into the LG15/CIW universe. Again, followers of events had to wonder if this was another attempt to derail the “official” LG15 experience. Fortunately, exactly one month later, the public got some well-deserved answers from the LG15 creation team — OpAphid had become the “Official LG15 Alternate Reality Game,” according to a post on the LG15 forums. Days later, the LG15 creators acknowledged that OpAphid “was a 100% fan created ARG” and that they “liked it so much that [they] decided to contact the creator and make it the official LG15 ARG.”