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Collaborative art tool?

Mikeyj@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 12:12:28 +0000

Hi All,

I'm putting together a collaborative art project for science engagement together with our engagement team at the uni I work at. It's to bring together researchers, the public, patients, carers, family and clinicians to explore respiratory diseases.

One of the issues that we have is that patients with a particular disease, Cystic Fibrosis, aren't able to meet each other physically due to the risk of cross-infection. They are supposed to be separated in time or space. The result of this is that as a group they have really never been considered or involved in any outreach or engagement activities which is pretty shitty and something I'd like to change.

One of the events we're running is probably going involve collage as the medium - is anyone aware of any tools or approaches that might work to have a group of people present and others remote interacting with one another to collaborate on a collage piece?

Alternatively, any approaches you can think of for achieving interaction and engagement within a group of people who cannot be in the same location in time and space would be brilliant.

Chronic diseases are really isolating and though people with CF are as a community really active, I feel science research and clinical engagement is letting them down. We're also asking patients themselves for input, but with ARGers special skills I was hoping to get some cool ideas.

Thanks :)

Escape Rooms

Rogi Ocnorb@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 03:36:43 +0000

Experienced my first escape room tonight. WOW!!!!!
Puzzles and ciphers just like the old days of ARGs.
ROT-5, puzzle wheels, chess pieces with numbers that turned out to represent degrees on a compass, words buried in a letter as instructions to open a box, a real cryptic with a key inside, a lever inside an old phone case that opened a secret door, turning wall decorations that opened a hidden drawer, so many little puzzles in our hands.
Brought back so many great memories.
Now we're going to try other escape rooms in town.

How to Make an ARG for a Complete Beginner?

ozzi9816@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 31 May 2017 07:08:42 +0000

Hey. I've gotten back into ARGs, and I'd like to create one of my own. I know enough to know that I won't be launching anytime soon, and it'll probably go through a lot of planning, but I still do want to make one; the only problem is I don't how to make the puzzles/a good puzzletrail/a good trailhead (and other etc things). I wanted to look at ARG post-mortems to see how they did it, but most of them have been taken down (a lot of the articles too), so that leaves me with no knowledge of how to actually handle running one.

Anyone here got good up to date links about the intricacies of running/making an ARG? Good puzzle ideas, how to make the various social media accounts look realistic (dates and such), and things of that nature would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Seeking User or Agency to Create ARG

ozzi9816@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 31 May 2017 07:01:35 +0000

I am looking for portfolios and resumes from people or companies who have created ARGs and successfully run them to completion.

My agency is looking to review your past work to help determine if it would be appropriate and feasible to run an ARG for a popular tourist attraction. To this end, we would need to see outlines and production notes from past games.

Please be prepared to discuss elements of your work including cost planning and lead times necessary for games of different sizes. This is not a guarantee of work, but all submissions will be vetted for future consideration.

Any and all work contracted would be very fairly compensated.

Interested parties should email me at FPenca (at) LNPNews (dot) com. Please include "ARG Development" in your email title.

Thank you!

Two Takes on Experience Design

krystyn@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 24 May 2017 18:01:08 +0000

Today while reading tweets, I ran across the following, thanks to Jim Babb:

http://patternsoftransformation.com/

It's a pretty good read. If you are someone interested in designing ARGs, it probably would be good to think of doing so in terms of designing experiences for your players.

Looking through it, it reminded me a little of a related, phenomenal (heh) piece of work on experience design presented by the late Brian Clark (on a domain named phenomenalwork.com). Brian wrote a series of posts which he entitled Foundations of Experience Design. Here's how he described it , and his intentions for it:

For the last couple of years, Ive been working on a book about experience design through the lens of phenomenology, a never-ending project thats taken me into ever-more-surprising corners of where those ideas come together. Ive reached the point where I realize that one whole pile of that probably isnt destined to end up in the book: the part that is really about the introduction to experience design as the craft that accompanies phenomenologys philosophy. Instead, I realize I actually have two half-finished projects instead of one.

