unforum

[Varin]

[EMAIL] Kane Winthrop 8/6 recap

[thebruce]

Kriel also has a mysterious 'gig' back at his hometown on Tuesday, as noted on his news page, but no location or information is given (as one would assume if it were a real event)... his hometown being Gibsonton, near the location in Florida of the photo taken of Faith with the bridge in the background, the Skyway Bridge, crossing between Palmetto and St.Petersburg.
Suspicious...

[TridenT]

Welp, I got one of these emails, so I guess I'm back in the game, baby!

(Just in time for the 2nd anniversary of a certain set of phone calls...)

[hayyoth]

so who all go these emails? i got one too... is it just to the people who are on the occulareffect.com's forums?

maybe not as many people as ABC had hoped were posting and they're trying to recapture interest?

[Esteed]

I got the same email. People that use Yahoo, pay attention to your Bulk folder, as that's where it showed up for me. Any clues you can make out from the wording of the email?

[Lostpedian]

The only clue I get from that email is that it's yet another insulting, remedial summary from TPTB's (Xenophile Media Inc.). Those of us following this "game" have to wait several days between updates, only have the same clues "recapped" for us ten different ways.

I use the term "game" here loosely, since there has been no real interaction on our part. We're in a choose-you-own-adventure book, with someone else turning the pages.

The ARG is said to last for eight weeks. Well, we're two weeks in already with little to show for it. Interest is clearly waning, based on the traffic in the forums.

It may be too late for Xenophile to salvage this. I get the feeling that the planning for this game was hurried, since direction has changed too often to be intentional. First, the game opened with MySpace pages for Faith and Vix, then moved to dedicated websites. The OcularEffect main page and HelpFindHer.com have gone through radical changes. The OcularEffect forums have been locked down by removing features like private messaging. Even the in-game contact EyesWideOpen changed his name one week into the game!. This latest revelation about Kriel failed when the http://www.kriel.tv/allnew.html, video, and mp3 went missing for many hours.

I think ABC Family needs to ask Xenophile for a refund.

Sorry for the rant.

[Esteed]

Agreed about the interest being waning. I get that these things are sometimes a waiting game, but there's a limit to how long I'll voluntarily wait for something. You'd think they'd want to avoid becoming the DMV of ARGs...

[Lostpedian]

I don't mind waiting... so long as I cared about what was going on. TPTB's have not written a good story and I just don't -care- about the characters.

EyesWideOpen is just another "something weird is going on with my website" who wants our help, but there is no face to him. No pictures, very little background, and some confusion even about his name. He doesn't seem very actively involved, and being the only moderator on the forums, his maintenance is lacking. His only actions are to close duplicate threads, but he doesn't rename or merge to keep things tidy. He's turned off private messaging, so you can't even contact him except by posting a new thread, and doesn't answer anyway. His most recent summaries says that several people emailed him pics from Comic-Con, but that was NEVER brought up in the forums until he posted on the main page. If there really were people at ComicCon giving tattoos, I think it shows that TPTB's failed again - perhaps they thought at least a few ARG players would have made the connection, and it didn't work out?

Miss Vix is not being portrayed as a realistic business-woman. Her "portfolio site"/blog is poorly designed and there is NO contact information for her business - not an address, phone or email. How would we even be able to make an appointment? You can only suspend disbelief to a point - these gaps take you right out of the game.

Faith is a girl with a weird story, but she's not in any immediate danger. She doesn't seem to need our help. The mystery of her symbols and background just doesn't seem compelling enough.

And why the hell are there all these different email addresses for Bethlehem Conservatory, yet NONE of the emails that I and others sent are being answered?

[Greyelf]

Just for completeness sake, I also recieved the same email.

[Vale]

I suppose I also did, but as I said at the OE forums, I can't check my email. Thanks for posting it, Varin.

Ditto on the waning interest. Maybe they'll extend the timeline....but ever since the check thing, and the lawyer for BC, I've been completely

[sammael]

[thebruce]

see my comments
welcome to UF Sam!