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Xbox 360 ARG? (www.origenxbox360.com)
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Yardarm51
Boot


Joined: 16 Apr 2005
Posts: 60
Location: Tokyo Japan

 		Oops. Embarassed I posted that at a rediculous hour of the morning and totally missed the 10=October 9=September. Damn. My bad. I thought I was onto something...d'oh.

I do live in Tokyo (currently in Vancouver Canada on vacation though) so I will try to figure out what I can about that building. However the satallite image doesn't seem to match the building in the other picture.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 2:15 pm
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Dinx
Boot

Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 18

 		Patience is key...
I believe that the most important thing for us to remember is not to attribute meaning where there is none.

Delving too deeply in between the lines has led some of us to empty space.

Our own desire to understand has only brought us confusion.

Those who would deceive only succeed because we allow it to be so.

Follow your nature...
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 2:24 pm
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Expletive
Boot

Joined: 29 Aug 2005
Posts: 22

 		Re: Patience is key...
Dinx wrote:
I believe that the most important thing for us to remember is not to attribute meaning where there is none.

Delving too deeply in between the lines has led some of us to empty space.

Our own desire to understand has only brought us confusion.

Those who would deceive only succeed because we allow it to be so.

Follow your nature...

Ok, i'll bite. Smile

Our nature as humans or gamers?

John

PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 3:08 pm
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Dinx
Boot

Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 18

 		It is our nature as humans to disbelieve. Even those with unwavering faith find they cannot erase the hint of doubt at the critical moment.

Skepticism is healthy. Follow your nature...
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 3:40 pm
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KaiQom
Kilroy

Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 2
Location: nowhere

 		i love ketchup

PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 4:09 pm
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oliverkeers13
Entrenched


Joined: 23 May 2005
Posts: 917
Location: London, UK

 		OK. WTF is going on. If this isn't related to the game, then don't clutter up the topic. If it is posted by the Puppet Masters, this is a serious breach of ettiquette. Either way, stop.
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 4:12 pm
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Cortana
Decorated


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 200
Location: Arlington, VA
oliverkeers13 wrote:
OK. WTF is going on. If this isn't related to the game, then don't clutter up the topic. If it is posted by the Puppet Masters, this is a serious breach of ettiquette. Either way, stop.


What's that? Is that the pot calling the kettle black?

PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 4:25 pm
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Expletive
Boot

Joined: 29 Aug 2005
Posts: 22
oliverkeers13 wrote:
OK. WTF is going on. If this isn't related to the game, then don't clutter up the topic. If it is posted by the Puppet Masters, this is a serious breach of ettiquette. Either way, stop.


What about it is against ettiquette? Sorry i'm just learning about how these forums are different from the 'free for alls' im used to.

John

PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 4:48 pm
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oliverkeers13
Entrenched


Joined: 23 May 2005
Posts: 917
Location: London, UK

 		We consider it poor ettiquette as these forums are for discussion of what they produce, not for them to put what they want here.
Take, for example, a newspaper. You wouldn't want an impartial newspaper that had the odd article written by the government, not credited to them.
If we are not going down the right route, we don't like to be prodded. We think of ARGs as exploration, we don't want a map. It's like being force-fed a walkthrough.

On the other hand, if it is unrelated, people work to decifer it, only to find out that it was something else, this wastes people's time, occasionally costing them money (through lost hours or pay-per-view internet)
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"You're talking last ditch, I need top drawer" V
"To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist" CH
"im iver an idiot or a genus" Dekuprince
Perplex City Video

PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:00 pm
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Phaedra
Lurker v2.0


Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 4033
Location: Here, obviously
Expletive wrote:
What about it is against ettiquette?


In a true ARG, there's what's known as the "curtain," the barrier separating the players from the puppetmasters (the people who are running the game). Because the aesthetic of an alternate reality game is "this is not a game," the curtain allows players to suspend disbelief by ensuring that they will always interact with a character, not a puppetmaster, while the game is in play. Furthermore, these forums are firmly "out-of-game," meaning that characters are not supposed to post here, since we discuss ARGs as games here.

