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Evelyn Offscreen: A Brief Clarification

October 6, 2009 / Carie Ward

EvelynOffscreen Halloween makes everything weird. At any other time, a substantial number of overlapping clues would mean that two campaigns were linked in some sort of way. But throw Halloween into the mix, and what appeared to be a logical conclusion to a group of facts turns out to be nothing more than a set of bizarre coincidences.

ARGNet has been informed that the “Evelyn Offscreen” campaign is, in fact, not at all related to the Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights. While there was never direct confirmation in the game that the two were related, there were several coincidences that made it appear that they were.

1. A newspaper clipping posted in a comment to Evelyn’s blog mentions the Palace Theater. The Universal Palace Theater is a centerpiece of the Halloween Horror Nights experience.

2. Newspaper clippings shown in the videos about the Palace Theater talk about Evelyn Crane going into reclusion after a box office flop. This event is talked about in great detail on the Evelyn Crane blog.

3. The Evelyn Offscreen website talks about how live events will be playing in Orlando, FL. The Halloween Horror Nights with the Universal Palace Theater attraction is also taking place in Orlando. (The Universal Hollywood HHN has a different set of attractions.)

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused players.

Mail Call: Go Forth and Buy Some Charcoal Briquets

October 5, 2009 / Michael Andersen

graysonozias Over the weekend, I posted an article about Levi’s upcoming treasure hunt, the Go Forth Fortune Experience. The hunt is scheduled toÂ begin atÂ 5PM PST tonight. TheÂ treasure huntÂ raises a $100,000 question: who was Grayson Ozias IV, and where is his fortune? I received a few answers today in my mailbox, althoughÂ the information I receivedÂ raised just as many questions.

graysonozias2 When I opened my mailbox this evening, I found a brown package from the Levi Strauss and Co. Archives in San Francisco, California bearing aÂ logo with the words “GO FORTH.” Inside, the package included a photograph of Grayson Ozias IV with the address LEVI.COM/GOFORTH printed on the back along with a handkerchief bearing the question “Who Was Grayson Ozias IV and Where Is His Fortune.”Â In addition to the photo and hadkerchief, I receivedÂ an empty 10 pound bag of Royal Oak charcoal briquets.Â I can onlyÂ presume I’m being asked to fire up the grill for a night of burgers, beerÂ and brats. So whoÂ exactly wasÂ Grayson Ozias, and what does he have to do with charcoal briquets?

graysonozias1 While the answer to the latter question will sadly remain a mystery for now, Levi’s has released some information on theÂ enigmaticÂ man behind theÂ treasure hunt.Â Grayson Ozias IV, according to the company,Â wasÂ an American adventurer who journeyed across the country before vanishing into the wilderness in 1896. He was also fast friends with Levi Strauss’s nephew Nathan, who recorded the details about Grayson’sÂ exploits that hint at the location of his considerable fortune. The search for Grayson Ozias IV’s treasure will take players through cities and towns across America in order to solve an elaborate cryptogram requiring a combination of knowledge, skill and determination.

In addition to the $100,000 prize for the winner, participants will have the opportunity to win a number of other great prizes along the way. They can also nominate and vote for a U.S.-based non-profit organization to receive an additional $100,000 at the end of the campaign. Frequent readers of ARGNet will recognize one of the names attached to this project, as Jan Libby (Sammeeeees, lonelygirl15) is working with Wieden+Kennedy and Levi’s to bring the Go Fourth Fortune Experience to life.

For more photos of the package, click here to view the Flickr stream.

Levi’s G.O. IV Fortune Treasure Hunt: Who Was Grayson Ozias IV?

October 3, 2009 / Michael Andersen

goforth Back in July, advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy Portland unveiled a new direction for Levi’s with its Go Forth campaign. Drawing heavily upon the poetry of Walt Whitman and the frontier spirit, the campaign seeks to bolster flagging spirits (and blue jean sales) with tag lines such as “strike up for the new world,” “this country was not built by men in suits” and “will work for better times.” While Advertising Age remains skeptical about whether the “bootstraps ethic will find a receptive audience in a dustbowl economy,” the chance to discover $100,000 in buried treasure might help convince people to “Go Forth.”

In two days, the hunt for Grayson Ozias IV’s treasure begins as part of Levi’s online component to the campaign. Details about the G.O. IV Fortune experience are scarce, as the contest rules were not available at the time of this article. However, you can get a feel for the interactive component by checking out New Americans: A Portrait of a Country, a collection of user-generated text, images, audio, and video responding to challenges such as “take a picture of you high-fiving a parking attendant” and “re-create Old Glory for today’s America.”

The aptly named G.O. (the) Fourth has a twitter account, and you can sign up for notifications on the countdown page. It remains to be seen whether the hunt for Grayson Ozias’ fortune will tell an engaging story.

A New “Trick” from Universal Studios: Evelyn Offscreen Presents a Real Treat

October 2, 2009 / Carie Ward

EvelynOffscreen Halloween is fast approaching, bringing with it costumes, candy, and the macabre. If you live in Orlando, it appears as though Universal Studios is bringing one final “treat” to your homes with the launch of its horror-themed alternate reality game Evelyn Offscreen, a new “interactive Halloween adventure” that is being run to promote Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights.

