It worked!

Back to Black

Sorry for the long delay in posting; I’m in the middle of a very busy month, work and personal projects-wise.

It’s also been a very busy week for Find The Lost Ring, as all the characters traveled to Beijing to play out the last chapter.

It’s hard to describe how I’m feeling right now. Last week, I had kinda steeled myself for the end of it all, and tried to wrap up loose ends – the forums slowed down to a few threads a day, I sent emails to the two people I’d communicated with the most (Diego and Mei Hui) to wish them luck, and I started an outline for a summary video (as requested by Ariadne).

But once they arrived in Beijing, it became clear that it wouldn’t be that easy. They wore t-shirts that Weezel designed early in the game, they wrapped up a plot point using a ritual created by the Couberteam, and they did a dance choreographed by Canzonett and Dav. They had one final task where they asked for our help (encoding a video address in a website and emailing it to the bad guys).

But now, that’s all over. We’ve been rooting for these people to succeed for five months, so when they return to their home worlds (and the pms/actors stop talking to us, because the game is over) – it really will – in a non-This Is A Game sense – be as if they’ve left the planet. We’ll also be losing the community of friends and support that we’ve all had for the last five months, as we’ll all disperse, having accomplished our goal. And we’re all feeling a very real sense of loss at that.

The athletes have been posting farewell videos, and seem to be feeling quite emotional themselves. For example, check out Diego’s; you can hear it in his voice.

The final event happens during the closing ceremonies. They’ll harness the power of 91,000 people in synchronization by performing the official Olympic cheer:

…which on top of the massive synch power from the global omphalos net, will allow them to return to their home worlds and families.

I’m wishing them luck, but at the same time, I’m still sad that it has to end.

Ten hours to go.

I’m happy to announce…

…that I’ll be a Supporting Community Leader/Game Master for California-based non-profit Institute for the Future’s upcoming massively-multiplayer forecasting game, SuperStruct, a creation by futurist James Cascio and games creator Jane McGonigal.

By playing the game, you’ll help us chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential. Superstruct FAQ

I’m really looking forward to the solutions and structures that the players develop as a way to deal with these terrible events, and seeing what we’d need – not just as professionals who are paid to think about the future, but as normal people.

There’ll also be some great awards given out by a committee of celebs, including Heroes’ Tim Kring, Ze Frank, Chris DiBona and Warren Ellis.

The game launches in late September; visit http://www.superstructgame.org/ to sign up for more news and a reminder when the game begins.

Podcasting FTLR

When Alex and Eli call, I can’t help but answer.

Alex Tweeted a recent NYT article about the Antikythera Device, asking if anyone would be interested in making a guest podcast about it.

Heck yes, I would be!

I’m a big fan of Eli Hunt’s podcast series and I’m love a challenge…and an antique mechanical analog computer struck me as pretty challenging. But after a bit (okay, a lot) of reading and research, I thought I’d be able to form an interesting narrative of its history, discovery and purpose – as well as its connection to our agonothetai.

Give it a listen here. How did I do?

Alex did a nice writeup to let people know about it, including some of my supplemental links and Eli’s comments.

I’ve included the full text of the podcast under the cut, should you be interested in reading it.

“ARG” vs. “Viral Campaign”

These days, if a show gives off even the slightest whiff of fantastic leanings, there’s bound to be a supporting ARG floating around the net as a way to generate buzz. IO9 recently published an article titled “The Argument Against ARGs” that goes over a few of the more popular offerings.

While the author has some good points about the games she describes, she also writes, “I feel like the ARG is just a fancier term for guerrilla marketing.” Honestly, I wouldn’t really categorize these as ARGs – they’re really more like “multimedia viral campaigns.” But if that’s where the vernacular is heading, so be it. I think the genre’s been around long enough that it’s fair to start loosely categorizing these games.

There are two obvious, general categories, and the first paragraph of the io9 article says just about everything there is to say, about the first type:

If you’re making a new piece of pop culture and you expect it to reach a mass audience, or even just a subcultural audience, you’d better have an ARG. What’s that, you say? ARG stands for “alternate reality game,” and it describes a wide range of interactive puzzles that generally involve getting you to visit various websites, call phone numbers, and go places in major cities in order to get free shit related to a movie, TV show and even occasionally a book. Why are popular titles like Dark Knight and Lost using ARGs? It’s more than just advertising: It’s a way to build an instant fan base without working at it for years like Star Trek did. But so far, ARGs have few of the benefits of a fandom, such as a friendly community of like-minded people; and they have all of the bad parts of fannish behavior like pointless obsessiveness and fetishization of dumb swag.

