Tag: live event (Page 7 of 8)

The Art Of The Heist: Atlanta!

April 15, 2005 / Jonathan Waite

After an interesting real world event in New York City involving a stolen Audi A3 two weeks ago, The Art of the Heist appears set to bring their Alternate Reality into the lives of those players lucky enough to live in Atlanta, Georgia. In-game communication between two characters led perceptive players to ads at Monster.com (which has since been removed) and Craig’s List, where Nisha, one of the protagonists in the story, asks for public assistance.

Once the ads were decoded (what would an in-game announcement be without encryption?), players were prompted to email the character for more details. Those that made the effort were sent this reply:

Thanks for your interest in helping. We are looking for retrievers in Atlanta to help secure an item. You must pass a background check in order to accomplish this task. You will be required to sign a release. You will be trained to operate some electronic equipment and given a task to accomplish, and you will work as a team under the direction of Nisha Roberts.

Applicants were told to be available for Saturday, April 16th, from Noon to 3:00 pm local time if they wanted to participate. The players were also subjected to background checks — three Unfiction forum members have passed these and are going to be on-scene for the event.

Within days of the ads being discovered, information was released in-game about the location of where the event will take place — an Audi dealership. As well, the characters have set up a image webcast for their worldwide audience to tune in as things happen. This means that all players (and not only those who can make it to Atlanta) will be able to take part in this unique opportunity. Community members are extremely excited about this event, and are eager to find out what will happen in this exciting ARG.

So far, this game has been a huge hit with the players, and with the innovations and creativity they’ve seen so far, it’s easy to see why AotH players are hooked. ARGN will bring you the very latest details as this story unfolds.

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“The Art of the Heist” Becomes Reality

April 2, 2005 / Steve Peters

The new ARG that we reported on just a few days ago, The Art of the Heist, shocked players yesterday when it became a real world example of just that: A major heist in the middle of New York City!

Players found clues yesterday that there was going to be a party at a car dealership on Park Ave. at 7:00 pm last night, and made plans to meet up at what they anticipated to be some sort of in-game event. Once they arrived, however, they discovered that instead of a party, someone had apparently stolen an Audi show car! There was plastic over one of the doors, an area inside that showroom that was cordoned off with police tape, and security guards outside.

A woman with a clipboard handed out flyers, and there was a sign asking for further information, along with a phone number to report to. Calls to the number reportedly connected with Audi of America.

Since its beginning just a few days ago, The Art of the Heist has unloaded a boatload of material for players to digest, including acess to dozens and dozens of emails, videos, photos, documents, voicemail messages, and now a missing car. We have to say that this is the most explosive beginning to any Alternate Reality Game we’ve seen so far. Players have been busy developing resources and getting organized, as the links below will attest. Stay tuned for much more on this one.

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Photo courtesy of AngelAnger.

Perplex City Hits the Street

March 19, 2005 / Steve Peters

Perplex City continued its journey “up the lift hill” in the form of a live meet with an ingame character in front of Abbey Road Studios in London today. Players watched events unfold on the streaming webcam of the scene, where players found clues planted around the intersection, and finally met up with someone named Dinah, who handed out envelopes filled with clues.

The initial clues indicated that a Dinah would be a little late, but would arrive before 1:00 pm, and that she would require a password, which was also hinted at. When Dinah did arrive, the dedicated London ARGers approached her with the password (which was “exchange”), whereupon she handed out envelopes that contained code-laden sheets and a Perplex City postcard. Breaking through the various codes, players revealed a log of emails between characters, with a little more backstory on Perplex City history.

All in all, this was a great way to kick things off, giving PC players a chance to meet each other in person right from the start, not to mention getting handed a clue from someone from the game. While we think Perplex City is just reaching to crest of the lift hill, we’re going to go ahead and change its status to Now Playing.

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Halo2 ILoveBees Game Ends With a Bang

November 6, 2004 / Steve Peters

November 4th brought the final chapter to the 16-week Alternate Reality Game that became known as I Love Bees. A promotional game for Bungie’s eagerly anticipated game Halo2, Ilovebees caught the attention of thousands of gamers and media alike over the past few months. The journey culminated on November 4th, with a live event in four cities attended by hundreds of players (San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Austin). At this event, referred to in-game as a Combat Training Exercise, players got an exclusive chance to play Halo2 before its release on November 9th, and received a commemorative DVD and Ilovebees lanyard. What’s more, the lucky players in San Francisco got a chance to meet some of the Ilovebees Puppetmasters.

Ilovebees was developed by a team headed by Elan Lee and Sean Stewart, who headed up the first real Alternate Reality Game, The Beast, in 2001. Since then, they teamed up to form 4orty2wo Entertainment, and began production of Ilovebees in February. Ilovebees, which launched on July 16th, told the story of an A.I. from the future named Melissa who crash landed on a website server here in 2004. Over the 16 weeks of the game, players completed a series of web-based puzzles and realworld challenges to reveal a compelling story that formed a prequel to Halo2, following its characters through the weeks leading up to the invasion of Earth by an evil race of aliens known as the Covenant. The story was revealed in over 6 hours of audio drama using some of the best voice talent and post-production in Hollywood.

