News of the Week
- The Perplex City alternate reality game is delayed indefinitely, and several members of the Mind Candy team have left their positions at the company. There have been no changes at the Mind Candy site, and no official statements concerning the departure of COO Dan Hon, Director of Play Adrian Hon, Ad Hoc Polymath Andrea Phillips, and writers Naomi Alderman and David Varela. Jey Biddulph, who was also part of the story team, has moved to another project, according to a comment he left on ARGNet.
- A new ARG campaign from US-based Court TV will be starting up tomorrow. The eight day contest, in which registered players will vie for a share of $25,000, has already been plagued with security issues.
- Jan Libby has spoken about recently joining the lonelygirl15 staff as a writer in an article at ARGNet. Her first video, “Sing With Me,” can be found on YouTube. This all happens as an apparent sequel to Sammmeeees is going on, with four new blogs and two new characters issuing emails to players.
- World Without Oil came to a successful conclusion Friday, June 1st. The game lasted a month, and used Web 2.0 and traditional means to portray a world without refined oil. Over 1800 people signed up to play.
Topic Discussion
It’s the end of Perplex City as we know it, and we’re not sure we feel fine, but we wish the departing Mind Candy puppetmasters the best of luck.
Looking for an ARG to play?
Our panelists have info on almost every currently-running game out there except Sammeeeees 2, which, if it’s anything like Sammeeeees 1, was just too awesome for us to get it summarized in time. We’ll hopefully make up for that soon. But in the meantime, take a look at what’s playing:
ELDRITCH ERRORS
Story summary: A psychic named B.A. St. Feline sends out a number of mysterious packages and posts ads on Craigslist, detailing disturbing apocalyptic dreams about a burning city and something ominous lurking under a mountain. Clues within the packages direct the curious to an internet security forum that’s recently suffered an unexplained outage. The outage may be more than it seems when fragments of messages are found in a file full of fragments from the pre-crash forum, and the sanity of the forum staff seems to be slowly eroding. Moreso than is usual for forum administrators, that is.
Behind the curtain: GMD Studios, makers of Art of the Heist, Who is Benjamin Stove, and other large-scale games.
Timeline: Episodic, designed to allow people to catch up to each episode easily. Two-year planned story arc. Started mid-April.
Format: Story told through package contents, Craigslist posts, forum posts, a MUD, and potentially other media.
“Feel”: Somewhat horror-oriented, based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft, but with lighter/humorous moments. Low puzzle content, high social-engineering content, high story content, high interaction content. Possibility of some roleplaying.
Player activities (so far): Calling in and leaving dream descriptions, which then get woven into the story, on a psychic’s answering machine, solving mysteries on the Sentry Outpost forum, finding each week’s Craigslist ads and trying to put them together into a story, playing in the MUD, a little bit of play-hacking, trying to get characters’ backstories, etc.
UF forum: Eldritch Errors
Chat channel: #stfeline on irc.chat-solutions.orgGame sites: beseeingu.com
sentryoutpost.com
ronomi.com
eldritcherrors.comWhere to go to get caught up: #stfeline on irc.chat-solutions.org, the Eldritch Errors Wiki, or the Unfiction forum.
DEUS CITY
Story summary: Adam Brackin, a PhD candidate at UT-Dallas, was working on his dissertation with a team of six other students involving firing a laser into space to communicate with the future. On November 11th, the team successfully contacts the future…but instead of only reaching two weeks into the future, they reach President Fujimoto of Deus City, thirty years in the future. He describes a utopic world where information is free, and life is beautiful.
At this point, mysterious investors purchase the project and the seven team members go their separate ways. While Adam Brackin goes on a mystical trek across the United States, Foo is busily trying to hack the feed and access information from the future. Players are encouraged to register as “Temporal Agents”. Phil was working for Defense-Corp, the company that purchased the project, and Adam was captured by the company.
Foo staged a takeover of Defense-Corp in late December, wresting control of the interface from a mysterious group. In the commotion, Phil and Adam escaped the complex. With control of the link to the future, Foo launched The Deus City Interface to allow players to communicate with people in the future city of Deus City, and players begin to explore the darker side of Foo’s “utopia”.
In a future world riddled with future versions of present-day characters, political intrigue, terrorism and murder, players attempt to align with a variety of factions bent on changing the future, or grasping on to power and ensuring it stays the same. Action takes place both in the present as players scramble to collect fragments of Nostradamus’ folios guarded by a secret organization for years, to the future where players choose to aid or oppose the government of Deus City.
