This Is Not A Game

TINAG is the mantra of a good ARG player and a effective PuppetMaster. It binds the whole game together, keeps players involved and immersed and ensures that the PM can hide effectively behind the curtain pulling the strings at will. It stands for "This Is Not A Game" and essentially translates to that whilst we are "in-game" all characters, players and external game objects must act as if they exist in their own Universe - as if the whole charade is real. TINAG keeps the players in the Universe of the PM's creation, and keeps the PM safely hidden behind the "curtain", it allows the players to experience the game in its purest form, without constand reminders (at least from in-game sources) that it is, in fact, just a game.
UnFiction is strictly OOG (Out Of Game) and anything which is said there must have absolutely no bearing on the game in question, of course, there aren't ARG-police out there to enforce this rule and many a PM has encroached on uF's immunity by posting there as an in-game character (see the Slenderman Mythos board for several examples) or using information shared there by the players to drive their story:

• For example, say Player A finally cracks a puzzle which has been bugging the community for weeks - he posts his conclusions on unFiction to the delight of his peers, they share a flagon of Butterbeer and rejoice, but no-one posts the solution to any ingame source as they want to release the information carefully and get the best result possible. The PM, having seen that the players have solved the puzzle (after perusing the thread for their game on the forums) declares the puzzle solved and releases the next puzzle. Players would probably consider this a breach of the trust which goes with uFiction and be significantly displeased with the PM.
• Another example could be a single player given information by an in-game character and told "not to share it with a single living soul". It is perfectly within their right to release that information on unFiction if they choose to - theoretically, the in-game character could never know as unFiction doesn't exist in their Universe. If there are in-game ramifications for the player releasing the information on unFiction then again, the players would be rather miffed.

Thats not to say there can't be a back and forth between the PM and the players; I've interacted with a number of PMs whilst playing their games - sometimes for OOG hints and sometimes just to chat. The VA interview I did a few weeks ago allowed the players to see how Paul put the whole game together. It gave us a deeper understanding of the story which we might have missed (OK, lets be honest, we missed a LOT).

I've followed Troy's blog for a few months now and I feel its given me a greater understanding of the creative process behind the Marble Hornets series. Troy talks about managing his schedule with MH updates, school, filming, work and other such things and to be honest I'm incredibly impressed. The MH team drop some seriously high quality content every couple of weeks or so and manage to maintain a zealously loyal following of viewers across the Internet whilst simultaneously studying, working and, seemingly, going to Mardi Gras (see left). The MH game has never really been about player interaction. The closest we've come to actual puzzle solves are the cryptic TTA vids which crop up every so often. With this minimal interaction, there have been few chances for the players to get behind the "curtain" and see the cogs which drive the story. Troy's blog allows us not only to peek behind the curtain, but to leap out between the crack in the drapes and shout "Oi Oi boys!".

As a rule to go by, TINAG is a good one. But its not set in stone and it is changing. A while back I talked about Gaming and the Real World, and how Jane McGonigal hopes that through gaming we might influence real world change. It isn't difficult to fit TINAG into this conception - I suppose it only serves to truly emphasise the point: it really isn't a game if it has real world implications. It sounds like a brilliant idea in my opinion and I hope that as a medium gaming begins to gather credibility as a vehicle for change. I hope, however, that if we begin to see more and more games which seek to impress real world changes onto their players, that PMs will not forget that, deep down inside, we are all kids who want to play, we want to be sucked into a world without consequences and just escape for a while. I hope that PMs won't forget that, whatever we say... TIAG.

ZI Acquaintance and Candy

You know when you're just sitting there minding your own business (possibly absent mindedly scratching yourself), and someone forwards you a confidential cipher code disregarded by the CIA and circulated through the means of a temporary dummy email address to the greatest logical minds that the internet has to offer?

You know that feeling? Well, thats the feeling I'm feeling with my feelers right about now.

