Shortly after the countdown began at FlynnLives.com/zerohour, players noticed that what appeared to be a picture was slowly forming, pixel by pixel, beneath the binary countdown. That image, although not complete, has started to reveal a list of city names, a good portion of which can be deduced. Washington DC, Atlanta, Orlando, Raleigh, San Diego, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Phoenix are fairly legible, with more becoming so as the countdown approaches the zero hour on February 24th. Stay tuned in the coming days to see if YOUR city appears on the list!
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Last summer, a number of movie bloggers received a flash drive along with two tokens for Flynn’s Arcade. By decoding and compiling code hidden within five different .gif files, players were lead to www.flynnlives.com, while text printed on the coins lead to www.homeoftron.com. These websites lead Comic-Con attendees on a merry blacklight-lit chase throughout San Diego to discover Flynn’s Arcade and a life-sized replica of the reimagined lightcycle for the upcoming Tron: Legacy film, scheduled for a December 2010 theatrical release.
According to Creativity Online, this viral campaign was created by 42 Entertainment. 42 Entertainment previously received numerous accolades for its alternate reality gaming campaign Why So Serious, which created a series of discrete live events and challenges to immerse players within the seedier side of Gotham City that had players finding cellphones in cakes, campaigning for Harvey Dent, and locating customized bowling balls.
It seems as though 42 Entertainment is trying for a repeat performance, as ComingSoon.net has reported that Puerto Rican tipster Angel Bidot has received a package from Flynn Lives containing an origami a plastic Bit and the message “/zerohour.” RobMagus also reported receiving the package earlier today. At FlynnLives.com/ZeroHour, a binary countdown is counting down the seconds until February 24 at approximately 11AM EST (8AM PST, 4PM GMT).
Click Here for the discussion at Unfiction.com
Click Here for the Tron wiki at Wikibruce.comÂ
Image courtesy of RobMagus
Speaking of countdowns, remember you only have until 11:59pm ESTÂ tomorrow (Tuesday, February 16) to enter to win an iPod Touch, courtesy of Running Press Books.
Wouldn’t it be great if, during times of crisis, there was a way to access a network of experts ready and able to help avert the crisis? Starting March 3rd, the Evoke Network goes live and available for all your crisis-averting needs!
EVOKE was developed by the World Bank Institute, the educational branch of the World Bank Group, and directed by Jane McGonigal, the creative mind behind Superstruct and World Without Oil (among many others) and most recently an invited speaker at TED2010. The alternate reality game’s mission is to help the world help itself, by empowering young people to tackle the world’s toughest problems. In the first episode, the year is 2020 and Japan is facing a nation-wide famine. The Governor of Tokyo sends an “EVOKE” to the mysterious Alchemy, who then activates the Evoke Network by contacting individuals with the necessary skills and ideas needed to help Tokyo avert her food crisis, and teach her people how to avoid it in the future.
During the 10 week course of the game, players will be presented with 10 different challenges involving topics like hunger, poverty, and education – one challenge per week. Players who participate in all 10 challenges will be honored as a “Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator – Class of 2010.” On top of that, the top 10 Social Innovators will also have the opportunity to be mentored by noted social innovators and business leaders, along with scholarships to the EVOKE Summit in Washington, DC to share their innovative ideas with the world.
The goal of the game? Fun of course! But the main goal is to teach the young people of the world skills such as networking, resourcefulness, creativity, and vision; empowering them to start solving the world’s problems. Teach the people, save the world!
EVOKE launches on March 3rd and is accepting membership reservations now, and discussion is brewing over in Unfiction. Also, the first graphic novel episode can be read in its entirety on the EVOKE homepage, including links to articles for additional information on the topics discussed in the episode and a video trailer with clues about the nature of the EVOKE Network.