This first type is deliberately short-lived and revolves around promoting, as the article says, a film, television show or a book. It adds a supplemental layer to the thing it’s promoting – you can report crime in Gotham to the police or help Harvey Dent’s campaign for The Dark Knight game, or learn more about the mysterious Dharma Foundation in-between long-awaited episodes of Lost.

But at the same time, these stories are meant to lightly penetrate a large audience. They offer a few websites to play with, some email and text message alerts, and perhaps a few puzzles, and seem to be largely intended for an individual to be able to complete without any community effort.

And, that’s fine! I loved being able to click through the mysterious, shifting newspaper articles and internal airline documents that were posted to the Donnie Darko website, and the Memento special edition disc had the pre-film medical records and letters of the patient. All of these enhanced my engagement with the films, making them a lot more “real” in my head – which I understand could make me more enthusiastic about sharing the experience with other people.

But it’s not really fair to compare this type of game to other “alternate reality games” as a whole. I think this is probably why unFiction owner Sean Stacey recently switched to the term “chaotic fiction” as a way to describe the genre.

The games I am drawn to are plotted, require lots of community coordination plus individual attention from the characters to get things moving, and often generate a lot of player content (videos, photos, and so on). I’ll stop short of say that they exist just for the sake of themselves (the money’s got to come from somewhere), but I do appreciate that the games I play don’t really shove any sponsorship in your face.

Find The Lost Ring is a perfect example of this, as the only time we’ve seen anything slightly related to McDonald’s has been 1) a tiny golden arches logo on the end title screen of a trailer, 2) a McD’s press release, and 3) a Japanese McD’s website advertising the game generally. The characters haven’t been taking photos of themselves eating Big Macs, nor has the Hamburglar turned up as an ancient Greek oracle for us to contact. There are no prizes or McD’s swag, and we’re playing to…well, save the world.

(That said, Perplex City was my first real ARG experience, and it was created to be self-sustaining, through revenue generated by puzzle card sales. It finished out a two-year-long first season and couldn’t get a second one going, so I don’t know if that represents a realistic model for non-corporate-sponsored games or not – but it was certainly an interesting and beneficial experience.)

Ultimately I think it comes down to my own investment in these games, and their payoff. I would be hard-pressed to get out of the house for a Harvey Dent political picket (though if I was in the area I’d stop to take photos) – that game is over as soon as the film hits theatres. But I have no problems driving to Austin and Marfa to retrieve a Ring sculpture. The game may be over with the closing ceremony of the Olympics, but it will resonate a lot longer than that.

Anyway…I haven’t been particularly interested in any of the recent viral campaigns but there are a few upcoming that I’m into because of the subject matter:

- District 9, related to a film due out a year from now, directed by Peter Jackson’s protege
- Imagine The Possibilities, a game for the leaked TV show Fringe which is totally the new X-Files (go watch it right now if you haven’t already)
- Seek the Six, a viral campaign for the upcoming AMC six-part miniseries remake of The Prisoner (complete with “I AM NOT A NUMBER!”, Jesus as No. 6 and Gandalf as No. 2)

I will be keeping an eye on them as their action starts to unfold, but I might have to come up with a new category to keep them distinct from the other alternate reality games that I play.

This just in!

I just spotted this post by cubicgarden which talks about his side of the Third Ring recovery, including some videos I hadn’t seen before. Wish there was one of his victory dance outside the gallery!

There’s also a new video by Diego which shows footage from the Fourth Ring adventure. I love it so much that words fail me.

Whoa.

Larissa Tweeted hat message the other day, and just made a post to her blog…

Whoa. (That’s my head. And that’s us walking. For more info, read my post on the recovery of the fifth ring.)

FTLR Roundup #1

So much has been going on that I haven’t had time to actually sit down and write about it, so here’s a handy post to keep everything straight.

July 2 – Dallas omphalabyrinth

Around this time, I also recruited a few of my friends to help run omphalabyrinths, to bring the total city count up to 27. They’re in Boulder, CO, Atlanta, GA and Washington, D.C.

July 18 – Monica, Jorge and the Codex

July 19 – Fourth ring translation and Diego’s plan

July 23 – Ring number five – an epic adventure, Part 2

FTLR – The Fifth Ring, part 2

Wow. So…the fifth ring is in Marfa, Texas.

…really? Marfa?

Yes, as it turns out. After volunteering to contact The Operative, I got a positive reply back:

Great. Let’s do this.

You obviously know where I am, from my theop number.

