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Game Head goes to 42 Entertainment, pesters about Halo 3
Is Geoff Keighley the only "real" gaming journalist? We're not actually qualified to say, but we do know this: he certainly is an astute young fellow. Instead of jocking up Bungie's crotch for any scrap of Halo 3 news, he went below the radar and to one of our secret crushes, 42 Entertainment. The most recent episode of Game Head has Geoff inside the walls of the famed Alternate-Reality developer and goes over everything from The Beast, to Last Call Poker and up to 2004's breakout hit, I Love Bees. It's in the third segment that Geoff gets around to asking the inevitable question, "will 4orty2wo do it again?" And for as much as we want to clasp our hands over our ears and shriek the theme song to Mr Belvedere, we can't help but listen. Ultimately, the answer is a "no comment" but with a wink and tip of the hat. [Via Halo.Bungie.Org]
42 Entertainment interviewed, ARG book discussed
Gamasutra interviews Elan Lee, vice president of 42 Entertainment, alternate-reality game superstars. The company created I Love Bees for Halo 2, a project for the movie A.I., and other ARGs; one of its current projects is clothing with clues to an ARG game.42 Entertainment recently released Cathy's Book, a story with an ARG built in. The book includes phone numbers readers can call as they progress and a few self-contained puzzles. Lee says that this is the company's first attempt at an ARG book, but that more releases are planned; he thinks that the main plot will always be delivered in prose, but he wants to add even more puzzles to unravel sub-plots.We're uninterested in the ARG clothing line, but we're not big fans of collectable card games either; there's always something more to buy. But the ARG book sounds like an interesting twist on ARGs and fiction. Count us in.
Joystiq interviews Elan Lee of 42 Entertainment
For most gamers, 42 Entertainment gained notoriety after creating i love bees, a massive Alternate Reality Game (or ARG) that served as marketing for the launch of Halo 2 on the Xbox. Since then, Elan Lee has been busy. 42 invited poker fans to graveyards across the States as part of the promotion for GUN, and helped launch the Xbox 360 with a unique "casual ARG." Recent projects, however, are pushing Alternate Reality Games away from the world of marketing, and giving them a life of their own. In his chat with Joystiq, 42's VP of Experience Design discusses Cathy's Book, an attempt to design an ARG under the guise of a young girl's diary. We also discuss Microsoft's ARG mishaps with the Our Colony campaign, and EDOC Laundry, the first alternate reality clothing line.And it just so happens than Elan is wearing one of the code-embedded garments during our interview.For starters, great shirt. Is this your favorite piece of EDOC apparel?You know, my favorite EDOC shirt is one that's coming out next week. We've got a winter line coming out with these really cool hoodies and sweatshirts, and long-sleeve shirts. It's this very cool serpent print, with a really fun code on it, and I'm very excited about it.Are you excited because of the design, or because of the code?My favorite shirts are always ones where the code compliments the design. One of the main problems I had with Season 1, the shirts that are currently out, is that we designed all the shirts, and then thought "Holy crap, we've got no time. Let's just throw codes on all of these." And we just found random ways to throw on the codes. For Season 2, we had a lot more time, so I got to sit down with our art director, Shane Small, and we designed them all at the same time. So it was "Well, what if that guy's head was tweaked a little to the left, and it was a weird semaphore type of thing?" and "What if that strange emblem was..." So, all of my favorite shirts are ones where the code doesn't seem slapped on, and it seems like this really wonderful synergistic merge of code and design.
Wearable game launching soon
While alternate reality games of the past have been deployed as viral marketing campaigns for standalone video games, newer ARGs are looking to physical merchandise as a means of funding and distribution. ARGs are usually characterised by a trail of puzzles left across various in-game websites, solved by players working alone or together.However, new ARG EDOC Laundry differs from precedent; its puzzle trail is wearable, in the form of a boutique clothing line which launches in March. The designers hope that their "skater" style clothing will become a talking point, tapping into the puzzle-solving, game-playing subconscious. This isn't the first ARG to sell puzzles, but clothing is a novel direction for games in general as well as ARGs--it will be interesting to see if it takes off.
