unforum

[Wulf74]

Heh - I feel as if I was just clouted upside the head. When I registered on the OracleWatch website the other day, under the "Thoughts" portion, I asked a question. Specifically why they needed all of my information. To be clear, it's not because I'm paranoid about identity theft, or the like - but because I have email/twitter/IM/etc setup under the name Wulf - to keep it separate from my RL stuff. The response I received was... startling?

[DarkWings]

So the question poses itself. Find the writer and risk changing the game. Or more waiting. What exactly are they baiting us to do? Or is it something more obtuse because of the email stating the hijack and such, and seemingly blurring ingame/oog?

[classical]

Well, that explains the image!
(Oooh, jesus, that's a perfect reference. Everything I ever felt watching Synecdoche, New York sums up my feelings for this game perfectly. If y'all haven't seen it, do so, and be prepared to walk away unsettled, questioning who and where you are.)

Anyway. Funny, the responder should desire us to share our real information freely, but they continue to hide behind a persona. Feh. It sounds mostly like he's just using the name to hide behind, though the 'good evening, Brother' thing makes me wonder.

However, we have to remember that our Brian D. Bricker is, in a sense, not the real one. We all know that there is a real, honest-to-god Brian D. Bricker out there, but... we've only been talking to a 'fake' Brian D. Bricker that is/was puppeted by Eric. Which is why, I feel, that chat with Eric happened in the first place--to expose the strings, rather than allow us to believe that character!Bricker was real!Bricker playing himself.

So as far as we know, we actually haven't 'found the writer' yet.

And part of me wonders if that's a challenge.


also, rereading: '... better pinpoint those who have embedded themselves into the world of Portnoy King and The Oracle as agents of whatever organization that mocks us ...'

Does that mean... the Watchers are not IG? Or some of them aren't IG? Or, perhaps, weren't supposed to be IG? I can't recall any place they've given us incorrect information, just very cryptic and not-useful-til-later information... but they did lead us to the ticket and oraclewatch.org. So while they are IG, this sentence makes me wonder wtf is going on here.

Don't get me wrong--I love the flexibility this game has had in incorporating not just the gamejacks into the storyline, but also its players (/cough). But it's beginning to reach a point where it'll be hard to stay just between the ditches when the mudslide floods onto the road.

The gamejack would explain the general pause in activity on the PM's side of things, but... fuck, part of me just wants to throw up my hands and say this entire gamejack is IG, Kade/DE is a puppet of the PM, and all of this mess was all intentional. It's just so much easier that way, even if I can't begin to comprehend the amount of planning it would take to get there. Bleh.

I will continue to the play 'the game', or what I perceive to be 'the game', but jesus fucking christ this is so complicated. This game has me so captivated and yet so confused that it been invading my dreams for weeks now. No lie.

[3v1L Schwinn]

[Lunsford]

No wonder I can't grasp what is and isnt IG. From the first post, things haven't been on the up and up.

[elfis]

[meta and oog] I strongly suspect that the PMs for this story / game are over-embellishing the supposed game-jacking. If my limited knowledge of the alleged game-jackers is even semi-accurate they are not IG and not game-jacking so much as watching and warning OOG about the nature of the alleged PMs.

If the assumptions regarding who the PMs are is correct then blurring of the lines and the breaking of traditional rules associated with unforums are to be expected.

I'm not even convinced this is a traditional ARG in the "game" since ... I'm thinking it is more along the line of future PM recruitment as is alleged regarding Incunabula / Ong's Hat etc. ... or maybe this will turn out to be the arg to end all args if you listen to the alleged game-jackers.

But what the heck do I know, I'm just a paranoid ARG-watcher worried about the misuse of such "games" for much more nefarious purposes - which is largely speculative anyway. I'm also interested in the flip-side, how ARGs can be used for the greater good.

But unless DE/Kade has been a shadow-sleeper-cell-ARG-agent since 2003 (http://www.dreamsend.blogspot.com ) ... or has since been recruited by a competing ARG developer ... or has had his online identity stolen and resurrected as a game-jacker ... I just don't buy the idea that there are two warring factions of PMs at play here - probably just the original designers struggling with some interlopers and possible monkey-wrenching by simply pointing out the meta elements.

I hate to have even posted this ... oh well.

"I'm Sorry" if my interjection is off-base or worse, feeding the big game-jacker conspiracy.
[/meta and oog]

[windup angel]

re: gamejacking, I'd kind of been under the impression that this was all part of the story.

Remember way back when

[classical]

So windup discovered this little counter on Brian Bricker's website.

What's it counting down to? Midnight at 09/09/09.

edit:

[Grady Martin]

yeah - counting to 9/9/9

the checkmate is from Blade Runner - Sebastien and Tyrell's game - and also the conclusion to the Immortal Game - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_game - played on 21 June 1851 - June 21, hey, that's summer solstice

[double spoiler hex protection]

[classical]

[BlackandBlue]

WTF?

[Tempestdevil]

i haven't been around much, again.. a certain massively multiplayer online RPG has been taking up all my time. ;P

i have some meta to throw into the ring though. perhaps the people running this game are exaggerating a bit. What I think is happening, is they're all ad-libbing, much like our friend Eric did.

I believe that the entire thing with Kade/DE trying to ruin the game, that was very real. No IG there. He really believed he was correct, and he was dead-set on ending the game as a sort of revenge. Obviously he failed, and I don't really ever think it was a viable thing that he would kill the game, but now we're rolling with it. Now, the PM(s) are taking his little interference, and setting the ball rolling, making it seem like it was part of the game. Because honestly, if this game had been under siege since April 8th, wouldn't we have noticed a little earlier? It was perfectly fine up until Kade jumped on the scene, then we started getting little tweaks, PMs insisting that someone was sabotaging the game. I think a very large amount of this game is about rolling with the punches, and I figure while they tried to stabilize their new storyline to mesh up with what they had planned, they kind of led us off the path, to distract us. Hence some of the things that make absolutely no sense and seem to just be dead ends. I believe they were put here on purpose, to lead us in circles for a day or two and let them work things out proper.

Phew.

[Yo-L]

I want to thank windup angel for the summary on the wiki.

I haven't registered on www.Oraclewatch.org yet, but I might. I don't have a lot of time to follow the game for long though (I'll go on holiday for 2 months sometime soon).

[META] I don't know about other ARGS, so is this the first time a real person is one of the main characters in an ARG? And the PMs really using real life elements of that person in the ARG?

[Tempestdevil]

Just signed up at oraclewatch too, but no email yet.. How long did it take you guys to receive responses?

[Merago]

Heh, this just gets more and more confusing, but it's impossible to drag yourself away.
I'm really looking forward to this game's conclusion as hopefully the PM(s) will let us know the truth about what's been going on in this game, what's IG, what's not. What's a gamejack and what's not.