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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Last Call Poker » LCP: Meta/Questions, Social Fun, & Poker Help
[META -- PM IDENTITY SPOILERS] Those pesky PMs
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Phaedra
Lurker v2.0


Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 4033
Location: Here, obviously
jamesi wrote:
RobMagus wrote:
hmrpita is one of us.


Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?

(Sorry, but it had to be done.) Laughing


Look out or she'll cut you. Twisted Evil
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World Champion: Cruel 2B Kind

PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 12:32 pm
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Dorkmaster
Unfictologist


Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 1328
Location: The People's Republic of Dork
Phaedra wrote:
jamesi wrote:
RobMagus wrote:
hmrpita is one of us.


Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?

(Sorry, but it had to be done.) Laughing


Look out or she'll cut you. Twisted Evil


See, this is why we love the Jamesi. And fear the women.
_________________
"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." -William Gibson
"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it." - PJ O'Rourke
"ACADEMY, n. A modern school where football is taught." - Ambrose Bierce

PostPosted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 3:48 pm
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2716
Location: State of Denial

 		An article found over on the [url]Errol Morris[/url] websight talks about ARGs....
Quote:


Through a Hole, and into Hidden Worlds of Fun
By Hiawatha Bray

The Boston Globe - April 25, 2005

Millions of us saw the television commercial last year. Outside a luxurious estate, a man paddles in his brilliant blue swimming pool, munching rich red lingonberries. He glances up to see an orange sports car arc through the air and plunge into the water a few feet away.

The ad promoted the excellent color reproduction of the new flat-panel TV sets by Sharp Electronics.

But something else was in play, something hinted at by the Internet address on the screen www.moretosee.com.

Indeed, there was a great deal more to see and do, and a tempting prize awaiting the curious viewer who followed the mystery to the end. The Sharp commercial was more than a TV ad. It was a "rabbit hole."

That's what they call the opening move in new kinds of totally immersive games, played out on the Internet, on TV, even in real life. These are called "alternate reality games," or ARGs.

"The whole illusion you're trying to create is that there's this whole segment of our world that you don't know about," said ARG designer Dave Szulborski, whose book on the subject is titled "This Is Not a Game."

Nobody's better qualified to write about ARGs than Szulborski. He helped to create one of the earliest of them the daring, controversial, and misbegotten game Majestic, from Electronic Arts Inc.

Billed as "the game that plays you," Majestic was an "X-Files"-like adventure that drew the player into an alternate world of dark secrets and government conspiracies.

But unlike most desktop computer games, you didn't just install Majestic and play it on your PC. You signed up for the game over the Internet, providing your phone number, e-mail address, and an instant-messaging user name.

The game operators at Electronic Arts "puppetmasters" in ARGspeak used phone calls and electronic messages to provide new clues in the story. A player's desk phone might ring in the middle of the workday, delivering a breathless message from a frightened informant warning of a new peril. Or the conspirators might send an instant message bearing a thinly veiled threat.

Electronic Arts had high hopes for Majestic, but the game was a flop. In an effort at realism, the game was designed to run in "real time," like the TV series "24." But this bored many players, who didn't want to wait hours for new clues. As if that weren't bad enough, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 occurred shortly after the game was launched. In the aftermath of that trauma, few people wanted to play a game about an evil band of conspirators.

But Szulborski and others thought the concept was too good to abandon. They began cobbling together their own games online puzzles that forced players to seek out clues through a variety of online and offline channels.

Szulborski has produced a number of these games, including "Urban Hunt," which featured a fictional reality TV show involving a nationwide quest for a half-million dollars.

In reality, there was no show and no prize. But that didn't matter to ARG buffs. "Most of these, the only reward is the game aspect of it," said John Mitropoulos, 38, an information security specialist in Charlotte, N.C., and an avid ARG player. "You're participating in kind of like those mystery parties people have."

Sharp's ARG was different. Launched last autumn, it was titled "The Legend of the Sacred Urns." This game featured a hunt for a rare artifact, with a Sharp home entertainment center for the first player to find it. Many of the vital clues were embedded in a series of oddball TV commercials.

Visitors to moretosee.com could view the ads, with pointers that highlighted visual clues. All the other game play took place on Internet bulletin boards, where players swapped suggestions and analyzed each clue in exhaustive detail. An Ohio resident, Ken Floss, solved the mystery on Dec. 1 to win the grand prize. But for most ARG fans, the puzzle is its own reward.

You'd think ARG games would appeal to a fairly small group of players, but Microsoft Corp. knows better. The company's video game Halo 2 was one of 2004's biggest hits, partly because it was promoted with a hugely popular ARG called "ILoveBees."

