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Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom: An Interactive, Location-Based Experience

March 11, 2012 / Mildred I Lewis

Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom is a new interactive experience that debuted on February 22 at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. Jonathan Ackley, Senior Director and Show Producer Interactive of Walt Disney Imagineering, and his team spent four years designing and producing the game. Ackley gained early insights into interactivity as a game designer at Rocket Science Games and then by designing critically acclaimed adventure games for LucasArts, such as The Curse of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam and Max Hit the Road. Ackleyâ€™s interests in nontraditional, nonlinear storytelling gave him an awareness of the possibilities for integrating new technologies into location-based storytelling.

Before Ackleyâ€™s work on Sorcerers, he tested interactive storytelling ideas through the Kim Possible attraction, also at Walt Disney World, treating it as a research and development project on using wireless technology (through Verizon). Ackley immediately saw the advantages that Disney had for environmental storytelling. In an interview with Ackley, he said, â€œWe have themed environments. We are in a unique position to make you the main character in an adventure story. Weâ€™re really lucky that we have such great stories and characters to draw from.â€ The end result is that Sorcerers is an intriguing effort that pushes the boundaries of shared interactive experiences for families with children. Ackley described these experiences as opportunities for players to assume the roles of their favorite Disney protagonists as they make their way through the game. Families can share memories of their favorite films across generations and or create new stories as they play.

The objective of Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom is to save the Magic Kingdom from Disney villains, including Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians, the Evil Queen from Snow White, Dr. Facilier from The Princess and the Frog, and Scar from The Lion King. These villains were all recruited by Hades, ruler of the underworld and the archvillain from Hercules. Players become apprentices to Merlin, the sorcerer from The Sword in the Stone, who is Hadesâ€™ chief opponent. In order to save the Magic Kingdom, players must stop the villains from capturing the shattered pieces of Merlinâ€™s crystal ball.

Telegraphs to an Alternate World with Tap Joint

March 7, 2012 / Michael Andersen

A man sits at a Chinese restaurant, sitting in front of a telegraph machine enclosed in a wooden box. Carefully placing a pair of battered headphones over his ears, the unknown man uses a cipher key to decipher the message, “Welcome to the city.” This is the scene that greets visitors to Tap Joint, a curious, new narrative experience that plays out almost entirely over the game’s virtual device. As the man’s conversation with his unidentified correspondent continues, visitors learn more about an unfolding narrative that places its participants directly into the story’s distinctive universe.

Through a series of telegraph messages and video clips, site visitors learn that the unidentified correspondent on the other end of the telegraph is a member of an underground movement committed to resisting their city’s government, the Allied Municipal Patrol. The resistance is hard at work assembling Wave Unitsâ€”single-channel, one-way broadcasting devices. The group’s goal is to assemble 1,000 of Wave Units in time for Illumination Day, an annual holiday taking place on March 9th. The game’s world evokes a distinctly antiquated feel, with old-fashioned technologies like telegraphs and pneumatic tubes carefully housed in wooden assemblies. Visitors see the world from the unknown restaurant-goer’s perspective, operating the man like a puppet, using their computer’s mouse to pull his strings.

NYC Post-Advertising Summit Provides Hands-On Look at the Future

February 27, 2012 / Jane Doh

On March 29th at Cult Studios in New York City, marketing agency Story Worldwide will attempt to put the nail in the coffin of traditional advertising with the Post-Advertising Summit, an immersive, hands-on conference to explore the future of marketing designed for strategists and storytellers keen on producing branded content in a new age. With a focus on how audiences control and consume brand messages, the Summit promises a full day of exciting discussions about a future beyond advertising.

â€œIn todayâ€™s post-advertising world, brands can only communicate with audiences by producing content that people actually want and can share,â€ said Keith Blanchard, Executive Creative Director of Story Worldwide. â€œWeâ€™re looking forward to exploring how any brand can create useful, entertaining media that tells a compelling story, resonates with audiences, and serves a brandâ€™s objectives.â€

There is no doubt that the relationship between audiences and brands have changed over time, trending toward more engagement and even invitations for audiences to collaborate. At the Summit, The Wharton Schoolâ€™s Future of Advertising ProgramÂ will unveil its study ofÂ â€œWhat Makes Ads Go Viral?â€,Â providing groundbreaking insight into how brands can capture audiences and buzz in the highly competitive realm of online video marketing.

Panels and keynotes will discuss the complex emerging landscape of social, mobile, and digital solutions while providing the experience and expertise of industry leaders producing entertaining content in the post-advertising age.Â But true to this new emphasis on audience engagement, participants in the Post-Advertising Summit will be treated to two workshop sessions where together they will create entertaining content, a hands-on way to see firsthand the power of engagement and internalize techniques, strategies, and methodologies to navigate brands through the post-advertising world.