Over the next couple of months, Id like to share with you the affirmative argument for experience designs role in the changing landscape of design thinking, explore the principles of the new questions it grapples with (that other designers should grapple with as well), and detail a system for developing practical toolboxes of techniques. More than half of it is material Ive been polishing for more than a year, now structured in a way that I hope is modular and practical while still tackling the big questions that beg exploration by more practitioners. It is one of the most complete documentations of the processes Ive been honing for 19 years, and it is doing no one any good just sitting on my hard drive.

Your dialogue and commentary on these posts are both invited and appreciated, as I hope to include parts of that commentary in some e-book version of the result to expand it as a resource for others.

Unfortunately, I don't think the e-book ever came to fruition. If someone knows otherwise, by all means let us know. And also unfortunately, phenomenalwork.com is no longer a registered domain. When I went to look for this, for just a moment I was worried that it was lost in the digital sea. But, fortunately, we have the Wayback Machine. It has preserved this material, and you can find it there: Follow this link to see the ten substantive sections, in reverse chronological order. That's a bit of an inconvenient way to read it though. So, for convenience and posterity, I have assembled the material into a rich text document with attachments, and a PDF (both attached). I have the left the hyperlinks therein pointing to the Wayback Machine's contemporaneous archives of those pages. A quick attempt to find some of them today reveals what you might expect: Over time, the resources at those URLs have in some cases persisted, while in others they have changed or disappeared entirely.

Joining in the puppeteering

ChateauSoul@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 24 May 2017 15:31:14 +0000

Dont Care How. Dont Care Why. Even if I am just a simple pawn. I want to be one of the people there for an ARG, because I enjoy seeing how creative and intelligent some people are, under the bullshit of shitposting memes and trolling people online. I want to be apart of something that will show how one can tap into the intelligence of others.

Advice on my Videos

kevinnormal@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 18 May 2017 07:38:29 +0000

Greetings. I tried making a couple of videos to introduce to my arg but they did not have much attention and honestly I feel like they are not good enough, but I cant exactly pin point why. Does anyone know how I could improve them?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZidlWo9DyM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abpjGfFV2hQ

They are kind of weird I wonder if I went overboard.

Records of The Beast

SignT@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 04 May 2017 15:00:05 +0000

I remember previously, the cloudmakers have kept a careful play record of the events of the Beast ARG. However, the domain has been bought, and new robots text makes it unable for the wayback machine to access the records.

Does anyone know how to reaccess the record?

PM Writing Tips

okayer88@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 08:49:23 +0000

Hello.

I'm a relatively new PM, currently working on a new ARG.

This is not intended to be transparency area, not in one bit, but more a way for PM's to possibly help each out with writing or story points.

I specifically am looking for a little help with some setup on my end of the field, needing a tad of help with my story writing if any PM (or helpful friend?) could help me out with the concept at all.

Creating ARG puzzles?

Habits@forums.unfiction.com — Sun, 19 Feb 2017 00:12:11 +0000

I've been looking into PMing for a bit now and have to an extent already started. I was curious if any more veteran PMs could help out a little by telling me about puzzles. When to introduce a puzzle, why popular ARG's puzzles work, and how to make such puzzles. Thank you for taking your time

The Haven Chronicles - My New Podcast

Lieoften@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 22:42:20 +0000

Hey guys, I've just released the second episode of my new podcast (The Haven Chronicles) which follows a group of soldiers as they recall their interactions on the planet Haven.

The first episode can be found here

Second Episode here

I may or may not have included some 'ARGish' assets to this project -- but at this early of a stage it might be a little bit hard to decipher anything.

Alternate Reality Awards 2017

catherwood@forums.unfiction.com — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 21:00:57 +0000

Hello there! I'm here from GameDetectives , so I apologise if I'm posting this in the wrong place or something. I'm currently running the final vote for an ARG awards!

You can vote in the awards here. I don't know if you'll have heard of any of the ARGs that have been nominated, but there's a description of each on the first page of the form.

I thought you might be interested, anyway. And the more votes, the better! I'm planning to run an awards ceremony in a voice chat on GameDetectives after the vote ends, too.

P.S. what's with my password being emailed to me in plaintext?

Essential Reading: The Wyoming Incident

dazeytweeter@forums.unfiction.com — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 02:41:32 +0000

The Wyoming Incident, tracked here on Unfiction at http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18035 and http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27872 (this link contains mild spoilers until a certain point in the explanation) is very likely the longest-running ARG in existence, from its first heartbeats (video postings and activity in the first linked forum, among other things) in 2006, to its last (so far) in 2013. The reason I would ask all prospective Puppetmasters to be aware of it, however, is not the length of TWI, but the events therein.