The trailers for the game that Microsoft ran in movie theaters last year concluded with an Internet address ilovebees.com. The address pointed to a website for a small beekeeping business, but visitors were soon drawn into a tense drama about a future alien invasion of Earth, similar to the one in Halo 2.

"ILoveBees" players would get more information about the threat by identifying pay telephones in the real world, then going to them at prearranged times. The phones would ring and players would hear new chapters of the story and would acquire more clues.

Apart from the movie trailers, Microsoft barely advertised this game. But driven mostly by word of mouth, about 2 million people visited the ilovebees website. "We've received pictures of fans recruiting strangers on busy streets, pictures of fans answering pay phones dressed in full scuba gear, and we've even seen fans waving ILB [ILoveBees] banners on CNN at the presidential debates," said Chris di Cesare, director of product marketing at Microsoft Game Studios.

The ARG universe continues to grow. But it's a shadow universe, veiled to some eyes. For instance, recent visitors to many popular blogs may have noticed wanted posters searching for the person who stole a brand new Audi A3 from the New York Auto Show. There are other ads for a fellow named Virgil Tatum, who claims to be the world's greatest computer game designer, and for a company called Last Resort Retrieval, which specializes in locating stolen works of art.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But rumor has it that all these ads are actually rabbit holes introductions to a new ARG called "Art of the Heist," and sponsored by Audi.

The German automaker refuses to confirm or deny the truth of these rumors, thus adding to the mystery.

You may be the sort of person who's already begun tapping the name "Virgil Tatum" into Google. If so, welcome to the rabbit hole.

_________________
Magesteff
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead


PostPosted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 1:44 pm
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CoffeeJedi
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Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 1327
Location: Charlotte NC, USA
Magesteff wrote:
I have also noticed "players with non standard nicks such as o and e and nd Smaller and LC nicks certainly look as if they are "reserved" for the Special Players (PM's, possible character bots{?}, technical crew)


its just a word-wrap issue; when you see one of those, just look at the name above it; the line isn't long enough for some of the LCP_ names
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 2:03 pm
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konamouse
Official uF Dietitian


Joined: 02 Dec 2002
Posts: 8010
Location: My own alternate reality

 		Could Errol Morris be involved in the video production end of LCP???
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r u a Sammeeeee? I am Forever!

PostPosted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 10:05 pm
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SuperJerms
Unfettered


Joined: 21 Aug 2004
Posts: 537
Location: indiana

 		HIGHLY unlikely. It's not in his style at all.

Besides, he's a documentarian (one of the most influential ones alive, at that) not a fiction director. You'd more likely see morgan spurlock do an arg than him (not that spurlock would be likely, either).
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 1:32 am
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		SuperJerms, steff mentioned, in a post i can't find now, that Errol Morris made the commercials for an ARG. We played it here. It was called the "Search for the Sacred Urns."

It was a game for Sharp television. And the commercials were riveting.

Not sure why you would think he wouldn't be likely to do an ARG. Were you implying ARGs are beneath him in some way or a waste of his talent, time, energy or something? No, probably not. Wink
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 3:35 am
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SuperJerms
Unfettered


Joined: 21 Aug 2004
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Location: indiana

 		LOL no, not that commercial work is beneath him...after all his first film was for HBO. And besides, ARGs are a new artform, so they would fall into the "experimental film" camp. Anyway, even some of the least likely folks to end up doing commercial work end up doing it anyway.

Surprised to know that he did the Sharp commercials, though. Those were...i guess...kinda like the stuff he did in Thin Blue Line, but not really. And nothing like Fog of War. Just a style thing from the movies I've seen. Didn't seem to line up.
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"If we could make your toaster print something we would." - Jordan Weisman

PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 4:01 am
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Dorkmaster
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Joined: 27 Jul 2004
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 		I hate to do this to the dude... Todd, seriously, email me, if you're offended. For real. I'm totally with you, and you rock my world. But, being a red-blooded ARGer, I'm forced to put pieces together...


Anyway, Todd, whose image is used for William Shriner, I thought the picture used in his "mini avatar" like in the "Top Players" field... that mini image looked vaguely familiar to me... I googled it, cuz, you know, we do that sort of thing (I really feel kinda bad, dude, for real... email me after all this and let me know you don't hate me!)...

Anyway, here's where that picture comes from:



It has to do with a story from where his co-star of Diff'rent Strokes, Dana Plato (who played Kimberly) died from a drug overdose. The story refers to Todd's law-issues with substance abuse and his possession of a loaded weapon. I just don't know why they'd use this photo. Anyway... I don't feel 100% cool with it, but I also wouldn't feel 100% like a true ARGer if I didn't dig up what I could in a meta thread about the topic.

