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May 31, 2007

AJ

I'm an IT Manager from the UK, roleplayer, roleplaying game designer, layout artist and Techno Pagan. I think i became interested on the periphery of Perplex City, but i think i've been interested in the genre for a lot longer, films like Michael Douglas's The Game, and thing like that have always intrigued me. I guess i'm interested these days in what ARGs show us about people, the expectations of them, and what people are prepared to do as players as a mass decision making machine. A friend and I are looking at running a UK Based ARG-lite, based on some roleplaying material we have, definitely a small player base, as a first run to prove the concept.

Posted by AdamMartin at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

Bryan Alexander

I'm the research director for NITLE, a group of 110+ small colleges in Europe, Africa, and the US. I study emerging technologies, like web 2.0 and gaming ...which is one way I got into ARGs. For me they're a fine example of Web 2.0 storytelling. And also educational gold. I've been telling academics about these since before ILoveBees, and at last there are some projects. There is bloggery, mostly at http://infocult.typepad.com/ for ARGishness. More of my .edu work is here: http://b2e.nitle.org/index.php .

Posted by AdamMartin at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2007

SXSW 2007 - ARG! The Attack of the Alternate Reality Games Transcript

Dan Hon has posted a transcript of the ARG panel at this year's South by Southwest:

Part game, story and treasure hunt, alternate reality games introduce people to a world of creative play, skywriting, online games, phone calls, radio broadcasts, secret websites, blogs, texts, coded adverts, emails, hidden audio files and helicopter chases. What you need to know about what’s been happening and what’s happening next from industry leaders.

http://danhon.com/2007/05/23/sxsw-2007-arg-the-attack-of-the-alternate-reality-games-transcript/

Posted by AdamMartin at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2007

IRC chat - 22nd May

Thanks to everyone who turned up for our second ARG SIG chat on IRC. I hope you all enjoyed it!

Next chat will be in approximately 4 weeks time, details TBA.

Major topics covered:

• GDC
• Wiki
• 2007 Whitepaper
• Leadership Council position

GDC

• Summary of the ARG SIG meet up we had at the 2007 GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco in March...
• We had approximately 15-20 people turn up to the event, which was great
• A good mix of people, both PM's and non-PM's, from educators and researchers to commercial and professionals

Wiki

• we're not using it enough: "amartin: I'd like to ask everyone here to consider adding *something* to the wiki before the next IRC chat - especailly if you just have half the info, create a page with the info you have, and others can help flesh it out"
• Wendy, Andres, and John all volunteered to add something to the Wiki (we look forward to seeing what you add :))
• Evan went ahead and started a TODO page on the wiki, whilst we were still in IRC :) - http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/To_Do
• please post to the list if you add anything to the wiki so that other people can help flesh-out your ideas...
• ...we're looking into getting RSS for just our part of the wiki, but not sure it will be possible. Wendy and Adam are asking about it
• reminder: main wiki page is: http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Alternate_Reality_Games_SIG

2007 Whitepaper

• we did a whitepaper last year (available on the wiki), but it was imperfect in many ways, and we underestimated the effort and time needed to get it right. We need to make sure we have enough of both before we consider doing another one
• whoever leads the whitepaper effort will have to start by deciding what the precise format will be and how it will be put together (one big paper, lots of smaller papers, etc)
• it takes between 1 and 10 hours a week, every week (starts off small, gets much bigger towards the end), for several months to get the whitepaper done
• the work can be split between multiple people, but people HAVE to be able to commit up-front the time to do their part, and to do their bits on-time, or it all falls down
• some discussion of topics and details of volunteering in the chat-log - please read through if you're interested in participating in this; a couple of people have said they'd have some time to do it, but they'll probably need some more people to help them

Leadership Council position

• if you have a burning desire to become a council member...email arg_sig @ igda.org with some info saying how much time you can commit to it, and what you would hope to do.
• the main issue is you need to be able to guarantee your time fairly regularly to deal with all the things that come up
• we have only two people who spoke to me about doing this, and if no-one else comes forward, we'll appoint someone ASAP

Posted by AdamMartin at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2007

Let's Be Serious: Non-Casual Investigations into Alternate Reality Gaming

Mark Heggen has posted an article discussing: "various non-casual investigations into alternate reality gaming. I had some wonderful question responses from Jane McGonigal, Brian Clark of GMD Studios, Sean Stewart of 42 Entertainment, Dan Hon of Mind Candy, and many others."

http://retext.blogspot.com/2007/05/lets-be-serious-non-casual.html

NOTE: This article is available in PDF format at: http://markheggen.com/heggen_noncasual_ARG.pdf - Mark recommends this version instead, since it comes with lots of extra typesetting etc and is somewhat easier to read

Posted by AdamMartin at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)