Received the following email about an hour ago:

Subject: I hope you do not mind me passing this on to you.
From: afriendSPLATfastmail.jp

I was sent this by a friend of mine who's working as an intern at the Central Intelligence Agency. He says that this came across his desk, but they decided to disregard it. Having played ARGs for years, I figured I'd send it along to you. This email address is temporary, and I will not be checking it or replying to any questions you have.

http://j5qip3qf64esrbww.onion/ziacquaintance.html
http://u2fmdzjj576jsyh2.onion/candy.html

Here are the messages you've missed:

ZIACQUAINTANCE:
P F Q U a l D W e D F x w c W P U Y s y v w x Q U D P B Q e x A O y w C

CANDY:
D X F K f x j S Y V W f k q e A D S F V E D R b p W E b d r W E T Y U v
p X P O x o b S D I I P N p l N Y j b S H J L Q q e f k d M S J U b i p
Q D S D C L b t e x P F Q U q x j f i l S K W S X l h f R J V k d c G U
R F R l o x d K V O H x A H O A f k

ZIACQUAINTANCE:
u h B A K L s n b c O B M H V h a P D A u v i E N o n n b M P S Q y c l
u S D E C V L x p y E R l n c V B R T m y g y h A S S n m u h x V E W u
h D F s l y S L D J J m y u S G D l w b n b y S V I Y S s p y w i h N Q
T R D x o C w n C y x i W F V l o A m y L M S F E x

CANDY:
W h B C O g z S F E X u d e t M Y F I k k L z b b R L O X d r r L Q V s
V S D n a A E R L L n s g o A O O C N S z o d S q e h S D F R V G k d A
r z m E R c A D V G s g d A V h q A r P K L E N d q V T Y u d q W E r r
N H N Y h m H P O E b d B V h S L Q W z l c V F V J K D h f S T Y J L L
h s T Y J h y Y U K h m f d E T Y K D F G u d q T x S s F g h J Y m f D

G L x Y U I U K l S z m S z H f d q J T h r S D j H h S m H S c S n H e
Y s J n D J D t b S g E R x H J s g E T J G H U U n t D f D g S U I J

We missed multiple messages between this one and the other next one.

CANDY:
m s D G F B M g D F S D h F G v S s B H N B R T a Y J c J K b I O s m F
D w b h S v s S N o N q q N M c M i b h w g s b c i S F D G u v S t c f
S o S S t S B s G k G F a D J c D b J h v g D h D v o J b J y m D D F G
c i


Good luck

.Unfiction thread has been made here: CLICK ME PLEASE - I LOVE IT. We need help...


ps. can't.stop.reading.Steam Me Up, Kid.curse.you.Becky!

Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas

The knock on effect of a good puzzle can be devastating. That's why I was still awake at 2am last night, and consequently, why I woke up late and missed the bus. F.F.E.Y.T had me in a puzzle-lock.

The effort was worth it, however, as together we managed to crack the first major gambit laid out by the mysterious Tweeter "WhiteRabbitYT". But lets start from the beginning: like many good stories, this one begins on Valentine's day.

On "Corporate Forced Love Day" a number of us over at unFiction received a mysterious message from a secret admirer:

My name is F.F.E.Y.-T. and I would like[with my friends] to wish you a good day.
Just a little something to let you know you are being thought of.
And will be thought of again this year...
?ZEVoSlRtNXJhVzVuYjJadFpXVlVTVTVIZFhCM2FYUm9lVzkxWVd4c2MyOXZibmg0ZUE9PQ==


Forest Frederic Edward Yeo-Thomas

Nice, isn't it? Well... it would be nicer if Forest weren't a dead guy.

Forest Frederick Edward Yeo-Thomas (1902-1964)  was quite a guy: captured by the Russians during the Polish Soviet War; he strangled a guard in order to escape, after this he worked in a stylish French fashion house before becoming an interpreter for the Free French Forces. He didn't work this job for very long before being whisked away to be a secret agent, parachuted into occupied France to help the French resistance coordinate attacks against German forces. After returning to Britain he wangled a meeting with the PM managed to convince Churchill to help fund the French resistance. In 1944 he once again parachuted into occupied France, but was betrayed by one of his men and captured by the Gestapo. Tortured and imprisoned; he organised a revolt amongst the prisoners and briefly escaped. Upon recapture he passed himself off as a French national and was transferred to a prison near Marienburg. Once again he managed to escape and make it back to the Allied forces. After the war he was a witness at the Nuremberg Trials.

Its quite a life to hi-jack. Experience tells me that it is not random that the PM has chosen this important character as his pseudonym and there are numerous connections which have already been made: FFEYT has a habit of quoting Mary Shelley and Byron; "Shelley" was a pseudonym the real FFEYT went under whilst in occupied France. "White Rabbit" was also another codename the real guy went by; which is how we found the character's twitter account (also worth noting that a "trailhead" or starting point for an ARG is often called a "Rabbit Hole").

