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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » ARG: Find the Lost Ring
[PRESS] Find the Lost Ring
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		G&M article's been postponed by the editors until next week. Don't know why, kind of a dumb move, unless it's like timing movie releases - get the article out when excitement has died down and there aren't loads of others reporting similar things. But then, the excitement will have died down. *shrug*
next friday.


TVO's The Agenda (with Jane) should be available online shortly I'm assuming.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 10:10 am
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mr.judkins
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Joined: 26 Feb 2008
Posts: 393
Location: Wellington, NZ

 		Yep. It's up now. Very Happy

Looking forward to watching the first half we missed...

PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 3:38 pm
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		link to video
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 4:12 pm
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Elizabeth123
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Joined: 15 Mar 2008
Posts: 285

 		Excellent discussion! Hmmm, Steve Paikin said online gamers "enjoy the subversive aspects of life." Interesting that we're thought of as subversive...Maybe people should be scared of us.

PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2008 4:18 pm
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		ShootOnline.com - AKQA's Trailers Launch The Lost Ring Game For McDonald's

fairly meta, behind the scenes, discussing trailer development, talking a lot with the team at PostPanic...

interesting closing paragraph, includes:
Quote:
[McDonalds] is also planning a global TV spot and is sponsoring a reality TV-type competition show that will allow the winning children to participate in Olympics programs.

hard to tell if that's going to be Lost Ring advertising, or McDonalds advertising, or if the spot and tv show will be related to the Lost Ring at all, but still something to keep an eye out for...
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:16 am
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danteIL
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Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 1990
Quote:
The trailer began with a series of five Olympic style rings, which were created in 3D and "based on a gyroscope idea," she said.


I *knew* that those rings looked like they were in 3D!! Quick someone get me a pair of those green/red glasses!!

PostPosted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:50 am
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konamouse
Official uF Dietitian


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

 		This article will only be "free" to view for a few days. So I'm "archiving" it here for future reading:

Quote:
SAN FRANCISCO, April 09, 2008, Ken Liebeskind --- You wouldn't know it by looking at it, but The Lost Ring, an Olympics related alternate reality game, is sponsored by McDonald's. AKQA/San Francisco developed the game for McDonald's, which was launched March 3.
Edwin Veelo, associate creative director at AKQA, said McDonald's was "very excited to put out the experience that spreads an encounter of cultures. They like to extend the experience by creating a game that anyone can engage with, but they don't want to bring it out as a marketing scheme. So there is nothing related to their product in the game and they are careful to maintain the authentic experience."
The Lost Ring is a game, designed in collaboration with the International Olympics Committee, that blends online and offline clues that users can collaborate on to solve puzzles. The game is Olympics related because it centers on lost Olympic sports. "Players find out that characters come from a universe that has the Olympics sports and for the benefit of our universe it's important that we bring the sports back," Veelo said.
The game is available in seven languages with 10 characters providing clues via YouTube videos, Flickr photos and Twitter updates. AKQA created trailers that play at www.thelostring.com to introduce the game. The trailers were produced by PostPanic/Amsterdam.
Trailer 1, a one-minute, forty-one second film, starts in ancient Greece in 393 AD, where Theodosius, the Roman emperor, banned the Olympic games "and an ancient secret was lost forever. In 2008, the secret is about to be uncovered."
The trailer "is a teaser for the experience. We wanted to make sure that anyone who would consider following the story would know what the quality of the experience would be," Veelo said.
The film includes expansive scenes of corn fields, which provide a setting for the game. "We did the filming in Portugal, where they had just harvested, so they could keep the corn in a deep freezer," said Ania Markham, PostPanic's executive producer. "We built a huge set in the studio and green screened the corn." They used real corn in front with compter generated corn in the background.
PostPanic also specializes in graphics and developed a series of computer graphics to relate information about the game. "The biggest challenge was to communicate information to the players to get them started," Markham said.
The trailer began with a series of five Olympic style rings, which were created in 3D and "based on a gyroscope idea," she said.
Mischa Rozema, the PostPanic director, said the goal of the trailer was to "create excitement on a big scale for a world enveloping game. I wanted to show that it could measure up to a Hollywood blockbuster.
"The trailer had to communicate different periods of time, from ancient Greece where a runner goes through a maze to current times," he said. The production involved "different treatments with a landscape that had a biblical scale with polar mountains in the back and corn fields in front for an epic feel."
PostPanic shot the trailer with Arricam LT and Arri 4.35 ES cameras.
Veelo compared AKQA's work on The Lost Ring with the video advertising it created for the Microsoft Xbox Halo 3 game that included shots of a 1,200 foot diorama that shows a futuristic fight between the main characters. The difference is that AKQA's work for Halo 3 was advertising for the game, whereas The Lost Ring is the game itself.
AKQA created the game with help from Jane McGonigal, the Avant Game designer, and created the site the game plays on. Of course, the game can be considered advertising for McDonald's, which is using it as part of "our most innovative and probably our biggest activation ever for the Olympics," said Mary Dillon, McDonald's global chief marketing officer. The company is also planning a global TV spot and is sponsoring a reality TV-type competition show that will allow the winning children to participate in Olympics programs. AKQA is playing The Lost Ring trailers on the game site and at YouTube and video sharing sites in different countries, Veelo said.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:47 am
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RobMagus
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Joined: 17 Jul 2004
Posts: 469
Location: Vancouver, BC

