…and the TINAG Philosophy
Play any Alternate Reality Game or even just read one of the many articles on the genre and you will quickly and repeatedly come across the phrase, “This Is Not A Game.†Your first reaction will most likely be to chuckle at the thought, but before long, you will notice yourself declaring those exact same words. Why? What does it mean? Where does it come from? And, for the “metaheads†out there, what the heck is TINAG?
Like something out of The Far Side, pedestrians in Maryland were recently startled to see a trio of cows (ok, not real cows, but humans in cow suits) leap from a van and begin accosting passersby, handing out cowbells and other swag that seemed to be promoting a Cow Revolution website, www.bovineunite.com. If you haven’t visited this site yet, you need to go there. Now.
Prepare yourself for the upcoming cow revolution. Seems our bovine friends have had quite enough of our milking them for all they’re worth, among other indignities. But they’re not just mad, they’re planning on getting even, and claiming their right to greener pastures in the process. Bovine Unite includes links to a cow blog, cow forum, and numerous media files including videos of cows pumping iron and the Bovine National Anthem. All of this is in preparation for “C-Day” on May 5th, when their nefarious bovine plan will go into effect.
Speculation abounds, but whoever’s behind all this had done a good job hiding their tracks. Web denizens are pointing to everyone from Chick-Fil-A to PETA, but the fact that events seem to be localized solely to Maryland seem to indicate otherwise.
So, keep a close eye on any cows that live near you, and be sure to stop by www.bovineunite.com on May 5th and tune in to the Cow News Networks between 8:45 and 9:00 PM (yeah, no timezone) for “further instructions.” We biped milkers are going to have to stick together to make it through this.
No, not an ARG. But pretty dang funny.
Discussion at Unfiction
Recognition for Alternate Reality Games is continuing to build with yet more media-related awards and nominations announced this week.
Regenesis Extended Reality won the FITC Design & Technology Award for Convergence. The FITC is one of Canada’s largest annual new media festivals. You can check out all of the winners at the FITC 2005 Awards website. In addition, ReGenesis Extended Reality was nominated for a Canada New Media Award for a Cross-Platform Project, which is arguably one of the top awards in Canada. The Canadian New Media Awards will honour individuals and companies in 19 categories on May 30th in Toronto. Congratulations, Xenophile Media!
If you missed Regenesis when it originally aired, it’s been announced that Season I will be shown on Canada’s Global Television Network this fall, effectively exposing the series to a much bigger Canadian audience. Additionally, Regenesis is scheduled to air on the Sci-Fi Channel in the UK this summer. Whether or not a replay of the extended reality game will occur in conjuntion remains a mystery at this point, however.
As we previously reported, I Love Bees is up for a 2005 Webby Award, although its run for a People’s Voice Award seems to be undeservedly out of reach at this point. The Webby Award winners will be announced at a gala celebration on June 6th at Gotham Hall in New York City, while the People’s Voice Award winners will be announced on May 3rd.
With all the mainstream recognition ARGs have been getting lately, we can surely look forward to seeing more and more of them in the very near future.
Northwest internet design company VirtuQuest has announced their latest Alternate Reality Game, Corporate Edition 5.0: “Banque Suisse.” The rabbithole seems to consist solely of a barcode (pictured at left) and some French text.
VirtuQuest is a media company that specializes in tailor made Internet Adventures. They develop mid-size Alternate Reality Games as corporate team building activities, ad campaigns, or public games just for fun. Periodically, a corporate client will allow their game to be accessible and playable by the general public, and Corporate Edition 5.0 is just such a case. Outsiders are not privy to some information that is given to the client as part of the Corporate Edition package, but outside players have been known to be very resourceful in games past.
VirtuCube (a Virtuquest non-ARG game) remains unsolved after many months. Aimed at the serious puzzle solver, VirtuCube offers an as-yet-unclaimed $500 prize to the first to solve it.
Corporate 5.0 discussion at Unfiction
VirtuCube discussion at Unfiction
Alternate Reality Gamers are always looking for the best way to keep informed of what’s going on in their favorite game. Not everyone can surf the boards reading each and every post all day long (yes, some people actually have to work at work), so players are always looking for ways to stay as current as possible without having to sacrifice huge amounts of time. Historically, moderated lists or blogs that would email updates to players’ in-boxes were pretty much the standard vehicle for letting players know about game updates in a timely way.
Recently however, ARGs and their corresponding player-authored resources have begun taking advantage of RSS syndication, which is a way of pushing new content out to players, but surprisingly, this great vehicle is often going underutilized. So, we thought we’d offer a little primer for those of you who have always wondered what those little RSS buttons that show up on various websites are for.
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, and is a standard format for publishing and distributing regular updates around the web. Using this standard, website publishers can provide updates like the latest news headlines or blog postings to consumers who use RSS reader applications (or one of a growing number of online services) to collect and monitor their favorite feeds in one place (RSS content viewed in one of these readers, is often called a “feed”).
Major news websites such as Wired and news-oriented community sites such as Slashdot and Fark offer RSS feeds, but it’s not just for news. Almost anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the “recent changes” page of a wiki, new items for sale on Amazon.com, even recent postings or new topics in a forum. Once information about each item is in RSS format, a feedreader program can check the feed for changes and notify you when they occur.
I am sure that we have all pondered how the world of Alternate Reality Gaming will shape up in years to come. Will our genre be overshadowed by rabid publishing houses, clawing at each other for the largest market share, or will the dedicated PM with 63 dollars and three cents reign supreme?
There tends to be a peaceful coexistence between Grassroots and Corporate games. There is no visible attempt to pull players away from one ARG and draw them to another. The consensus of most, if not all, ARG Puppetmasters is to see their fellow game maker succeed in their foray behind the curtain. It is disheartening, to say the least, to see people talking about our world being “Grassroots vs. Corporate.”
The only real disadvantage of a grassroots game it that many have launched, attracted followers, and then collapsed prematurely the next weekend! It is mainly this fear that stops us normally eager ARG’ers from diving headfirst into a newly launched grassroots experience. Investing our time and effort in it only to see it meltdown becomes depressing after the nth time.
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