Tag: Xenophile Media (Page 1 of 3)

2010 Webby Winners Announced: Letters to the Future, District 9, and True Blood Take Home Honors

May 5, 2010 / Michael Andersen

Webby_Logo_small Yesterday, the winners of the 14th Annual Webby Awards were announced, recognizing excellence in “interactive design, creativity, usability and functionality on the Internet.” This year, a trio of alternate reality gaming projects came home with accolades. So congratulations to the teams behind Love Letters to the Future (Xenophile Media), District 9 (Trigger LLC), and True Blood (HBO).

Love Letters to the Future swept the Green category, taking home both the Webby Award and People’s Voice Award for the category. The campaign sought to collect messages from the worldwide community to future generations: the top 100 messages were buried in a time capsule at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on December 13, 2009. Providing an interactive undercurrent to the already interactive campaign, Xenophile Media hid a series of clues and messages from the future on the website, culminating a series of augmented reality images hidden at locations across the globe. To read more about the alternate reality game designed for Greenpeace International, you can follow along with the game’s progress at the Love Letters to the Future blog.

Love Letters to the Future: The Time Capsule Talks Back

November 27, 2009 / Michael Andersen

loveletterstothefuture Over the next few weeks, Love Letters to the Future will be collecting text, image and videos from users around the world sending love letters to future generations. And on December 13, 2009, the 100 most popular messages as selected by the site’s users will be sealed in a time capsule at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The multimedia messages will be encoded and stored as a series of two-dimensional bar codes, stored on microfilm. The microfilm contains meta-information on how to decode the messages. That way, when the time capsule is unsealed a century later, people can access the information regardless of technological changes.

Apparently the time capsule will be a rousing success, since people who submit messages to the website receive a response from 2109, courtesy of Xenophile Media. Over the next three weeks, players will have the opportunity to unlock videos, clues and messages left by Maya, hidden amongst the messages posted on Letters to the Future. Upon submitting a message for consideration, players receive the first clue: the phrase “Me2109.” Maya’s final video will be unlocked by playing a locative game December 9-12 in cities around the world, including Amsterdam, Toronto, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Hong Kong and Istanbul. Maya’s videos will then be played at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

According to Xenophile Media, the objective of Love Letters to the Future is “to collect a critical mass of love letters – messages about people’s fears and hopes for the future, the stories they want to send to their children’s children.” The website has already received over 2,000 text, image, and video submissions.

Head on over to Love Letters to the Future and leave a message for future generations. After all, how often do you get the chance to participate with a time capsule that talks back?

What’s an xPod?

January 7, 2008 / Geoff May

A new article posted at Canoe.ca (also via Canada.com) hints at an upcoming game from Xenophile Media, tied in with a new show from the Canadian network CBC called jPod, which premieres Tuesday, January 8th (on CBC of course). While much of the show’s online components are typical of the new trend of extended interactivity, the key point is noted in a later paragraph:

“And midway through the season, an alternate reality game dubbed xPod will launch, built by the same company that designed the Emmy Award-winning web game for ReGenesis.”

Now, while we take the term alternate reality game in this context with a grain of salt, Xenophile does have a decent track record with their past projects for Fallen (Ocular Effect) and Regenesis.

What might xPod hold in store for the ARG community? Well, first of all, it will most certainly be geared towards the crowd who would enjoy jPod. Otherwise, it’s too early to tell. xPod is reportedly scheduled to begin sometime in the spring, while the TV series premieres this week. Though it is a Canadian show, it might make its way to the US at some point. So, if jPod appeals to you, then keep an eye out for xPod!

And the EmmyÂ® Goes to…

October 11, 2007 / Marie Lamb

We offer our belated but no less heartfelt congratulations to the team at Xenophile Media, who along with co-creator Matt Wolf were winners of a Primetime EmmyÂ® award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television, presented at last month’s ceremony in Los Angeles. The team got the nod for “The Ocular Effect,” the alternate reality game tied in to the ABC Family television movie, Fallen. Xenophile previously won an International EmmyÂ® for the ReGenesis Extended Reality Game.

The Ocular Effect told the story of Faith Arella, a girl searching for her roots in a
transglobal hunt for clues that started with a mysterious sphere called the Oculus. Players at Unfiction and elsewhere helped Faith find the secret of the Oculus and deciphered other puzzles along the way to help her on her journey.

We are also bursting our buttons with pride here at ARGNet, because our very own Jonathan Waite was a part of the Ocular Effect team. Congrats Jon, and rest of the crew
at Xenophile. We look forward to your future projects with great anticipation!

Two More Awards for ReGenesis Extended Reality

April 20, 2007 / Brooke Thompson

It’s been a crazy month for the guys at Xenophile media. It started off back in March at the 10th Annual SXSW Interactive Awards when Occular Effect (The Fallen Alternate Reality Game) won the award in the Experimental category. But it was not about to stop there. The nominations were just beginning to roll in. Fallen was nominated for a Banff World Television Award and Regenesis was nominated for both an Interactive Emmy (pdf) and a CNMA Award. The CNMA and Banff World Television awards will be announced in the next few months, but last night the Interactive Emmy went to(pdf)… Xenophile Media for Regenesis Extended Reality Game!

Clearly, they’re going to need to build themselves a bigger trophy case. But the real question is, how are they ever going to get any work done with all this celebrating? We want more!

Regenesis Extended Reality Wins Gemini Award

October 24, 2006 / Jonathan Waite

Congratulations are in order for Canadian production Xenophile Media as they captured the 2006 Gemini Award for Best Cross Platform Project at last week’s ceremonies in Toronto, Canada. Their ARG, the ReGenesis Extended Reality, won for the first time in the prize category, awarded to the “interactive project that best â€œenhances the users’ enjoyment of the television program/series through such platforms as mobile, the Web and other portable devicesâ€,” according to a press release. ReGenesis is a Canadian bio-lab drama available in Canada and in syndication worldwide.

Shaftesbury Films, who produce the television series, has been forward-thinking in its attempts to connect to its audience, partnering with Xenophile to manage the alternate reality gaming model which has delivered real-time content that is directly related to the weekly series for both of the show’s seasons. In the second season’s Extended Reality, players were treated to hours of video clips which broadened the overall storyline of the show, and the show reciprocated (in a fine bit of pre-filmed trickery) by acknowledging the efforts of the players as they attempted to aid the scientists working at NorBAC labs in Ontario.

You can watch the Gemini awards gala will be broadcast on Canadian network Global on November 4th at 6:30 pm PST / 9:30 pm EST. The Gemini Industry Awards, which were awarded over a three night span, will be broadcast on Rogers Television in the Toronto area, so if you want to see the Xenophile folks accepting their awards, you’ll want to tune in on for the second of the three nights, dubbed the “Gemini Lifestyle, Childrenâ€™s and Youth,” which will be shown at 6:00 pm EST on November 17th.