Ilovebees broke new ground in its innovative use of real world distributed puzzles, stellar writing and sheer numbers of players. At it’s culmination, the ilovebees site received as many as 500,00 unique visitors per day, making it by far the most followed Alternate Reality Game to date.

A post-game chat is scheduled with the Ilovebees Puppetmasters on November 7th at 2:00 pm Pacific Standard Time. You can have a chance to ask questions and get the inside scoop on what went on behind the game by stopping by #apocalypso on irc.chat-solutions.org (browser based access).

This Week in ARGs: Flash Mobs of Beekeepers??

August 12, 2004 / Steve Peters

Busy week in the Alternate Reality Gaming world. Here’s a summary of what’s been going on:

Ilovebees-
Well, the ilovebees puppetmasters are nothing if not prompt. Once their countdown to metastasizing was complete, ilovebees.com updated at 9am Pacific on Tuesday the 10th, marking the beginning of Phase 3. The site now contained a lot of embedded HTML text, embedded text in images, some new creepy sounds and a list of 220 coordinates.

The text, when defragmented, continues to reveal more and more about the AI (Melissa) and her origins, in addition to captured conversation from the ship she was apparently installed on. It seems that now Melissa is trying to find a way to break out of her box and become “wide awake and physical.” What this means, nobody knows, but it seems she’s making progress.

The sound files reveal a changeling child, which seems to be her finding her voice and trying it out. Now it seems she’s determined to transmit something to 210 discreet locations in the U.S., [EDIT: Updated the link to stay current] and by the looks of the timer, it seems that this will occur on Tuesday, August 24th, at 6:07 am local time, when the timer indicates Melissa will become “wide awake and physical.”

The jury’s still out on what this all means. Players aren’t sure if this indicates that some real world event is going to happen all over the country, or if it’s just a puzzle of some kind that needs to be solved. Either way, you can bet countless ARG’ers will be showing up in the wee hours of the morning at the various locales, looking for geocaches or waiting for dancing robots in bee costumes. There’s no telling what might happen, so feel free to join in, and bring your camera! We’ll post the best pics here, if you send them in.

[Edit: In addition, we’ve created a toll-free hotline for those of you at the various locations to use to report your findings, should you not have immediate web access. Feel free to call (866) xxx-xxxx [EDIT 8/25: number now offline] to record your findings. We’ll forward your report to the unfiction forums right away.]

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Urban Hunt-
Meanwhile, the folks over at Urban Hunt have been advancing a very compelling story. Secret documents/maps from the failed Reality TV Show Dread House have turned up, so it seems it may not all be an urban myth after all. There’s definitely a secret here, and things are still just getting started.

What happened to the contestants and the crew? Did they just disappear, or did something even more sinister occur? And what do dreams have to do with all this?

Check out The Guide for this if you want to get up to speed, as it’s very well done.

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ARGFest-o-Con Provides Fun, Mystery, and a Name for a Game

April 27, 2003 / Steve Peters

About a dozen denizens of the ARG world converged on Las Vegas this weekend for a semi-casual get together. This was the first time that we know of where players and even producers of various games have done anything like this, and it was great to get to meet people who were only previously known by their online personas.

Attenders expected surprises, and they weren’t disappointed, as they suddenly found themselves in the middle of a new game launch! Upon checking in to their hotels, a few folks were given packages from Stephen Lake, who is a fictional character in the ARG that had been dubbed L³. Players were sent on a scavenger hunt around Las Vegas that included a round of drinks courtesy of Mr. Lake, a search of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and a trip to the Hard Rock Hotel.

Ultimately, they ended up with a package containing a note and about twenty mini-CDs. The clues on the disks led to the discovery of Acheron. Acheron, to which L³ was a apparently teaser, will be launched this summer. Full Story…

The main event of ARGFest-o-Con was a party at a secret location somewhere in Las Vegas. In order to find the place, partyers first needed to meet a “man in a white hat” who would then give them instructions on how to complete a mini-quest, which ended up at the location of the party. One puzzle solve would lead to the next clue, and so on, and the first to reach the destination won a small prize.

The winner of this mini-scavenger hunt, called “Martha’s Mystery Tour” was Unfiction member DanmanD (pictured at right) who received an official ARGN T-Shirt and free dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, which was,Â incidentally, the secret destination. Not only was DanmanD the youngest person in attendance, but in my book he also gets the Most Dedicated ARG’er Award, and his father Peter gets the Most Dedicated Dad Award, for accompanying his son on the 12-hour bus ride to get to Las Vegas!

Unfiction member Diandra was also presented with an ARGN T-shirt for being the first to complete the online portion of the journey. CabalAgent23, the man behind Chasing the Wish then surprised us all withÂ commemorative CTW shirts, mugs and even frisbees! The evening culminated with a limo ride (courtesy of

Diandra) to the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. Congratulations to DanmanD, and thanks to everyone who attended and made ARGFest-o-Con an unqualified success!

A complete walkthrough of Martha’s Mystery tour is posted here.