Behind the curtain: This game is a production of FundiGames and serves as PhD candidate Adam Brackin’s dissertation on Aesthetic Studies. The game launched with two alternate trailheads, “Deus City” and “The Committee of the Sedulous Amalgamation” that merged after a few months of gameplay.
Timeline: Started in mid-November. Deus City website allowing communication with the future launched in mid-January. Players realized Deus City and The Committe of the Sedulous Amalgamation (tCotSA), a mail-based puzzle trail, were alternate trailheads for the same game in March. Two new Districts are scheduled to launch on the site within the week, including a graphic user interface overhaul.
Format: The story centers around the Deus City website, a custom-build platform of forums, private messaging, and puzzles organized in Districts. Character interaction via email, blog posts, news articles, and private messaging constitute a large part of the system although players are often guided to other sites and methods of communication.
Some puzzles are independent of the plot and serve to increase your personal statistics while others help advance the storyline.
“Feel”: Equal parts cinema noir, post-apocalyptic dystopia, and social intrigue. The game tends towards a faction-based style of play and includes elements reminiscent both of Perplex City and role-playing games through its prestige, karma, trust, and credit point systems. Ample opportunity for role-playing with numerous puzzles of varying degrees of difficulty.
Player activities (so far): Players have retrieved dead drops, engaged in Skype conversations, viewed and created YouTube videos, interacted with characters via chat, email, and terrestrial mail, and attempted to influence dozens of characters existing in 2007 or 2037, and sometimes in both times. There are currently two deaddrops awaiting pickup in West Palm Beach, Florida and at the University of New Mexico for any interested ARGers. We would appreciate your assitance in retrieving these items.
West Palm Beach deaddrop location
University of New Mexico deaddrop locationGame sites:
Deus City main page
Defense-Corp page
Time Communication Project blog
Adam Brackin’s blog
Foo’s blog
Foo’s YouTube page
Phillip Moore’s blog
Phil’s YouTube page
Will Forth’s blog
Alex’s YouTube pageResources:
UF forum: Deus City
Wiki: Deus City Wiki
Chat channel: #deuscity on irc.chat-solutions.orgWhere to go to get caught up: Check out the Deus City Wiki page for a summary of the plot so far as well as puzzle solutions and an explanation of the website interface, or ask players for assistance in IRC, on UF, or on the Deus City website.
BATTLE FOR PROMICIN
Story summary: There is a heated debate over the use of Promicin, a neurotransmitter found in each of the 4400. When injected into someone who is not one of the 4400, it does one of two things: it either kills them instantly or gives them an amazing supernatural ability. Not surprisingly, the government wants to stop the use of Promicin, but many, like Jordan Collier, think the public deserves the right to choose for themselves.
Behind the curtain: Campfire Media
Timeline: Unknown. Season four of The 4400 starts June 17th.
Format: The story so far centers around the three websites about Promicin – promicininfo.com, promicinpower.com and
promicinterror.com.“Feel”: Science Fiction.
Player activities (so far): Combing through extensive content on the websites, submitting their own promicin stories via blogs, video or pictures and interacting on the Promicin forums.
UF forum: News & Rumors
Chat channel: none as yetGame sites:
www.the4400.com
www.promicininfo.com
www.promicinpower.com
www.promicinterror.comWhere to go to get caught up: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19242
OTHER GAMES THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST
In addition to these games, there are a number of ARGs that appear to be just starting up which may turn out to be interesting.
Love Nevr Dies involves a hostage situation, ghosts, and electronic voice phenomena, and has been told through creepy voice messages, instant messaging, and websites.
69 78 73 71 77 65 has been using classic ciphers like the Zodiac and Enigma ciphers and seems puzzle-rich at this point.
Nachoman Studios involves a couple of alien brothers and a series of trials for players.
If you liked Batman Begins, or are a fan of Wizards of the Coast, you may want to keep an eye on ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com and gleemax.com, as both have looked promisingly ARGish.
Don’t miss Gleemax’s visit to the netcast (50:00). Trust us, it’s worth it. The panel dissolves into giggles at this point and never quite regains their seriousness.
You never call, you never write, but that’s okay, we’ll be fine. <sniffle>
Subscribe to the ARG Netcast feed through this link or via iTunes. Contact us at our special netcast email address, netcast@argnetcast.info with your tips, suggestions, concerns and submissions. Call us on the ARGNet voicemail at 630-274-5425.
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