 		The Globe and Mail article has been printed.

Schwa!

http://tinyurl.com/692uxh
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:11 pm
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		don't want to derail, so 'll keep it short since I responded in my own blog...

Again with the problems. The quotes, I'm fine with. But re: the labyrinth event - I didn't do any pursuading - that was all Melody who pretty much did everything there, I just filmed and edited, as I've always described; don't know why it was written that way, I didn't imply it in the slightest. credit where credit is due. *sigh*
otherwise, purdy good article. nothing really new, but a good overview, even if it was pushed back a week Wink

lots of player quotes and chats. yay Rob!
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 1:35 pm
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Melody
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Joined: 22 Mar 2008
Posts: 13
Location: Guelph, Ontario

 		yay... more press!

PostPosted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 12:46 am
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		East Bay Express - The planet that plays together stays together

one the more revealing, interesting articles release, IMO...

primarily, statements like this:
Quote:
According to McGonigal, 21 percent of the total games players are from Latin America, almost matching Americans (25 percent of players) in enthusiasm.
...
Weaned on American hegemony in all things entertainment, they don't always do their due diligence, checking the foreign language blogs to see if new revelations have emerged there exclusively (hint: they have).
...
"Players in other countries are working a little harder, because they don't assume that all of the content is going to be in their own language," McGonigal said. As for the lagging Americans: "They'll catch up eventually," she said.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 12:36 pm
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unagi
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Joined: 31 Mar 2008
Posts: 464
Location: Japan
Quote:
While McGonigal says the gamers are on schedule and on track, there are still many important pieces of game lore, chapters of a mysterious text called the Codex, still awaiting translation into Mandarin and Japanese.


Oh ... orz

No, we are only four chapters behind ... although some translated chapters haven't been uploaded on the wiki ....

PostPosted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 12:52 pm
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Weezel
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Joined: 01 Sep 2006
Posts: 420
Location: National Park, NJ
thebruce wrote:
East Bay Express - The planet that plays together stays together

one the more revealing, interesting articles release, IMO...

primarily, statements like this:
Quote:
According to McGonigal, 21 percent of the total games players are from Latin America, almost matching Americans (25 percent of players) in enthusiasm.
...
Weaned on American hegemony in all things entertainment, they don't always do their due diligence, checking the foreign language blogs to see if new revelations have emerged there exclusively (hint: they have).
...
"Players in other countries are working a little harder, because they don't assume that all of the content is going to be in their own language," McGonigal said. As for the lagging Americans: "They'll catch up eventually," she said.


Do you think she's talking about the ingame blogs/forums, or is there a whole nother LA community that is tearing into this stuff as well?
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:16 pm
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sapagoo
Charter Member


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 1213
Location: Atlanta, GA

 		BrandWeek article about McDonald's and their "Year of Innovation" mentions The Lost Ring.

Quote:
BrandWeek: What are you doing with digital?
Mary Dillon: We created The Lost Ring. Obviously the way young adults consume media is different from anybody else. One of the ways they love to spend their time is online and there is a subgroup of adults who really like to spend time gaming. We created the first ever global alternate reality game. It launched about six weeks ago and will continue into the Olympics. It encourages people to join forces online and offline to solve this mystery.