If you can get to this location in the next 10 days, then we can arrange for the dead drop. We’ll need an hour to complete it. Bring multiple agents if you think it will make for a safer transport. Send me a date and time you can make it.

Planning and Preparing

Phew. Marfa is about 527 miles from Dallas, which translates to about 8-10 hours driving. Bus and trains were cheaper, but would take way too long. So, jasper (another Texan player) and I arranged to drive to Marfa from Austin, where I would meet her and a friend. After a length airport debacle, I ended up just renting a car and driving down, arriving at around 4:30 for a 5 AM departure.

Somewhat disturbingly, our mission was as follows:

You’ll be stationed on Highland Avenue in front of the Marfa Book Company bookstore between 1:30 PM and 2PM.

You’ll be disguised as a street musicians. It doesn’t matter what you do, just make it convincing.

Put out a hat.

At some point, I’ll drop a tip in the hat. After 2PM, you’ll use that tip to figure out the location of the ring, which you’ll retrieve IMMEDIATELY nearby.

I will NOT stop to talk with you.

If you attempt to follow me, I will contact a teammate and have the ring removed before you can get to it.

Let me repeat that… “You’ll be disguised as a street musicians.”

Hoo boy.

Anyway, the dressing up part is easy – it’s the “make it look convincing” part that was a slightly bigger issue, as I don’t play any instrument particularly well. I just bought a guitar to learn to play, though, so I thought that enthusiasm might make up for a lack of talent and skill, and threw it in the car, with some tambourines and a recorder.

Traveling

The trip from Austin to Marfa went smoothly, although at about 6 AM we were the first ones to come across a bad car accident. The car had rolled a few times (obvious from the paint scrapes on the road) and left several frighteningly deep dents in the asphalt.

I woke up in the backseat as jasper got out to check the car; there was a woman trapped inside. We called an ambulance, and several other cars stopped to help make sure the woman was okay (her legs were hurt, she was being crushed slightly by the car and was in a very uncomfortable position, and her wrist was broken, as far as we could tell). She had been shopping just before the accident and there was a lot of debris strewn across the road, so we helped clear it off for other cars to pass – lots of cassette tapes and DVDs, toiletries, and a child’s backpack with the tags still on it.

We left after the two firetrucks began levering the car to raise it enough to pull her out of the back door. I think we were all a little shaken, but also very relieved that she was alive, conscious and able to speak. The rest of the drive was relatively uneventful.

Marfa

Well, although we all professed to be a little embarrassed, Kyle, Susan and I had no problems setting up our instruments – a washtub bass, a harmonica, and a slightly out-of-tune guitar – and jamming together.

We set up a laptop on the hood of the car, plugged into the hybrid’s three-prong outlet, and connected to the Marfa Book Company wifi (though we switched to the stronger signal from the nearby Pizza Foundation). We were able to broadcast our performance through Seero, and speak to the people in IRC, who were standing by in case the dropoff included some difficult puzzles.

As we played, lots of people drove by slowly to check us out, someone told us “we had balls”, and a man emerged from the bookstore with coins collected from the patrons inside. He turned out to be the editor of the local newspaper, so I owe him an email with some links and information about just exactly what we were up to. Three girls stopped by later and sang “Oh Susannah” with us, too.

Twenty minutes in, a woman walked by and dropped two single dollar bills into the hat. We subtly peeked at them (we were supposed to continue straight through til 2) and showed them to the people watching our live broadcast. One bill said, “PARKING 974″ and the other said, “LOT FLV” – aha! A license plate.

We wandered around looking for the right lot, and jasper found the car just around the corner, with a box hiding in the backseat. We absconded with it and drove away as quickly as possible…down the street, to the second wifi point, for more live broadcasting as we opened it up.

Ahh…it was a long day, but a successful mission. We drove back to Austin, stopping off at the Marfa Lights viewing area and at an Alpine McDonald’s for some photo-taking, and I drove back to Dallas that night, arriving at around 2:30 AM. The next night (Sunday) I was so tired I fell asleep with my glasses on, the lights on, and without setting any alarms – but it was all very, very worth it.

It was great to meet jasper and her friend, and I hope we’ll get to do more game stuff together in the future. Right now, the Fifth Ring is sitting in my office, waiting to be photographed in detail (which will be the contents of part 3 of this post series).

See all the action summarized in this video:

FTLR – The Fifth Ring, Marfa, Texas and an epic adventure

On July 23, James sent us the message for the last ring – which, as it turned out, was just the start of a long adventure for me!

This post is part 1.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.