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The Secret World fans get a persistent ARG
If you've wanted to get in on the ground floor of an Alternate Reality Game tied to The Secret World, the time is now! A brand-new ARG developed by Human Equation has just entered the scene. Focusing on the Black Watchmen, this ARG differs in that it will be a persistent, complete game with features (such as a class system and NPCs) designed in partnership with Funcom. However, players will have plenty of real-world and online puzzles to work through as well. Check out the official site now to start on the first mission; the second mission unlocks tomorrow, March 20th. Then stay tuned to Chaos Theory for an upcoming interview with the creators for even more details about this new game and what they have in store for this IP. [Source: Human Equation press release]
Confused by the Resistance 2 ARG? Infinite Bits has you covered
We've been trying to keep you as up to date with the Resistance 2 ARG as possible, but those of you who are new to the whole thing may still be understandably confused. Infinite Bits has a great article about how the ARG (Alternate Reality Game) has gone so far and how that links in to both Resistance 1 and its sequel. Sure, there's some conjecture involved, but it sounds pretty convincing to us! ARGs are a great marketing tool, if done right, and it's rumored that the company behind this one is the best in the business. You may know 4orty 2wo from I Love Bees, The Beast and Last Call Poker, three of the biggest ARGs so far (with The Beast being widely considered to be the first of its kind). So don't be afraid to get involved in Dr. Aklin's tale. But please, suspend disbelief before taking part. It's way more fun that way.
The Daily Grind: Are ARGs MMOs?
ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) take the normal boundaries between games and reality and skew them just enough so that the two overlap, offering a new way to think about entertainment interaction. Perhaps one of the most famous of these is the "I love bees" campaign, which was developed to promote Halo 2. Certainly hundreds played, and part of the gameplay mechanics was taking clues from various places on the Web to complete the puzzles and solve the mystery.However, is "hundreds" enough to typify the term "massively"? Given that you could play alone and never see another player, only becoming part of a grander, more widespread team, is that really "multiplayer"? If the entirety of gameplay isn't online, does that satisfy the "O" requirement? How precise does the "MMO" definition need to be?
GDC 08: Entertainment content convergence in online worlds
We spent most of Monday ensconced in the GDC Worlds in Motion summit track, which made "standing room only" seem extremely spacious -- most of the sessions were packed to the gills and then some. It seems like more than a few industry types are interested in the intersections between gaming and virtual worlds. Case in point, the following session we've paraphrased (hopefully not too liberally!) from Reuben Steiger, CEO of Milllions of Us, a company that builds marketing campaigns and content for virtual worlds. Reuben: Storytelling is the bedrock of human culture. (Looking at a slide with a real campfire on the left and a user-created campfire in Second Life on the right) -- users in virtual worlds are recreating this storytelling tradition. I'm going to make a contention: the internet has failed as a storytelling medium. Instead, the norm is bathroom humor and ridiculous jokes. So virtual worlds: are they games or not? What defines a game -- linguists and semioticians get real worked up about it. The audience might say "virtual worlds are games without rules, competition, goals or fun." And it's hard to blame them. Extreme openness has defined virtual worlds, where fun can be in a way you define as opposed to what some game developer feels is fun. But the appeal of virtual worlds is that we can tell stories on a broader and less walled playing field.
Mysterious Xbox email teases Halo 3 mythology
Click to enlarge "Look for the signs, the keepers of the flame"That's the subject line of the email blasted out early this morning from "Xbox Flash". Checking the web-hosted version, the page is identified as "Forerunner Email". You don't have to be a rocket scientist (or a Halo fanboy) to deduce that we're in the middle of some clever marketing for Microsoft's upcoming FPS, but to what end? While we're suspicious of this email being related to the just beginning Halo 3 ARG -- after all, an email from xbox@email.xbox.com is not the most subtle way of kicking off an ARG -- we still thought to check in with this thread on the newly created args.bungie.org forums where they've been dissecting the clues. For example, the Forerunner symbol in the image appears to be a new one and ... is that a face on the wall? Boy, we need to get some more sleep ...
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.
Google's Da Vinci Code puzzle quest launching soon
We've already seen the Da Vinci Code spun into a video game and a mobile game; starting tomorrow, it will also become an online puzzle trail, an Alternate Reality Game-style code quest run by Google and accessible from your Google homepage. This movie tie-in game fits with the book's themes of brain-bending puzzles, and it should hopefully be an enjoyable ride, with puzzles being issued daily until May 10 -- coincidentally, the start of E3 -- and a prize draw for those who answer all 24 puzzles correctly.There's something of a discrepancy in prizes, thanks to regional sponsors -- the US grand prize winner will be flown on a first class trip to England, Rome and Paris with three guests, bagging over $120,000 of goodies along the way, whereas the top UK winners get a trip to Paris on the Eurostar. It's an interesting move to add this kind of daily ARG-style play into a personalised homepage service such as Google provides; people using the service already will find it easy to play the game, whereas those who haven't tried the service have a new incentive to do so.[Via ARGN]
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.