FFEYT has been communicating mainly through Twitter up until now, through cryptic tweets about "P.M", the day of the water in the street and endless poetry. After a bit of brainboxing we worked the tweets lead to "Rue de Eaux" or "Street of Water"- a reference to the location of FFEYT's death and so this lead to the date of his death: 26th February. We waited with bated breath for the 26th to come around and for the promised "Gauntlet" to be thrown down.

On the 26th, those who had sent FFEYT an email received a .wmv file in response: the video showed a number of different images and challenged the watcher to "find" him. At the start of the video, there were scrolling numbers running across the screen from top to bottom: 4369605441. Simply googling the number lead to http://www.flickr.com/photos/blinkofaneye/4369605441/ - and at the bottom of this page we find that WhiteRabbitYT had favourited the picture; allowing us to view his saved images. 

When?



Who?



Where?

So: three cryptic questions. Let's take a look at each one individually:

When: The White Rabbit
If you look carefully, you can see some text in white over the Rabbit's eye; thats binary. It translates to 20th April 1798. Fairly easy for a beginning question, don't you think? There was also another code embedded in the picture which translated to "QTR" - we don't know the relavence of this yet.

Who: The Letter Grid
The letters in the grid spell out:

"NATO ACCOLSI GALVANI E PIANSI ESTINTO. PER LUI FU L'UNO ALL'ALTRO POLO AVVINTO - GALVANUM EXCEPI NATUM LUXIQUE PEREMPTUM CUIUS AB INVENTO IUNCTUS UTERQUE POLUS"

Which translates to: "I received the newborn Galvani; I cried him dead / He held together both the electric poles." The numbers at the bottom translate to the coordinates 49.6 N, 84.6 W - which leads us to a crater on the moon: Galvani. The who was Luigi Galvani.

Where: The Parrots
This is the one which stumped us. We knew they were parrots and they might be on fire or something... The tagline to the picture reads: "Names, collectively, have power..." which lead us to believe it had something to do with the collective noun for parrots; which we could only find to be "Company".
I TinyEyed the background and found it was a well used image of Hell. Meanwhile, String, a relatively new player, popped in an informed us that another name for a group of parrots was a "Pandemonium" - Pandemonium was the name for the capitol city of Hell in Paradise Lost - our where was Pandemonium.
 
Ofiuco contacted FFEYT with our answers and he confirmed they were correct. Seems Ofiuco will now be receiving a package with the next set of clues! FFEYT tweeted that we should wait for more information and expect an update on "White Day" - 14th March. 
 
Last night was very fun, and working as a team to put together all the clues really felt good. I can't wait to see what other twists and turns might be lying just around the corner for us. This game reminds me of Ministry of Argon in its twistyness and that was one hell of a ride; this game is shaping up to be awesome on a whole new scale. Bring on March.

The game can be followed at the unFiction thread here.
Or you can contact FFEYT directly at forestfrederickedwardyeothomas@yahoo.co.uk

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.

A Trained ARG Soldier

After New Year I have come to the realisation that playing too many alternate reality games has turned me into a Cluedo/post-it note game genius. I think it must be all the mind bendingly difficult puzzles, all the late nights staring at cryptic pictures trying to piece together strands of information to gather up a story, but over the past few days I have been a fully functional criminal mastermind.

I went up to my friend's parents hotel as planned, nice journey and its always good to spend time with old friends. Sarah, the friend who was hosting the party had decided (last minute) to add a "murder mystery" theme to the proceedings and so I was armed with my ornate dagger letter opener Swatts had brought back from Venice for me, and I was ready to put my puzzlebox to the test.
The first night was the 30th, the party proper wasn't starting till the night of the 31st (as is customary for New Years eve parties I believe), so we just drank a ridiculous amount of alcohol and played board games. As the night wore on we descended from a pretty intense game of Monopoly (which I still managed to lose, even after getting hotels on Park Lane and Mayfair!) down to the game where you have a post-it note on your forehead and you have to guess who you are. I managed to get my person in 3 guesses! Booyah! Are they male? Yes. Are they over the age of 30? Yes. Are they the Principal of our old college? Yes - you dick.

The next evening was the party itself, Sarah passed around bowls with 3 different categories written on strips of paper - one bowl for names, one for items and one for locations. Now, after we had picked out our three selections, we were informed that in order to "survive" to the end of the weekend, we would have to kill each other off. It was an interesting move for a party, murder, and it certainly put us all on edge! The idea was that we would have to brutally bludgeon our "mark" with our designated "murder weapon" in the location we were assigned, and so their assassination target would pass to us. The person with the most murders to their name by the end of the weekend would be the winner. We were told this at dinner, and I can tell you - noone would accept ANYTHING from anyone else for the rest of the evening: "Hey Sam, pass me the salt", "Oh, I bet you'd love that wouldn't you - here I am passing the salt and then BAM, I'm lying salted in the gutter, dehydrated to death - I'm watching you..."

