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D.C. Goes Kra-Z For LCP

October 26, 2005 / Jackie Kerr

This past weekend, Last Call Poker hit Washington D.C. with a live game of Tombstone Hold â€˜Em. A crowd of 25 took part at the event, which included a poker tournament and a small favor for Lucky Brown, creator of Last Call Poker.

The games took place at Historic Congressional Cemetery near RFK Stadium in D.C. where participants were greeted by a pointy, fuzzy-headed girl acting as the liaison for Lucky and drizzly rain. There, they were given chips for the tournament, instructions for tournament play, and the opportunity to peruse the historical section of the cemetery to be used during the game. Players met at the chapel in the center and were introduced to the cemetery and its history by the Chairman of the Board. Among the more flavorful members of the cemetery are John Phillip Sousa, J. Edgar Hoover, and some early members of Congress. Following the introduction, the tournament began and â€œtablesâ€ of 4 to 5 pairings were sent off to duke it out in Hold â€˜Em. Winners of the tournament include UnFiction members LouMac, Cortana, and Rowan.

Austin Game Conference

October 26, 2005 / Dee Cook

Today saw the opening of the Game Writers Conference, a subset of the Austin Game Conference which opens tomorrow. Of particular interest to ARGers was the discussion by Maureen McHugh from 42 Entertainment about the work that went into The Beast and I Love Bees.

Maureen was contacted in 2004 to write for I Love Bees. She has a background in teaching English and writing science fiction. She made some interesting points about the emergence of varying types of entertainment being dependent upon what technology is available. As the printing press made novels possible, so has the internet made Alternate Reality Gaming possible. Additionally, she spoke about the emergence of the novel in comparison with the different ARGs we’ve seen so far. In the beginning were fake memoirs – Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders – which were originally published as actual diaries rather than a made-up story. From there, novels moved to an epistolary form (such as Clarissa) where the reader eavesdropped on conversations between strangers. She compared this with The Beast, where the players dropped in on writings which were originally intended for other in-game characters. Next in history, the novel moved into an art form with an omniscient narrator, such as Tom Jones. Could this be where ARGs are headed?

A Giant ARG?

October 25, 2005 / Dee Cook

Unfiction member MaxSteele writes in with the following:

On October 13, community member Addlepated discovered
href=”http://giantology.typepad.com” target=_blank”>Giantology
from a video showing a colossal discovery on the coast of Southern
India posted on
href=”http://www.snopes.com/photos/tsunami/colossus.asp”
target=”_blank”>Snopes. Over the next several days, different
entries appeared on this site ranging from an underwater
statue/fossil of a fish in the Philippines to giant
footprints found in Northeastern Iran.

On October 21, an entry titled “Giant Creature Discovered in Siberia”
appeared on the site. The entry linked to
href=”http://arkadysimkin.pl” target=”_blank”>Arkady Simkin’s personal
website. On here, there was a
href=”http://arkadysimkin.pl/Siberian_Ice_Giant.wmv”
target=”_blank”>video and a
href=”http://arkadysimkin.pl/radio_interview.mp3″ target=”_blank”>
radio interview detailing the discovery of a “mammoth type
creature” found in the Arctic by irregular radar readings.

After sending an email asking if Mr. Simkin wanted assistance, I
received a very lengthy email reply from a friend of his who told me
the site had been compromised, and Mr. Simkin’s email link changed to
a different one. His apartment has also been ransacked, and he is
currently ‘out of sight from those who would like to find him’.

Is this real? Is it the start of a big production ARG? Either way,
there is definitely activity surrounding this discovery. I believe
our community should begin to take a look. If nothing else, our
abilities to find out information and problem solving could help with
this new find in the Arctic.

Discussion and information can be found here. Thanks, Max!

ARGs in Now Playing Magazine

October 24, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

Recently, our very own Steve Peters was part of an interview in Now Playing Magazine called “Meet the Puppetmasters”. Before you go off to your local convenience store in a mad panic, hoping to find the issue there on the magazine rack, check this out — Now Playing has decided to embed an ARG right in the magazine! Without saying too much, those of you who are lucky enough to get a copy of the magazine can look to the page where the article is found. From there, we’re told that there are a series of interactions that players can go through. Neat!

(There’s also a link on their website, and after trying 2267 ways 2 view the content, we had success. Maybe you can as well…)

Thanks to Now Playing Magazine for featuring ARGs in such an interesting article!

Sable & Shuck Winners

October 24, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

Belated congratulations go out to community members Wishi-San and Meak, who were two of the four winners in the Sable & Shuck ARG. A promotional device for Stella Artois beer, the Sable & Shuck ARG ran from September of 2004 until wrapping up in June of this year. Because the final puzzle was never solved, contest organizers announced earlier this month that they would split the grand prize of Â£10946 between the four that “were most worthy of the prize”. That means that Wishi-San and Meak each get a nice Â£2,736.50 slice of the pie. Bravo to them and the other two unidentified winners!

Another Mysterious Countdown

October 15, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

News articles at Team XBox and GameSpot (scroll down to Rumor #2), as well as an anonymous tip to ARGN, have led us to The Lutz World Report, a self-proclaimed “‘truth’ source of the Paranormal and Extraordinary.” But wait — what is that there? Is that… a countdown timer? Counting down to… sometime on October 18th? What could it all mean???

We all know how important countdown timers are in the world of Alternate Reality Gaming — who could forget the launches of I Love Bees and Metacortechs? At the same time, one shouldn’t forget non-ARGs like Our Colony and OrigenXBox360. The moral of the story, as it always is, is to wait and see. We’ll be watching to see what happens on Tuesday with cautious optimism.