In addition, it is considered bad form for puppetmasters to post here, either as themselves, or posing as players, in order to nudge the players in the direction they want them to go. This shows a disrespect for the players, implying that they're too dimwitted to figure it out on their own, as well as demonstrating that the game is not well-designed (if it were, the PMs would find an appropriately in-game method of guiding the players where they want them to go).

There are forums that do not adhere to these guidelines, such as Immersion Unlimited, but Unfiction holds itself firmly out of game, which is why these "guidelines" have the status of rules here.

Expletive wrote:
Sorry i'm just learning about how these forums are different from the 'free for alls' im used to.


Well, those differences are one of the reasons we're a community and not just a forum. Wink

Two other concepts you may want to note:

1. Trout

Generally represented by the trout icon Trout trout is a gentle way to indicate to someone that what they're posting as "new" has already been discussed. Trouting is not a smackdown, and in fact, the term was developed to avoid the appearance of flaming.

More discussion here (and I do strongly advise that you read it).

To avoid being trouted too often, one should....

2. Search
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:06 pm
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Expletive
Boot

Joined: 29 Aug 2005
Posts: 22
oliverkeers13 wrote:
We consider it poor ettiquette as these forums are for discussion of what they produce, not for them to put what they want here.
Take, for example, a newspaper. You wouldn't want an impartial newspaper that had the odd article written by the government, not credited to them.
If we are not going down the right route, we don't like to be prodded. We think of ARGs as exploration, we don't want a map. It's like being force-fed a walkthrough.

On the other hand, if it is unrelated, people work to decifer it, only to find out that it was something else, this wastes people's time, occasionally costing them money (through lost hours or pay-per-view internet)


Shouldnt the creators of the ARG decide what are appropriate behaviors for their game? Until all is revealed you can never really be sure what is necessary and what isnt, correct?

If this is, in fact, an ARG, there is a countdown driving its completion. So while i agree the preferred route is the satsifaction of dscovery without assistance, if we arent 'getting it' fast enough they may need ot help move things along before the next update in a day or two.

Lastly, if this response is inappropriate becuase it ALSO dirties up the thread, then my apologies in advance and i'll quit it. Smile

John

PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:08 pm
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Expletive
Boot

Joined: 29 Aug 2005
Posts: 22

 		Thanks both of you for making it clearer to me. Are these universal ARG guidelines or are they peculiar to this community?

John

PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:13 pm
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Phaedra
Lurker v2.0


Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 4033
Location: Here, obviously
Expletive wrote:
Shouldnt the creators of the ARG decide what are appropriate behaviors for their game? Until all is revealed you can never really be sure what is necessary and what isnt, correct?


See my post above for a brief description of why these forums are out of game.

Suffice it to say that your objection is not new and has been discussed to death elsewhere a gazillion and a half times, as inexperienced PMs come here and insist that they are trying to be "innovative" or "blur the boundaries" or simply that it's their game and they'll do what they like, thank you very much.

A thread here reiterates the reasoning for this forum being out of game, and is continued here.

Yanka describes concisely and lucidly why in-game character posting here is absurd:

yanka wrote:
It's very simple logic, really. This is a place where people talk about the game: the voicing of the characters, the writing style of the PMs, the press about the game and the links/paralllels to whatever movie/game/event/etc. the game is promoting (in cases where it applies). People can say stuff like "I don't think Durga will be appearing in Halo2", "I recognize Kristen's voice" or "Jeez, this game sucks." If the game still maintains that it is not a game, then to it a place like unfiction cannot exist at all, otherwise you'll have a paradox and Durga will have to go "Whuh? I'm being voiced by someone named Kristen?" I think this is what Space means by "internal consistency". Any game that insists that it is not a game cannot intersect with a place where it is a game - it can only be one or the other - or it really is fundamentally flawed.


