Tag: San Francisco (Page 4 of 4)

Lost at Comic-Con

lostglyph.JPGThe Lost Experience got quite a lot of publicity during the San Diego Comic-Con this year. During the Question & Answer section at the Lost panel, a mysterious woman, who identified herself as Rachel Blake, started questioning the panel members on the Hanso Foundation. Despite the writers claims that it was just something they made up, Ms. Blake was adamant that both the films and The Hanso Foundation are real. She questioned them on Joop, fires in Iceland, organ harvesting and deaths of Hugh McIntyre and Darla Taft. Before she was escorted away by security, she screamed that the Lost writers had blood on their hands and that if the audience wanted the truth they should visit hansoexposed.com.

Once at the hansoexposed.com site, visitors need to register and start hunting down glyphs that contain codes that unlock segments of a video. These glyphs can be found just about anywhere: on websites, podcasts, magazines, and on cast members themselves. Once a new segment is unlocked, it then needs to be positioned correctly within the other segments to create a coherent video. So far, 21 of the 70 fragments have been unlocked. Although there is a leader board set up to track those who find the codes first, the codes themselves are spread across the globe, so cooperation is needed to find all 70 codes to expose the Hanso Foundation and tear it apart.

It’s still not too late to get involved with the quest to expose the Hanso Foundation. You don’t need to know everything that has come before to participate in the hunt for the glyphs. But if you are curious, Unfiction has several Quick Reference Guides to lead you through the three acts of the game. Rachel Blake also has her own version of what has occurred so far. Only by working together can the secrets that the Hanso Foundation are keeping secret be exposed.

Perplex City News

pc2.jpgGood news comes to Perplex City fans this week as Perplex City announces that their card packs are now available via several major online retailers. The card packs, as well as a starter pack which includes additional items such as a music CD and a binder, may now be purchased at Overstock.com, Buy.com, Walmart.com, and Toys “R” Us.

Mind Candy received recognition recently at the Origins International Game Expo, where they won the Vanguard Innovative Game Award. According to the Origins Expo website, Origins awards “Celebrate the best in board, role-playing, miniatures, play-by-mail, and trading card games; professional and amateur magazine publications, game-related fiction, and accessories and supplements.”

Last but not least, Perplex City is planning a live event in San Francisco on August 12, from 10:30 am until 5:00 pm. According to Mind Candy, this is their first major US event, and they hope to have several hundred people there. This event will “activate the link” between Perplex City and San Francisco. For more information or to register, visit the live event website at PerplexCity.com.

IGDA San Francisco Presents: I Love Bees, 4orty2wo

dvdbees.jpgOn April 26th, the International Game Developers Association will present “THINKING OUTSIDE THE (x)BOX (or “HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE BEES”) at 7:00 PM at the Metreon’s Action Theater in San Francisco (101 4th Street @ Mission).

Featured speakers will be Jordan Weisman, Sean Stewart and Jim Stewartson of 4orty2wo Entertainment, the team behind the Alternate Reality Game “I Love Bees.”

4orty2wo’s Alternate Reality Game became a phenomenon last year, sending thousands of players running to payphones around the world. The innovative Halo 2 prequel involving a seemingly innocent website of a Napa Valley beekeeper and a shipwrecked AI from the future received a Game Developers Choice Award for Innovation, was featured at GDC’s Experimental Gameplay Workshop, and became the latest and most successful example of the nascent Alternate Reality Games (ARG) genre.

But what place do ARGs have in the world (and future) of video games? What is their relation to one another? Are there lessons to be learned from ARG production that can impact the way video games are made?

Join Jordan Weisman, Sean Stewart, and Jim Stewartson of 4orty2wo Entertainment as they examine I Love Bees to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of ARGs, their intersection with traditional video games, and the future of this exciting new form of digital play.

This event is free and open to the public. For more info: www.igda.org/sf

Halo2 ILoveBees Game Ends With a Bang

dvdbees.jpgNovember 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. syringe.jpgOver 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).

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