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**Posted:** Thu Nov 16, 2006 11:51 am

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'squeek'
r u a Sammeeeee? I am Forever!

Nightmare Tony

Craigs list, amazing place. Just got a free boat. 13 foot sailboat with trailer. No mast or sail,m though. Still floats. Fixin 'er up Smile

**Posted:** Sun Nov 19, 2006 9:59 pm

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For this is the place where dreams and nightmares are birthed and bred
Nightmare Park

White_Knight · Boot Joined: 07 Nov 2003 Posts: 58

I have just 2 words:

ARG FEST

A gathering of large portion of the dedicated players all in one place for a weekend = Captive Target Audience

I'm sure you're creative enough to think of something.

**Posted:** Thu Nov 23, 2006 5:00 am

Nightmare Tony

Live event madness there. If enough clues were given along the way culminating at Argfest...the joy should be there...

**Posted:** Thu Nov 23, 2006 11:26 am

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For this is the place where dreams and nightmares are birthed and bred
Nightmare Park

MageSteff

**Posted:** Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:32 am

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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

slainangel · Guest

I was recently contemplating setting up something for research which might be useful for people looking somewhere to put a rabbithole.

The site would be essentially a fictional newspaper (just their online edition, of course). Partially populated with news stories from the real world (maybe even syndicated news sources if I could afford it), and partially with fictitious stories.
The original objective for me was to see whether people's comments and discussions vary depending on the type of stories (are people more likely to discuss a sensational story, or a real one? Do rhyming headlines really make a difference?), and allowing fictitious content would allow me to post stories with facts doctored as needed in order to test a particular hypothesis. A covert second experiment would be looking at the statistics to see if the number of people cheating on the "do you think this article is factual?" question varies between sensational/cute/celebrity/etc categories.

But now I think about it ... such a website could be a great resource for PMs to advertise. A news site with real syndicated news, but where readers are also free to submit their own articles whether they're true or not. If the existence of such a site was known among the ARG community, anyone looking out for a new game could look through the week's top stories until they found a puzzle they liked.
Maybe even allow retroactive posting to trusted people ... you could insert news stories dated months or even years earlier, to provide some support for your game's backstory.

Am I barking up a dead tree? Or does something like this already exist?

**Posted:** Mon Dec 25, 2006 6:24 pm

JohnLockeGuy · Decorated Joined: 15 Oct 2006 Posts: 181

^That seems incredibly interesting... I really think someone should set that up. As far as I know, it doesn't exist... but it would be awesome. A free, easy way to launch games. People who don't know the difference reading through the articles, find a website, characters, puzzles, etc... It would have to be heavily moderated, though, because people would inevitably submit inappropriate things.

But, get to work! Smile

I'd certainly use it.

**Posted:** Wed Dec 27, 2006 1:36 pm

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Played: The Lost Experience // CassieIsWatching // The 4400
Made: Free! Psychic Readings // The Night People // Reindeer Games
Playing: Cathy's Book

AtionSong · Unfettered Joined: 29 Aug 2006 Posts: 352

You could probably add read stories by using the Google News RSS feed:

http://news.google.com/nwshp?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wn&q=&output=rss

Ah, the beauty open source.

**Posted:** Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:16 pm

slainAngel · Guest

Thanks for the support Smile

As far as moderation goes - does a newspaper have moderators to approve the stories? I think the nearest thing is probably an editor.

For the purpose of this site, there would be a team of 6 writers on the staff. All articles would be written by one of these 6, and conform to a standard "house style". Each writer would also have their own personal style, which might allow a regular reader to identify them.

Articles would be taken from a free news source (possibly google news ... have to check the terms & conditions), or from public submissions. While some might be posted verbatim, I suspect most would be rewritten either to be more useful for one of the experiments, or to make the fictional articles stand out less.

Of course, in the editorial process we would respect the requests of any PMs who want either the whole message or part of it reproduced exactly for whatever reasons of important minor details, steganography or similar clues.

**Posted:** Sat Dec 30, 2006 2:35 pm

JohnLockeGuy · Decorated Joined: 15 Oct 2006 Posts: 181

**Posted:** Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:17 pm

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Played: The Lost Experience // CassieIsWatching // The 4400
Made: Free! Psychic Readings // The Night People // Reindeer Games
Playing: Cathy's Book

JohnLockeGuy · Decorated Joined: 15 Oct 2006 Posts: 181

http://www.care2.com/news/

That's a news website based on user submissions... maybe we should figure out how that works, and then do the same? Smile

**Posted:** Sun Dec 31, 2006 9:10 pm

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Played: The Lost Experience // CassieIsWatching // The 4400
Made: Free! Psychic Readings // The Night People // Reindeer Games
Playing: Cathy's Book

djsampson · Unfettered Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 393 Location: INDY

**Posted:** Tue Jan 02, 2007 6:08 am

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I take your reality and substitute it with my own! -Mythbusters

Simmons247 · Boot Joined: 14 Jul 2007 Posts: 27 Location: Scotland

Hmm wellll if iw as to launch one that i've been thinking about i'd just e-mail the mods on the forums with a start and knowing that they would'nt be able to resist a good arg they'd fall into my trap *mwahaha* ahem

then they'b probibily kill me if they started getting spammed with ARG things hehe

**Posted:** Sun Jul 15, 2007 6:09 am

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Simmons =)