Evelyn Crane is a classic horror movie actress who has been in seclusion for the past 37 years, after an incident where a movie critic called her “too old”. Ever since then, Evelyn has been searching for the secret of eternal youth so that she can reclaim her old glory as an actress. Based on her facination with Elizabeth Bathory (the Hungarian countess who, as legend has it, bathed in the blood of hundreds of murdered young girls in order to retain her youth), it would appear as if Evelyn might just go to any sort of lengths in order to reclaim her beauty, youth and position. A perfect sort of story for Halloween.

If that wasn’t enough, there is also the mystery surrounding a series of deaths at the Universal Palace Theater, where many of Evelyn Crane’s movies have been shown. Julian Browning was the usher at the Palace Theater from 1922 until 1940, when he was found hanged behind the screen at the theater. Ever since then, he has been reported to be “present” at many of the other tragedies that have befallen workers and patrons of the Palace Theater.

Visitors to Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights will be able to visit the Universal Palace Theater via the Silver Screams haunted house in the theme park. The Evelyn Offscreen website promises that live scenes will be playing in Orlando, Florida, but whether this means just in the Silver Screams haunted house or possibly elsewhere remains to be seen. However the online campaign will be available to everyone, so even if you can’t get scared half to death at the Halloween Horror Nights, you can still get scared in your own living room.

Click Here for the Evelyn Offscreen website
Click Here for Evelyn Crane’s twitter
Click Here for Evelyn Crane’s blog
Click Here for information on the Universal Palace Hotel

Not Your Ordinary PICNIC: Exploding Media

October 1, 2009 / DaniÃ«l van Gool

PICNIC 04 Itâ€™s time for day two of PICNIC, and a new day means a new theme: Exploding Media. The theme brought with it an exciting schedule, filled with more on social media, but this time focusing on trying to find parallels between social media and brands and marketing strategies, as well asÂ on games and interactivity.

The first speaker wasÂ movie director Chris Burke, who is also the creator of This Spartan Life, the worldâ€™s first and only â€œtalkshow in game spaceâ€. I hadnâ€™t previously heard of This Spartan Life and thus wasnâ€™t familiar with theÂ show’s format, where a host (Burke)Â interviews a guest (in this case, Gerri Sinclair, CEO of the Center for Digital Media), while playing Halo.

Apparently,Â This Spartan Life has been a big Â hit since 2004 and has gathered quite a bit of praise for its innovative presentation. I can see how the concept might work well with smoothly edited episodes showing Halo game play supplemented by added voiceovers. However, as a live concept, I thought itÂ came off asÂ a forced way of trying something new. The Halo backdrop compounded by the clumsiness of Sinclair trying to master the controls of the game were so distracting that I hardly followedÂ the actual interview.

Sinclair, hailed by Burke as a â€œgaming professor who actually knows what sheâ€™s talking aboutâ€ has a great track record when it comes digital media and narrative . Most of the times when the interview took an interesting turn, though, the conversation got interrupted by shrieks of â€œOh no! I fell of a ledge!â€ and â€œsomeone is shooting at me!â€ or with Burke trying to keep track of where his interviewee went in the Halo level. It’s a shame, because I would have loved to hear more of what Sinclair had to say on gaming and the changing ways of delivering narratives.

After Purity Towers: Confessions of a Double-Crosser

September 30, 2009 / Jane Doh

Purity Towers Logo Sometimes, the most interesting games are also the most controversial. They push the limits of expectations and possibilities, presenting new challenges and opportunities for participatory play. Purity Towers, the latest campaign from Funnel Productions, operated on two levels of controversy. First, the producers created a competitive game environment between two divergent camps: the hegemonic Proscript Party, and the representatives of the underclass, the Grotian Underground. Secondly, the gameâ€™s content, while often presented in a light and humorous way, touched upon real social and political issues, including illegal detention and torture, revolutionary change, and political oppression.

The Grotians and the Proscripts were once two antagonistic kingdoms forced to cooperate because of frequent dragon attacks. When the dragons were finally defeated by Edward Jameson, a mythical hero and ancestor of the last Proscript President, the Grotians were in worse shape than the Proscripts. According to the mythos, the Grotians agreed to become the servant underclass of the Proscripts, and for several generations the Peopleâ€™s Proscript Party (PPP) ruled over the â€œProscription Zone.â€

One day, the Grotian Underground (GU) started recruiting players. A luxurious Party-owned residence, Purity Towers, was about to open its doors, becoming a landmark in â€œThe Proscription Zone.” The GU defaced the Purity Towers website, and a high-ranking Party member encouraged players to create their own GU cadre, resulting in a ning network, an underground newspaper, and the blogs of two symbolic leaders, Levi Waltershield and Rosa Wells. To complicate matters, two recurring Funnel Productions characters, Earl de Rosa and Randy Porknut got a contract to sell Sticky Itchers Shower Scrub to Purity Towers. Randy recently recovered from a bout of undeath from a previous game while Earl, in his drunken grief, got married in Las Vegas and misplaced his new bride. Inspired by this, a GU player starred as Earlâ€™s lost wife, Bertha Marie Effenberger. Making some heartfelt videos, Berthaâ€™s mission was to get Earl to sympathize with the Grotian side and infiltrate Purity Towers while delivering Sticky Itchers Shower Scrub.