Tag: Paul Denchfield

Paul Denchfield + Violet Kiteway = Fun

fia.jpgThree weeks ago, we reported on the Frozen Indigo Angel game promoting BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend music festival. On the same day, we also found out about a season two preview for Perplex City. As it turns out, the two were fated to be reported together, as they were officially connected on May 12th in a blog post on Violet Underground, with a puzzle found in one of Paul Denchfield’s videos leading to a new PXC game web site.

Within a day of finding the puzzle, players of the Frozen Indigo Angel (FIA) game had solved it (see this thread at unofficialmills.co.uk) and discovered the tie-in with Perplex City. On the 14th, Denchfield posted on his blog about the recent activity and the new PXC web site, and Violet blogged about receiving emails which put her in touch with Denchfield himself. At this point, the story revolved around Cyrus Quinton, a member of the myserious Third Power who had set up a secret web page at the newly discoverd Silburn-Griggs Mining web site. Cyrus, according to Violet, is a “sound-engineer-slash-mass-murdering-psychopath,” and Denchfield warns about a “subliminal messaging scheme” Cyrus has planned for the Big Weekend concert — just as Cyrus warns his agents about Denchfield.

From the 15th to the 18th, Cyrus created “ticket challenges” for people to take part in during real world events. These challenges were noted by both Violet and Denchfield in separate blog entries, and players quick to solve the puzzles were awarded with tickets for the concert event. However, not everything is as it seemed, as a timetable was discovered at the same time, revealing that Cyrus was planning on using Perplex City technology during the weekend to send subliminal commands to listeners of Radio 1 who attended the Big Weekend concert. Alas, even as players, led by Denchfield, were told to do whatever they could to stop Cyrus from broadcasting a “primer” over the airwaves, the signal ended up going out on the 17th, “drowning out Beyonce and Shakira.”

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Game Alert: Frozen Indigo Angel

frozenindigoangel.jpgThere’s a new alternate reality game in the wild, and it goes by the name of “Frozen Indigo Angel.” It’s a promotion put on by BBC Radio 1, and is promoting Radio 1’s Big Weekend music festival. The event is the largest free music festival in Europe, and the game has a number of tie-ins to real world entities — the BBC web site, radio, podcasts and many popular web sites are where you can find information leading to the game.

The trailhead for the game can be found at www.pauldenchfield.com, which details the life of Paul Denchfield, who obviously loves the conveniences of Web 2.0, as he uses Twitter, Flickr, Imeem and YouTube to tell his story. Recently, there was a live event involving Paul as he protested at the BBC, and our sources tell us that there are more live events in the near future.

The blogosphere has taken interest in the game, as Matt Deegan, Wonderland and The Guardian Blog have all featured the game in recent posts. This is yet another example of how the BBC has embraced alternate reality gaming as a content delivery model and buzzmaker, as previous ARGs Jamie Kane and Wannabes have come out of the BBC camp.

One last thing, for you faithful ARGNet readers — watch this game carefully, as we have an inside track on a very interesting development to come very, very soon.