I'll quote part of one of my posts there as to why not only is PM posting against Unfiction's rules, but it detracts from the gaming experience, just in case anyone doesn't feel like reading the entire META discussion:

Phaedra wrote:
xnbomb wrote:
There's something important that is implied in SpaceBass' statement that may not be inherently obvious: When he uses the pronoun we here, he is speaking for me, and probably for a quite a few other users here (although I will not presume precisely who or how many). This is not just about unfiction's management deciding how it goes. This is about what expectations we, as players who post on unfiction, can have regarding how information/ideas posted here interact (or to be more precise, do not interact) with game realities. I, and countless others like myself, have the expectation that puppetmasters will respect the nature of these forums, as SpaceBass has loosely (but more than adequately) defined it.


Well said.

xnbomb wrote:
What goal is served by violating players' trust? Puppetmasters *do* make ARGs for players to play. One hopes that they want their players to enjoy the experience. Betraying my trust is not likely to cause me to enjoy a game.


This trust is all-important for the functioning of the game. Players give the PMs an immense amount of trust.

The beekeepers did absurd things in public. They gave out their phone numbers and pictures to the PMs. They traveled (in some cases flew) great distances to the end-game events.

Art of the Heist players got on a boat.

These are not things that I, as a reasonably cautious individual living in the 21st century, am going to do for just anyone. I trust that the PMs have my entertainment first and foremost in their minds, and that they are not going to do anything nefarious to me or with the information that I give them.

I am able to have this trust because I know that it is a game, and I know that the PMs know that it is a game. The essential formality of the game structure, underlying the 'reality' to which it pretends, is all-important here.

As Elan put it:

Elan Lee wrote:
The importance of a game is the formality. It's a lubricant in that it provides structure in a way that most people are not comfortable performing without.


I enjoy the fact that the game pretends not to know it is a game, but as a player, I need the essential reassurance that it is a game, and the knowledge that all non-character parties realize it is a game, in order to have to freedom to participate in the game-world. The more real the in-game world is, the better and more seductive it is. But that is only because it is still essentially within my control.

An ARG may flirt with the borders of that control -- it may call you unexpectedly, it may appear on your TV, it may involve a real-life event in which you do not know which players are plants.

But while that flirting is exciting, it is only so because it draws attention to the boundaries, not because it blurs them. You can still stop playing, if you wish, and the game will leave you alone. In the end, if you assert boundaries, the game will respect them.

People enjoy roller coasters, but sane people don't drive their cars off cliffs. For most people, the illusion of risk is where the excitement comes from. Most people do not want it to be real.

So again, the job of the PM is to create something that looks real, but has visible boundaries.

That is the purpose the Unforums serve, besides being a central community hub for players. They delineate clear boundaries between in-game and out-of-game. They create a neutral zone between real life (where most of us have other things to do, like school, work, family, etc.) and the illusory world of the game, a place where we can talk about the game and take it seriously but where the illusory nature of the game is acknowledged.

Regarding the enjoyment gained by knowing where the boundaries are, I refer you to Jane McGonigal's A Real Little Game paper.

Specifically:

Jane McGonigal wrote:
Michael J. Apter, a psychologist who studies adult play, proposes that pleasure in play is dependent upon a sturdy "protective frame" around a perceived challenge [2, p. 22]. According to Apter, this frame assures the player that real world problems cannot intrude on play and that the game will have no real world consequences or effects. A kind of guarantee in the vein of Bateson's metacommunications ("Don't worry, this is only play"), it allows players to enjoy what would in everyday life be experienced as painfully frustrating or disturbingly risky. Apter uses a three-part analogy involving a crowd, a tiger and a cage to make his point, an analogy that I find quite relevant to immersive game design. An empty cage, Apter suggests, will produce boredom in a crowd of spectators; a tiger without a cage will produce anxiety; and a tiger in a cage will produce a pleasurable excitement. This pleasure, for Apter, represents the safe arousal we experience during play.


Jane also discussed it with Elan.

