Tag: jane mcgonigal (Page 4 of 6)

What do Education, iPhones, and LG15 Have in Common?

September 30, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

After cleaning out my inbox (1300+ messages!), I found a few stories from the past month or so that I found interesting, and I hope you will too:

Over at Cross-Media Entertainment, Christy Dena is reporting on a new educational ARG called Help Me Solve a Mystery. Quoting from the Research Quest blog , Dena notes that the ARG will be “designed to teach critical thinking and information literacy skill. The game will be targeted to college students, yet will be freely open and promoted in order to attract a broad range of participants.” Our very own Michael Andersen started up a discussion thread at the Unfiction forums earlier this week. Gayla Keesee, who blogs at Ed Tech Lady, has written an article asking for assistance from people currently playing this game, so if you can help her out, be a good samaritan!

Also on the educational front comes this article by Ian Bogost at Water Cooler Games. It tells of an instructional counter-terrorism ARG called the Never Rest Game and links to a discussion thread at the Unfiction forums.

Just as the news of two instructional ARGs comes to our attention Jeremy Vernon blogs about using ARGs as an educational tool. We hope Jeremy is watching the same blogs and web sites as we are.

The last of the education-themed story alerts pointed us in the direction of Dr. Scott J. Warren, a professor at the University of North Texas. Dr. Warren is teaching his students about alternate reality gaming through a course called CECS 1000, describing the course as a “hybrid course.” Warren is extending his classroom environment to Second Life, but exactly what kind of ARG this will turn out to be is unknown, as it is closed to outside access. However, you can read Warren’s own blog at doorarg.wordpress.com.

Shifting gears now, Wagner James Au and Jane Pinckard at GigaOm have pontificated about the most-wanted games for the iPhone, and #7 on the list is Perplex City, or another top ARG. Their argument is that an ARG would showcase the multi-funcionality of the iPhone, and they are calling for Jane McGonigal to be hired for the project.

Elan Lee of 42 Entertainment was recently a speaker at one of the IGNITE discussion nights in Seattle. Video of his talk can be seen at YouTube.

And finally, another ARG set in the universe of Lonelygirl15 has launched. Mission Anchor Cove is being run by TheLadyLazarus, according to this post at LG15 Today.

40,000:1–Find Kiyash at Burning Man

August 26, 2007 / Michael Andersen

Jane McGonigal is a busy woman. She has worked on award-winning alternate reality games including I Love Bees, Last Call Poker, and World Without Oil. Along with Ian Bogost, she introduced benevolent assassination through Cruel 2 B Kind to unsuspecting cities around the world. Independently and as a member of The Institute for the Future, Jane has published countless articles exploring alternate reality games and collaborative play.

And now, according to her blog, all she wants is our help finding her husband, Kiyash.

Jane’s husband will be attending Burning Man, an “annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance.” The event will be held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada from August 27th to September 3rd. Over 40,000 attendees are expected at the festival this year, so finding Kiyash will be a challenge. But then, the ARG community has faced tougher odds before.

Jane’s instructions tell potential participants of the Secret Burning Man Game to look for a six-foot-three man who will likely be wearing an orange jumpsuit, goggles, and/or a white muslin head wrap. Tell him that “Jane says hi” or something equally nice. Perhaps “Jane says you look dashing in your orange jumpsuit.”

And if you manage to beat the odds and find Kiyash, please leave us a comment with the details.

Game Launch: World Without Oil

April 30, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

After almost two months of anticipation, World Without Oil officially launched today. Announced at ARGFest 07, the game is a “live interactive month-long alternate reality event” that will explore the idea of a worldwide oil shortage. Jane McGonigal (IFTF) and Ken Eklund (writerguy) have led a team of “some of alternate reality gaming’s most experienced puppetmasters” in creating this game, part of the Independent Lens Electric Shadows Web-original programming. With the official launch, the WWO trailhead site has a new look and new features previously not open for the public.

The self-proclaimed grassroots experience bills itself as “an insight into what happens when a great economy built entirely on cheap oil begins to run short,” as it looks at the “impact on people’s lives — work, social, family and personal — and explores what happens when our thirst for oil begins to exceed supply.” It’s not immediately clear as to how the game will take shape, but it seems that player-generated content will be at the heart of the experience, as the game will revolve around “citizen stories in blogs, videos, photos, audio and phone messages posted all over the Internet.”

You can get involved by reading the player wiki, official game blog, and the MySpace blog. You can also register at the trailhead site, and check in with developments at the Unfiction forums.