(Seriously... don't be pissed. Let me know in ANY way, and this post is bye-bye. Not trying to bring up bad past stuff... but why let them use this photo, dude?)

Anyway, I must end this with my most sincere props to the dude who could have been like William and let it all bring him down, but he didn't. He looks back once, grits his teeth, decides to change, and moves on to bigger and better. Tip o' the hat to you Mr. Bridges. I'll be the first to go to your next film!

EDIT: And to make things a bit more balanced, here's where the other photo came from:



Apparently, Todd is a fan of pcchat and Maxtor. Who knew? Smile

So the question becomes, did they actually get Todd to do the role, or is this just red herring to the extreme, and they used public domain photos? I dunno. I'm still hoping Todd did this, as well as the other actors. I'd assume anyone in a video (duh) would have to be the same, but we haven't seen Todd in a video. I dunno... anyway, more uselss stuff from teh dorkmastah...
_________________
"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." -William Gibson
"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it." - PJ O'Rourke
"ACADEMY, n. A modern school where football is taught." - Ambrose Bierce

PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 4:21 am
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krystyn
I Never Tire of My Own Voice


Joined: 26 Sep 2002
Posts: 3651
Location: Is not Chicago

 		We've heard audio. He really loves a clean bathroom.
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Stories and dreams, crossing my palm like silver.

xbl gamertag: krystyn

PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:43 am
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Phaedra
Lurker v2.0


Joined: 21 Sep 2004
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Location: Here, obviously

 		I really, really doubt they'd use his image without his permission. Especially considering he's a fairly major character (not a "first-tier" character like Lucy or Matt, but not someone like hikerd00d).
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:22 am
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2716
Location: State of Denial
Dorkmaster wrote:


So the question becomes, did they actually get Todd to do the role, or is this just red herring to the extreme, and they used public domain photos? I dunno. I'm still hoping Todd did this, as well as the other actors. I'd assume anyone in a video (duh) would have to be the same, but we haven't seen Todd in a video. I dunno... anyway, more uselss stuff from teh dorkmastah...



It is his voice on the audio recordings. With the corporate backing comes the cash to actually pay people for their pictures. Maybe he hopes to wipe out the previous connection with the first pic you mention by associating it with something fun and lighthearted... and a silent tribute to a friend who now lives only in the mind of her co-stars and viewers

We miss her to, Todd.
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Magesteff
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead


PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 2:20 pm
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Dorkmaster
Unfictologist


Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 1328
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 		To clarify, I didn't really think that it isn't Todd, but again, this is 42 who is really really smart as a whole and I wouldn't put it beyond them to figure out some nifty legal loophole to use celebrity public domain photos or pay a small fee for AP-photos or SOMETHING... Anyway, I am like 99% positive that any picture is the actor playing the role, I just thought I'd throw that out there.

Now I feel like I'm dissing the dude for not being the dude... Awww... man I'm messed up now. Everyone rocks here... I'm not putting down anyone, and um, yeah. I need a drink. Smile
_________________
"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." -William Gibson
"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it." - PJ O'Rourke
"ACADEMY, n. A modern school where football is taught." - Ambrose Bierce

PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 4:02 pm
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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?


Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2716
Location: State of Denial
Dorkmaster wrote:
Now I feel like I'm dissing the dude for not being the dude... Awww... man I'm messed up now. Everyone rocks here... I'm not putting down anyone, and um, yeah. I need a drink. Smile


/me pats Dorkster on the back

Some celebrities are good sports... looks like Mr. Bridges is one of them. Very Happy
/me gets Dorkmaster a drink of Lemonaide

Would you like your Lemonaide with sugar or alcohol?
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Magesteff
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead


PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 6:16 pm
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SMG3er
Veteran

Joined: 20 Apr 2005
Posts: 134
Dorkmaster wrote:


So the question becomes, did they actually get Todd to do the role, or is this just red herring to the extreme, and they used public domain photos? I dunno. I'm still hoping Todd did this, as well as the other actors. I'd assume anyone in a video (duh) would have to be the same, but we haven't seen Todd in a video. I dunno... anyway, more uselss stuff from teh dorkmastah...


Heh, we can always call him and ask:

(Scroll down to the last person)
http://www.hollywoodiscalling.com/index.php?page=2&change_page=TO+SEE+MORE+CELEBRITIES+CLICK+HERE

PostPosted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:16 pm
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