Jane McGonigal wrote:
During a discussion of other pervasive games currently in development by Lee and his collaborators, I related Apter's analogy to Lee, curious for his perspective. I offered my own interpretation: that perhaps the central goal of successful immersive game design is to communicate to players that a cage is in place, while
making it as easy and likely as possible for the players to pretend that they don't see the cage. In other words, I suggested, give the audience a tiger, build a sturdy and always visible cage, but give the crowd both the means and the incentive to say, "What cage? I don't see a cage" even as the spectators are oohing and aahing over the cage's lovely gilt design and breathtaking size. This slight twist on Apter's analogy resonated deeply for Lee. "It's a really beautiful way of describing many of the thoughts I've had for such a long time," he said, vowing to keep it in mind during future projects [personal correspondence]. The key to immersive design, we agreed, is to realize that the clear visibility of the puppetmasters' work behind the curtain does not lessen the players' enjoyment. Rather, a beautifully crafted and always visible frame for the play heightens (and makes possible in the first place) the players' pleasure – just as long as the audience can play along, wink back at the puppetmasters and pretend to believe.


This is one of the reasons why I feel a profound lack of enthusiasm, and even a certain amount of distaste, for ARGs that attempt to be "subversive" or "revolutionary" by "blurring the lines" between the game and reality.

Most of the time, they don't actually succeed, despite their bravado, which is why it's not a serious problem. Most of the time, the games are badly designed, so they don't attract a great many players.

But an inherent component of that bad design is their philosophy itself. Games that behave as if they're trying to blur the lines, while winking at the players and keeping the game structure both firmly intact and firmly visible have the potential to be fun. Games that actually blur the boundaries and dismantle/deny the visible boundaries will, most likely, be frustrating and possibly frightening.

They erode the all-important trust that players give to PMs. That trust -- that profound trust in invisible, nameless strangers, that willingness to do for them what you would not do for a random person on the street, that willingness to give them information that you generally wouldn't entrust to any stranger -- is only possible because the game structure is visible.

Bringing this back to Unfiction, using these forums to gather information to be used in-game violates the boundaries. It destabilizes the visible structure that says Even though it claims full-throatedly that it is not a game, this *is* a game and there are spaces outside it. We all know that the PMs are reading these forums. But the PMs are out-of-game. The game itself cannot come here.


Expletive wrote:
If this is, in fact, an ARG, there is a countdown driving its completion. So while i agree the preferred route is the satsifaction of dscovery without assistance, if we arent 'getting it' fast enough they may need ot help move things along before the next update in a day or two.


Then they can find a way to do so in-game.

Expletive wrote:
Lastly, if this response is inappropriate becuase it ALSO dirties up the thread, then my apologies in advance and i'll quit it. Smile


It's not an inappropriate question, and it's understandable why you wouldn't immediately and intuitively understand it, having never played an ARG, but don't be hurt if a mod moves this to the META section. Wink
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:19 pm
Last edited by Phaedra on Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Fardo NL
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 		First off this is not an ARG ... But a Game ... So the rules are not all the same ... your even aloud to find stuff what some blieve to be out of game ...

Fact is that the coordinates where found... Fact is the coordinates are located in Tokyo ... Fact is the building with the MS circle of Light was found in Tokyo

PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:19 pm
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Yardarm51
Boot


Joined: 16 Apr 2005
Posts: 60
Location: Tokyo Japan
Fardo NL wrote:
Where is this?



http://www.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0508/30/news039.html



http://image.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0508/30/ki_xbox03.jpg


Could it be this building coordinates found in www.origenxbox360.com



OK. I read through the article which accompanies the "circle of light" building pictures. The guy who wrote it is as baffled as we are. The building site is near Omotesando (a major shopping road/district). The mark has been put on the scaffolding surrounding a building which just started construction. Apparently this image was put up very recently. He wonders what the building is going to be. I can tell you there is a big Microsoft building only couple of train stops away (10min) in the Shinjuku district. If this is going to be a Microsoft building then I would imagine it will be a retail boutique type place on the ground floor and officies above like a lot of the places along Omotesando.

Here is a link for the location of this new building.
Google Maps
Unfortunately the map is in Japanese but the address is Tokyo-to Minato-ku KitaAoyama 3-11. I have no idea how to translate that into a GPS coordinate though. Anyone able to do that?
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:35 pm
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