Source: PR Newswire

ARGFest 2007 Panel IV: Defining ARGs and the Future of ARG

April 18, 2007 / Jonathan Waite

In the fourth panel discussion at ARGFest, titled “Defining ARGs and the Future of ARGs”, I was fortunate enough to moderate what turned out to be a lively and entertaining discussion from a panel full of people I have professional and personal admiration for. The panel consisted of Brian Clark (GMD Studios), Adrian Hon (Mind Candy), Jane McGonigal (Avant Game, The Institute for the Future), Sean Stacey (Unfiction), Brooke Thompson (Giant Mice) and Evan Jones (stitch Media).

There was an opening round of statements in which McGonigal talked about her latest project, The Institute for the Future, and spoke about how alternate reality gaming can have an impact on the real world by delivering messages about important world issues. She also discussed World Without Oil, which is poised to launch in two weeks. In his opening remarks, Clark went on to state that he was interested in the idea of sustainability, noting that the community needs to find ways to embrace and celebrate all forms of ARG.

The first question for the panel was, “When asked by others outside of the industry, how do each of you describe what alternate reality gaming is?” Clark described ARG as “platformless gaming,” while Thompson focused on the story and narrative and how pieces of the story can be broken up and distributed in many different forms. Stacey agreed, and as he talked about the “collaborative storytelling process,” he added that player actions ultimately color the experience and make it unique. McGonigal focused on the idea of “massively-scaled collaboration,” where game elements “can’t possibly be solved alone,” and real-time game design. Hon interjected with humor as he talked about a “decision tree” approach that he had used in the past, and discussed the ideas of controls and using real-life interfaces within game design. Jones wrapped up responses by bringing up the accessibility and cross-platform aspects of ARG, adding that talking about the idea that “characters believe that they are real” is one of the ways he describes ARG to others.

ARGFest 2007: Cruel 2B Kind

March 11, 2007 / Jessica Price

Welcome to beautiful downtown San Francisco!
Did you see that amazing cable car?
You’re looking gorgeous tonight!

You’re too kind.

I should know, of course, since teammate Elan Lee and I are the Cruel 2 B Kind World Champions. We achieved this renown by carefully plotting our strategy weeks in advance: we monitored traffic patterns in the play area from a helicopter, had minions who quietly attached GPS tracking devices to ARGFest participants so we could locate them easily during the Friday night game, and brought in an industrial psych firm to do detailed profiles on our competitors so we’d be able to out-think them.

There’s a vicious rumor going around that we ended up partners by accident, hadn’t read the instructions in advance, and won only through sheer dumb luck, but I will of course categorically deny the truth of said rumor. And you should believe me. After all, I’m the world champion in a game of sneaky assassination, so you know you can trust me.

Cruel 2 B Kind is a game of “benevolent assassination” in which you slay other players with compliments and other kind phrases. You don’t know who else may be playing, so you have to be kind to random strangers as well, often with entertaining results. The three phrases listed above were our weapons, which we deployed against other teams in a sort of verbal rock-paper-scissors encounter to determine who was victorious and who was dead of an overdose of kindness. At ARGfest, we played the “Booty Variant” in which each player carried a piece of booty to award to the assassin who killed them most impressively. The booty ranged from the bizarre (a length of rubber tubing) to the edible (cookies and gourmet chocolate) to the truly entertaining (the “It’s Just A Flesh Wound” shirt Elan acquired from one of our first victims). Each time you kill another player, they are absorbed into your team.

Games That Alter Reality

March 6, 2007 / Brooke Thompson

If you’ve ever played a game through to the end, you know that strange mix of excitement and depression that hits as you realize that the characters that you’ve loved for the last few weeks or months have completed their story leaving you with no more websites to obsessively check or forums to read or fellow players to talk with. It’s bittersweet and it’s what I call the ARG Hangover. I woke up with a doozy of one on Monday morning. ARGfest was over and here I was still in San Francisco.

I suppose that I shouldn’t complain. I’m here for the Game Developers Conference (GDC). It’s a huge and amazing conference that’s the highlight of the year for many game folk. But it is no ARGfest and after such an amazing weekend, I wasn’t expecting much. Boy, was I surprised.

It’s something to sit in a conference room filled with ARG folk – everyone there knows about the magic of Alternate Reality Gaming. We can get excited and discuss or debate the nuances in a way that only those familiar can. It’s filled with our own experiences and, even, biases. It’s something completely different to sit in a conference room filled with folks with a passing awareness, with experiences completely different. And, when the panelist in the front of the room is discussing the power of Alternate Reality Games to alter our own reality for better, it’s absolutely inspiring as you look over the crowd and see their eyes get bigger, their curiosity aroused.