ARG Netcast, Episode 44: That Special Relationship

ARG Netcast, Episode 44: That Special Relationship [ 1:07:41 ] Play in Popup | Download

Happy holidays! Here’s our gift to you — a stirring, fast-paced discussion of recent ARG news featuring Jonathan Waite (ARGNet), Sean C. Stacey (Unfiction, Despoiler) Brooke Thompson (Giant Mice, Eldritch Errors) and Brian Clark (GMD Studios, Eldritch Errors).

News Items of the Week

• The Cloverfield viral campaign launched a widget this past week that seems to measure the networking effect of the ‘word of mouth’ spread of information. People can post the widget on their own blogs and web sites and the idea seems to be to track the buzz that the game-which-is-not-a-game is receiving. See the Cloverfield Clues blog for more details.
• Jane McGonigal has posted on avantgame.blogspot.com that she needs help to find the next great puppetmasters. She is looking for people who are bilingual, preferably those who can speak both English and Japanese or Mandarin Chinese, and the job includes a lot of creative responsibility, including public performance. If you meet these requirements, head over to her blog to see how you can apply.
• Nathan Cade, a new game that has popped up recently, follows in the footsteps of previous games that begin with a suspicious email that leads into various instant messaging interactions. Players have been assigned codenames which suggest that the puppetmasters are attempting to create two teams, which is causing frustration with some of the player base.
• According to Aleks Krotoski of The Guardian Games blog, Alternate Reality Gaming was the biggest disappointment of 2007. Her arguments are based on the number of people playing ARGs, as well as the demise of Mind Candy as an ARG developer. I’m sure that this might come up later in our discussion, so stay tuned.
• What is this Game, a promotion for a movie called What is this Movie, will begin on January 1, 2008. Part of the Terms of Service include a section about cheating players, in which the puppetmaster team warns against decompiling the Flash elements.
• Sean C. Stacey of Unfiction wrote an interesting article about the relationship between puppetmaster and player. This will be one of the feature discussions on today’s netcast.

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