New Eyes on Old Soldiers

Just thought I'd take a second to note how the epiphany of just one person can make a big difference in the Alternative Reality Gaming world. Hwoami came into the Old Soldiers game a little while after we'd all been completely stumped by the original cipher sent to ARGnet - we'd come to the conclusion that it was some kind of double columnar transposition cipher, but this would require two separate keywords to decipher and we'd exhausted all possibilities. With a fresh set of eyes he was able to effectively intellectually-bitchslap the rest of us by realising that these two images:

Could be overlain to highlight a specific part of the cipher page:

He has successfully won himself about 27x internets (that's all his internets for the next 3.4 years) for this. Congrats.

You can continue to follow our flounderings at unFiction here.

ps. reaching the end of The Looking Glass Club; I am beginning to think this book is far cleverer than I am.

Old Soldiers

I was browsing through my normal blog-related haunts and came across an article written at ARGNet regarding a recent package they received. Michael Anderson talks about how he recently received a strange package from a man known only as "LOKI", one perhaps related to governmental conspiracies and WW2 veterans. Now, any normal human being; having received mail from a Norse God, would be rather perturbed, perhaps seeking psychiatric attention; but any ARG player would immediately scream TRAILHEAD and run around the office with the package precariously balanced on their head and waving their arms around Kermit the Frog.

On Andersons advice, I popped over to unFiction and perused the details. Seems ARGNet's package contained a number of cryptic clues, dating from WW2 era to present day. An encoded letter, a creased photograph stamped with (we have recently discovered) the message "Time Sensitive Material", strange maps, death certificates and newpaper cuttings. We are currently working on a number of these pieces, including the coded letter, to try to work out what the deuce is going on.

What we do know is that the game is a prelude to the release of Big House Comics' upcoming story "Old Soldiers":

A story born in the last days of World War 2. Across the globe five men begin to feel the pull towards New York, Five Families. What is the  mysterious connection that they have, why are they being called? The pieces in a game that has played out over generations are in place, ready for the end.

The end of the world?

Big House have stated that the release of Old Soldiers will be coordinated with a multimedia campaign and the story itself will bring the reader into an "immersive world" with parts of the story being told online.

For now, our only lead are a number of clues which point towards oddjobs.biz and a strange personality test which claims to be able to give you your perfect job prediction. In reality, the personality test is most likely a kind of "sign up" form for the game which is set to play out - I've certainly signed up, a link can be found here.



Whilst we wait for a reply, the brainboxes at unFiction are furiously decoding the cipher on the original letter and attempting to piece the story together from redacted documents and mysterious coded messages. We are making some headway; with lupusfurcifer translating a Russian letter for us, and Knarf and malevolentneon attempting to persuade an American player to call the number listed on the Odd Jobs website.

What will be interesting about this game, will be the concrete result of a tangible story at the end. You can guarantee its been well thought out and I can't wait to get my teeth into the juicy details which may be hidden below the veneer of the Odd Jobs site. Jump over to unFiction and join the thread to get all the latest info on where we are. Follow on after the jump for links to all the contents of LOKI's package.

ps. bought DC Universe Online yesterday. I figured I'd try the free month and if I don't like it I can always just pack it in. Matt at Darkmatters persuaded me, I expect him to piggyback me through the early hours of the game as payment.

No Res Shrines: Gaming and the Real World

On the surface, the gaming world is murky and dank. Its dark and cold and confusing, populated by overzealous fourteen year olds slapping their "ep33n" around on FPSs and thirty somethings hunched over keyboards in the basement of their Mother's house in the suburbs and roleplaying busty Night Elves. This is the image of gaming which we have grown to accept; one of mindless escapism, a disconnected self which is controllable in a totally different and disconnected Universe.

Increasingly, however, this restrictive and short sighted vision of gaming is being challenged. Governmental analysts are beginning to confirm something that, deep down inside our heart of hearts, we've always known; gaming makes us better people. This assertion is two fold - on the one hand, there is the exciting prospect that gaming physically and mentally trains us for certain situations. A couple of weeks ago, The Onion jokingly suggested that games such as Gears of War and Fallout 3 are training our children to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

I know I've learned that surreptitiously slipping a live grenade into the pockets of unsuspecting bandits can be a laugh riot, and iguana bits are no substitute for vast amounts of synthetic Nuka-Cola. Today wired.co.uk (my faithful friend) published an article by Noah Schachtman on how American analysts are using videogames to weed out bias in their operatives.

The agency is looking to axe everything from "anchoring bias" (relying too much on a single piece of evidence) to "confirmation bias" (only accepting facts that back up your pre-made case) to "fundamental attribution error" (attributing too much in an incident to personality, instead of circumstance).

I have to admit there is a place in my gut which leaps at the thought that playing Black Ops might make me into a one man killing machine, a real life 007; utilising my twitch reactions to mow down a camp-full of bogies in seconds and then zip lining into my chalet in Switzerland with my sultry femme fatale; Olga. In actuality I think the only thing I'll end up with is bad eyesight, a bit of a belly and the thumbs of a 65 year old.



On the other hand, there is the implementation of gaming in the effort to stimulate real social change. On a more Alternative Reality Gaming slant; Jane McGonigal's book "Reality is Broken: Why Games make us Better and how they can Change the World" focuses on the attempts at using games to raise awareness and encourage "off the wall" thinking when it comes to national and international social problems. McGonigal states that reality is broken because games act as "happiness hacks" and so are more productive at producing happiness than real life situations. This is why gaming is so often used as an escapist pastime.

McGonigal goes on to state that instead of lamenting this change, perhaps the strengths that can be found in gaming strategies could be harnessed to affect social change. Alternative Reality Games could be used as vehicles to increase awareness of particularly critical subjects or even stimulate players to actively improve their lives through giving real world targets to attain.

Michael Andersen at ARGNet did a sterling job reviewing and summarising McGonigal's latest book, although he is skeptical of the application of gamification tactics to real world problems stating that he does not wholly believe that gaming strategies can be applied to "complex problems that are resistant to game designer attempts to reduce goals to concrete action steps". I've already stated that ARG gaming has affected me in a very real way, increasing my ability to make connections, widening my knowledge of cryptography and deduction and giving me a wide variety of skills which I have already been able to apply to my life.

I'm quite enthusiastic about gaming being a vehicle for change in real life, but I believe we need a big push; something to really carry gamification into the media eye and advertise it as a powerful vehicle for social revolution. Alternative Reality Games need the equivalent of what Facebook was for social networks.