We're learning as we go from this market. It's really about engaging the young adult community and building a relationship with them. Since it launched, we have two million that have been engaged in the game around the world. It's being played in seven languages across 100 countries. It has spread very virally. It's not something, unless you're in that world, that's easy to relate to. There were times when I was trying to get this off of the ground and make it happen that it was challenging to get people to understand what we've done here.


PostPosted: Tue May 06, 2008 10:35 am
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mapmaker
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Joined: 26 Sep 2005
Posts: 608
Location: Providence, RI, USA

 		Notgordian posted an article from AOL sports in #unfiction. Someone doesn't likey:

Mark Hasty wrote:
WANTED: One black-belt level computer geek to help decipher McDonald's Olympic tie-in promotion. Knowledge of mythology, numerology, and Esperanto essential. Single-minded obsessive streak helpful but not necessary. Must be willing to not relocate until start of Olympic Games in September. Send resume/c.v./documentation of non-existent social entanglements c/o this author.

I'd love to tell you I'm kidding, but I'm not. After several attempts to understand The Lost Ring, the aforementioned McD's promotional video game, I feel like somebody's been beating me on the head with a small pillow for the better part of an afternoon.

The Lost Ring is an "alternate reality game," which means it's an impossibly complicated contest designed for people who actually wish they were stranded on the island from "Lost," running from the Others and the Dharma Initiative. Except this time, instead of plane crash survivors, the characters are (so far as I can tell) ancient Olympic athletes who found themselves blinked into the middle of cornfields dressed in modern athletic gear, with cryptic tattoos on their forearms.

Of course the tattoos are in Esperanto. What were you expecting? And, since mysterious numbers are so important on "Lost," they're a big part of The Lost Ring, too. But this is more than just a "Lost" ripoff, right?

Right. It also rips off "The Amazing Race" and those lonelygirl15 videos from YouTube, with a good dose of mythology, plate tectonics, and of course "parallel multiverses" thrown in as a bonus.

The six main characters in The Lost Ring come from all over the globe, each with some combination of blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, and Flickr accounts to establish their 21st-century bona fides. You're not supposed to be able to figure out that they're all ancient Greek athletes, but it's pretty obvious, since they all have amnesia and memory of a single Greek word from some sort of vision.

The point of the game is ... actually, I haven't the foggiest idea what the point of the game is. It's one of those annoying postmodern things where they try to convince you the tasks they're involving you in are simple because they can be summed up in two or three words. They only seem simple, though, because no one will give you the information you need to solve the puzzles. This might seem like great fun if you're a student. If you've ever logged any time in a cubicle, the experience is simply redundant.

The Plot: There's this lost Olympic sport, and some sort of secret surrounding the Olympic Rings. I think. I didn't take the time to the read the Codex of the Lost Ring because after grad school, I vowed never to read anything called a "codex" again. It's also got something to do with labyrinths, which in the game are terrifying traps, but in real life are simply twisty walkways in which it is not possible to make a wrong decision about which way to go.

Somehow the destiny of these six characters is to meet someplace (if that someplace isn't Beijing or Athens, I'll eat a Chicken McNugget) and take part in this ancient lost sport. After watching some of the characters' videos and reading large portions of the wiki associated with the game (Ooh! How very Web 2.0!) I found myself hoping that this lost sport involves them trying to catch javelins. Unfortunately, it involves running blindfolded through a labyrinth which, like Soylent Green, is made of people.

The Game: To be fair, The Lost Ring is very beautifully done. I don't know if McDonald's spent a lot of money on it, but it sure looks like someone did. And they did a masterful job of making sure that the game is so complex that no one could possibly solve it on their own, thus ensuring that a virtual community would have to spring up. All of these people from all over the world will be visiting McDonald's-branded websites every day. (The McD's logos are not obvious, but they're there.) From a marketing point of view, they didn't miss a thing.

In the long run, though, there's nothing here for a sports fan, and the connection to the Olympics (both ancient and modern) is iffy. There wasn't a blindfolded labyrinth run in the ancient Olympiad, and even if there had been, the three female characters wouldn't have been allowed to take part in it, unless they were Spartans.

Call me when you bring back the Monopoly game, Ronald.


PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:15 pm
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