My mark was my friend Becky, and my weapon was to be a mobile phone - easy freaking peasy. Unfortunately, I picked a freaking doozy of a location. Off the hotel grounds. By the time I found this out it was already well past dark, and I'm not sure how my friend would feel about me luring his girlfriend down into the night in order to murder her with a mobile phone. I had to bide my time, but also, I had to keep an eye open because someone would have picked out my name, and would be baying for my blood! And to make matters worse, Becky was being super-paranoid about it, she wouldn't even accept a sparkler from me - asking that I put it down on the step so she could pick it up!

As the evening wore on, friends were picked off, girlfriend was taken out by a shoe wielded by my friend Ed. She didn't mind, it meant he had to deal with her mark, which was to somehow take out a guy she'd never met with a book. Ed didn't get very far with that either, no sooner had he killed the girl, then he was assassinated by Rob and his oh-so-mightier-than-a-sword pen, in the girls toilet - no less. We decided not to enquire as to why Ed and Rob were hanging out in the girl's loos. Ditt fell foul to a box of biscuits, Shirley to a teacup and Josh was powerless against Sam's pringles tube. But I persevered. In fact, I made it till the morning - the fresh morning air had never smelled so sweet! I didn't even mind that it was infused with the smell of 4 twenty-something guys all sleeping in sleeping bags and exuding noxious gasses - I was alive! Now to enact my dastardly plan:

Put the Epsom in the Irrigation!

Phew, last night was exhausting. It was the finale of Fifteen Days of Darkness and boy was it tense! For those of you not familiar with the game, there are a number of great player made wikias set up for each "act" or "round" or whatever in the series (Vanessa Atalanta - Act 1, Ministry of Argon - Act 2 and Fifteen Days of Darkness - Act 3) and the unFiction thread can be found here. I've said it a billion times and I'll say it again, the best place to get involved with games like this is unFiction and the whole VA/MoA/15DD saga can be followed there aswell.

I'm going to describe to you how it all went down, and hopefully I can convey some of the tension and urgency which I felt playing it. Quick synopsis of the story, in fact I'll start with the summary the PM gave me when I joined the game late:

"very quick praisee - order of oborot have proven to be the 'bad guys' building up towards something at winter solstice.

Vladimir Sirin [from last game] has remembered everything, was kidnapped by them [possibly] and is now trying o 'hack' the leader [Jayden Doyle]'s mind.

This is via chess and riddles done by Internet pages where people have to work out the answer to each page before moving onto the next..."
 

After we fully hacked Jayden's mind we discovered the Order's final plan - they were growing Erigeron Breviscapus - also known as the Flower of Life - using some power provided by the eclipse and the winter solstice to achieve eternal life. We didn't know where they were growing the plants, and we weren't 100% on what they were going to do with them - but we knew they were bad and must be stopped!

 
The Chess Master's Final Move

So, Tuesday evening myself, the_claw and Dagada were faced with a quandary - do we ask the long standing character, the seemingly all-powerful Vladamir Sirin, to delve deeper into Jayden's mind in order to extract more information and possibly save Ben (an Order member who's body Jayden had invaded with his consciousness), but also risk killing both Ben and Jayden in the process? Or do we ask Vladamir to withdraw, sparing Jayden, but possibly not saving Ben?

We struggled with the choice, dear readers, we hesitated and faltered and left it till the last minute - we simply couldn't choose! Eventually we bit the bullet and decided to urge Vlad to push further into Jayden's mind to extract more info. My reasoning was as follows: Vladamir, although at times secretive and manipulative, is a good man and would gladly risk his own safety for the safety of others. Similarly, if we do not push forward we spare Jayden (a seemingly ruthless man who had no problem invading someone else's body for his own means) and lose Ben. So, onward and upward Mr Sirin. This choice, it appeared, was not without consequence.

The strain of pushing further into Jayden's mind, probably coupled with the fact that we ummed and eeerred for so long was too much for Vlad. He managed to evict Jayden and gather more information, but in the process he succumbed to the pressure and died. Oh woe! Oh damn and blast!

It seemed as if we had made the wrong choice, we had sacrificed one of the most important characters and we weren't even sure what it was worth - all we had gained was a cryptic video message from Vlad and a dead Jayden.