Centian misses playing games with humans…won’t you oblige? By playing with Centian, you could win a registration badge for the 2011 Interactive festival at SXSW. Run by the folks at Sweb Development, the points-based contest ends March 15, and the central hub for the game is the Centian Games Ning site. Centian Games incorporates multiple platforms, including Twitter, SMS, and GPS-based smartphone apps. Right now, contestants can compete by using the #centiangames hashtag when Twittering their check-ins on Gowalla and/or Foursquare. Another way to win the SXSW badge is to answer internet search trivia questions over an SMS subscription service. It remains to be seen what other challenges and fun human games Centian will devise in the lead-up to Sweb Development’s exhibit at the free and open-to-the-public ScreenBurn Arcade at SXSW from March 12-14 in Austin, Texas. But, there’s something undeniably ARG-ish about Centian.
The twitter account responded to my Gowalla check-ins, and we started a conversation about playing games, which moved from Twitter into e-mails (I’ve posted the e-mail correspondence over at Unfiction). There, I got the chance to learn more about Centian the non-human. Centian certainly has a distinct personality: chipper, bubbly, and fun-loving. It reminds me of Eddie, the Heart of Gold’s onboard computer in the Hitchhiker’s Guide, but less nauseating. The contest itself is an ancient game called Malkut, which means Royalty in the language of its people.
Wait… what? Centian has a people? At first I thought it was some kind of HAL-like electronic entity, just a superficial net-presence to run the contest. I was wrong. According to Centian’s e-mail responses, it is a “Krateran,†an extinct people that apparently had human interactions in the past. Now, Centian seems to be alone, the last of its kind. I wonder what happened, and why we humans have forgotten the Kraterans.
Free speech, a fundamental human right? Yes, of course, you’d say. A universally granted human right? Absolutely not, even in the 21st century. Confronting 5,000 years of reading, writing, and the politics of censorship, Lekha’s Journey is a fictional interactive experience tied to the four-part documentary series, Empire of the Word, which aired in November-December 2009 on TVO, a publicly funded, educational media organization in Ontario, Canada.
In Lekha’s Journey, author I.P. Burroughs’ writings sparked international controversy and violent rioting that forced the mysterious writer into hiding 20 years ago. Aspiring Canadian writer Lekha Sharma forged an online friendship with the fugitive author, who is about to release a translation of the Bhava Sutra manuscript. The Bhava Sutra is believed to be a politically dangerous (anti-patriarchal) tract, written by a woman in Dehradun, India, in the 5th century BCE. The last people who tried to study the Bhava Sutra died or disappeared in unusual circumstances.
I.P. Burroughs convinced Lekha to meet her in Egypt, but the Bhava Sutra manuscript was stolen from the modern Library of Alexandria before the two could meet. Instead, I.P. Burroughs has laid a puzzle trail for Lekha, as she looks for missing pieces of the manuscript around the world. As she travels, Lekha is being followed, but she cannot allow the hidden message of the Bhava Sutra to be suppressed. Beautifully filmed on location in Canada, Egypt, Italy, Turkey, Germany, India, and England, Lehka is plucky and approachable as the protagonist, albeit a little naive. I.P. Burroughs’ supporters Lekha meets along her travels can be entertaining and sometimes cryptic as they help guide Lekha’s journey.
On September 12, 2006, authors Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman released Cathy’s Book, an experiment in transmedia publishing, under the Running Press imprint. The book and its accompanying evidence packet provided a window into the life of Cathy Vickers, a fashion-conscious teenage girl with a penchant for daydreaming and doodling. Readers could follow a series of clues contained within the novel to birth certificates, news clippings, telephone numbers, and websites. Cathy’s Book was a New York Times Best Seller. The subsequent books in the trilogy, Cathy’s Key and Cathy’s Ring, wrapped up Cathy’s story.
Last month, the Cathy trilogy was re-released as an iPhone app, at $0.99 per novel. The app integrates the interactivity of the original novels, and adds animations throughout the story that make the illustrations liberally peppered throughout the book come alive. To celebrate the app’s launch, Running Press Books is giving ARGNet readers the chance to win an iPod Touch and iTunes gift cards. To enter, follow the instructions below.
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