In summary:
----------------

The first videos of 'The Wyoming Incident' appeared on Google Video and Youtube between July and August 2006. The original video, posted on Google Video, identified its content as what was broadcasted in Neobrara County, Wyoming, during a hijacking of several local-programming stations. While the video is safe to view, the story describes various adverse effects of viewing the video, due to a troublesome frequency in the audio.

Followers are anonymously led to The Happy Cube, a message board dedicated to "Cubing" (Read: Serial Murder), and the blog of one Gregory Miller. The character of GMiller is used to lead the story, eventually moving the blog from an independent host to a Blogger site. Eventually, progress is made. GMiller reveals, among other things, that he is not, in fact, Gregory Miller. He is the original owner of the Wyoming Incident videos, an ancient inspiration of dark impulses that his people tasked him to update into a modern format. He distributed the first few videos himself, and followed them to their final owners, including Gregory Miller, Happy Cube administrator Jack Q. Pembry, Danny Cable (who wasn't a particularly important character in any way), and Jamie. Jamie was the uploader of the second video, AKA "givemeanumber" on Youtube, and the only surviving video owner, which proved extremely angering to GMiller.

With this post came the fourth Wyoming Incident video, as he had promised to Unfiction users following the mystery, and the promises that GMiller would answer four questions from Unfiction followers, one of which he would choose himself, and that the fifth Wyoming Incident video would soon be shared on a file-sharing platform called Ares. It was around this time that the third video was discovered to have been the first posted.

A user on The Happy Cube named Iliketofix, the most recent member before followers of TWI were directed to the board, directed followers to "Hackjob Johnny presents video 5" on Ares in accordance with GMiller's schedule. It was then slowly revealed that Iliketofix, who may or may not have been GMiller, was a servant of Father Paranoia, one of nine Dark Muses mirroring the Nine (good) Muses of greek mythology. He began posting frightening, disturbing and disgusting short stories which became 'required reading' for the followers, which he later revealed as the engine for a mass harvest of negative energy from followers to the game to feed Father Paranoia.

Iliketofix tells players, among other things, that a legion of Paranoia's black-eyed children, who eat the living and wear the dead, would be joining the board to stalk players. When one of the black-eyed children eats a player, Iliketofix is replaced by Ilovetofix, who finally reveals their overall goal: to create such underlying negativity in humanity that when The Nine Muses have their way, bringing humanity to the peak of perfection, humanity will tumble from that peak and descend into an endless age of darkness. Jamie is eventually found, and followers find a consensus that yes, they do want to hear his last words. The poor acting gives away that he isn't actually dead, but Iliketofix shrugs it off, pointing out that ownership of the second video has already broken Jamie's mind, so he's no better off alive than dead.

One of The Wyoming Incident's weaknesses as an ARG, from a certain perspective, is the vast amount of lore and role-playing that takes place on The Happy Cube to bring about major developments. As such, a great length of time goes by between the previous point of note and the next.

(cont. in next post)

What happened to the contacts thread?

Caprice@forums.unfiction.com — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 02:54:47 +0000

Last time I was here, there was a thread where users posted contact information for PMs to send trailheads. I can't seem to find it.

[Contact] The Interaction Thread

Aerobane@forums.unfiction.com — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 21:24:32 +0000

As more and more ARGs are becoming heavy in interaction, I think it is time we gave prospecting PMs a little helping hand. Whether it be for a trailhead, a reach for more players or a puzzle I'm guessing it would be beneficial for a lot of people if we listed our online contact details.

It has also occured to me that some people, including me, may not be getting involved in many ARGs simply because the characters aren't interacting with them. To put it frankly, there is nothing quite like the feeling of someone basing a trailhead on you. This thread, if people reply, will also take the strain off people like HKDL and PokeKiller who seem to be constantly under attack by trailheads. So, I'm hoping I'll have a good response. Just an E-mail and an instant messenger name would be suffice.

So, if any PMs want to throw a trailhead my way, here's my details:

E-mail: Crowfoot [at] gmail [dot] com

AIM: CrowfootCornix