Check out the Post-Advertising Summit’s schedule for more information and to register for this full-day event in New York City. Early bird registration ends on February 29, but whether you register before or after that date, remember to take advantage of ARGNet’s media sponsorship of the event by using the discount code ARG for an additional 30% off registration.

Take A Walk On The Wired Wild Side with “Bear 71”

February 17, 2012 / Celina Beach

A bear walks through the Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies and is ensnared in a trap where she is tranquilized, tagged, and collared with a GPS device. She has now become Bear 71, and joins a group of wired wildlife who document the interactions between nature and their increasingly encroaching human neighbors.Â Bear 71Â is a new interactive project produced by the National Film Board of Canada’s digital studio, and includes an interactive web documentary site, a social media microsite, and a live installation piece that launched in conjunction with the Sundance Film Festival.

The main part of the project consists of an interactive web documentary created by NFB’s Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison, which introduces viewers to Bear 71 and then drops them into an interactive map of the Park, where they encounter other wired creatures that live in Bear 71’s home range: golden eagles, Big Horn sheep, wolves, and deer mice, all similarly tagged and under surveillance. The animals’ movements can be seen as they move about the park, and clicking on their markers reveals a video feed and information about the animal. Viewers can click on their own marker as well, which launches a group of surveillance feeds including their own (the site requests access to the viewer’s webcam and microphone, which can be denied) and any other viewers who happen to be browsing the site at the same time, tagged and tracked like the animals. Landmarks such as the freeway and railroad that run through the park can be seen, cars and trains moving on them as the animal’s markers cross back and forth, highlighting one of the project’s main points: when technology and the wild intersect, it is often to the detriment of the wildlife. There are also video feeds and observation points marked on the map, showing actual pictures and videos from their real-life counterparts in the Park.

Guidestones: A Mystery Stranger Than Fiction

February 14, 2012 / Jane Doh

Sandy Rai, an Indian exchange student, comes to the journalism program at Toronto’s Ryerson University and teams up with fellow student Trevor Shale for an assignment. However, what starts off as a college photojournalism assignment quickly plunges Sandy and Trevor into a deep mystery revolving around the suspicious death of a scientist, the enigmatic Georgia Guidestones, and a shadowy conspiracy still to be discovered.

While not necessarily the first interactive web series, Guidestones, created by iThentic and 3 oâ€™clock TV, promises to raise the bar for the web series genre, experimenting with different methods of presentation. With a very polished look, including on-location filming in India, the independent series is presented in two versions: a 50-episode “push” version with built-in interactive elements, and a “linear” version that will debut in the spring. The “push” version went live this week, and viewers can sign up at Guidestones.org to keep up with the episodes as they are released. Offering different levels of engagement, the casual viewer can watch the web series as it unfolds, while those hungry for more can follow clues embedded in the videos which lead on to further online assets, hidden storylines, and other in-game/in-story extras.

The series blurs the line between fiction and reality by bringing in the very real mystery of the Georgia Guidestones, a megalith that suddenly appeared in 1979 in rural Elbert County, Georgia. Dubbed the “American Stonehenge,” the Georgia Guidestones stand nearly 20 feet high, are inscribed with four ancient languages, and feature a rather perilously balanced capstone on top. It’s the stuff conspiracy theorists, millenarians, and idle gawkers like me just eat up.

Mark of the Spider-Man Lets Fans Walk a Mile in Parker’s Shoes

February 11, 2012 / Michael Andersen

Images by Phoebe S.

When Sony released the official trailer for Marvel’s franchise reboot,Â The Amazing Spider-Man, on February 4th, fans tapped into their inner spidey sense, barely perceptable letters spelling out “MARK OF THE SPIDER-MAN” at the 2:28 mark. This message led to a viral website displaying six static video feeds and a Twitter account.

On February 10th, the @MarkofSpiderman Twitter account started posting lost and found notices, broadcasting GPS coordinates to eleven different locations in six cities: Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, and Seattle. Fleet-footed fans found Peter Parker’s backpack, containing everything you’d expect the film’s nerdy protagonist to have: Physics and Chemistry textbooks, safety goggles, keys and a MetroCard, and a notebook loaded with class notes. Parker’s photography gear also found its way into the backpack, with the occasional film canister, photograph, or film negative scattered throughout. Parker even left his running shoes in the bag, leaving the recipients of each backpack with the singular opportunity to step inside Parker’s size 11 shoes.
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