But then Ben chirped up on his facebook wall - he was alive! We'd saved him! He had woken up in a dark flat above a shop in London.

Furthermore, we were able to use the images in Vlad's final message to hack Jayden's account on the Order of Oberon's message board, there we found a final farewell by Jayden to the members of the Order and his conversations with a mysterious character "MeeM" to whom he appeared to be reporting. MeeM demanded reports every few months from Jayden, each time Jayden reported our actions to this overseer and MeeM responded with derision and aggression - eventually it emerged that MeeM intended all along for Vlad to hack Jayden's mind, and in fact had sacrificed Jayden to kill Vlad. I think at that point we all appreciated the gravity of what we had done. Jayden was just another pawn, as were we.

You ain't gettin' on no Train Foo'!

Ben described to us his surroundings, he had woken up in the flat in London, above a shop with the shutters down. Next door was another shop called "Ecomax" where he grabbed a bite to eat and then headed left and round the corner to a tube station called "Stamford... something", then he took the district line into the center - intending to take a train up North. We recognised that he'd essentially been a prisoner in his own body for many weeks and it would probably be best if he could get some rest and see Claire.

It occurred to me, however, that we kind of ignored the information which Ben had given us (and in these games you learn quickly that nothing is irrelevant, we are not given information which has no purpose). I decided to take another look at the place where he had woken up, I looked up Ecomax and myself and the_claw tracked his movements along Chiswick High Road and down Goldhawk Road to Stamford Brooks tube station. There must be something important in the area, then it hit me: Jayden had taken his body to that specific shop next to Ecomax - so I checked it out.

A freaking pharmacist! A perfect place to grow experimental regenerative herbs! My suspicions were confirmed when the_claw - having been reporting to MeeM and pretending to be Jayden, received the following reply:

Message subject: Re: Report
From: MeeM

Sent: Wed Dec 22, 2010 4:16 pm
To: JayD
Message
You write early in the day for me, but I can understand your urgency to inform me of this, little rabbit.
What extra information do you need to know? The plants are in your care still, are they not? Growing comfortably in that dismal city you call home? So what is it you need to know? On the 4th we will be glorious, alive and never turning back...

This message confirmed to us that the plants were growing in London. I quickly contact Ben through facebook (on my blackberry, not the easiest thing to do!) and asked him to stop and head back to the shop. He wasn't happy. I had to guilt him a bit - gave him the old "many have sacrificed their lives for this" speech and eventually he started heading back across London.

Put the Epsom in the Irrigation!

The employees at the pharmacy, presumably, still worked for the Order of Oberon. So, when Ben arrived they recognised him as the Jayden who had showed up and spent the past few weeks asleep on the bed upstairs. They admitted him without argument and left him alone to explore the shop and find the plants. Ben found his way into a back room, pitch black and stuffy, we asked him to rummage around in his pockets for anything which might light the room, he came out with a lighter.

Once he could see by the light of the flame he described the room to us, lines of shelves with seedlings supported by an irrigation system coming from plants. At the end was a window with a shutter over it - angled so as to catch the light of the moon. As he described the surroundings, he complained of a wooziness, but he soldiered on. He uploaded a picture of the shutter to facebook:

Ben activated the shutter, and a countdown appeared - we feared we might be caught! The device had a musical lock, which needed a specific sequence to unlock it. Thankfully Sarah (the_claw) was quick on the case and described to Ben how to play the melody composed by Mozart which we encountered earlier in the ARG. This, thankfully, stopped the countdown.

However, this extra time in the room had left Ben extra extra woozy. We figured it was some kind of gas meant to keep the plants alive, but it certainly wasn't good for Ben! He started to pass out, we frantically suggested items to hurl at/bash the window with, chairs, water tanks, keys... in the end he just went through the door... clever boy.

Once Ben had gained his composure he took a look around the shop - we realise we probably shouldn't just wander round in full view of the cameras, so he used his new found abilities (gifted to him by Vlad upon departure) to take out the security cameras. Unfortunately, the effort caused a nosebleed. We could tell he wasn't exactly having a hoot so we devised a plan to kill the plants quickly and quietly. We asked Ben to scour the pharmacists for anything which might be harmful to the plants - Bleach, Salts etc.

He came up with some Epsom salts. Brillo!

So, we urged him to quickly and quietly fill the water tanks with as much salt as he could muster and turn the irrigation system up to full to give the plants a full blast of its salty goodness. Boom baby! After a couple of breaks to get some air, he was done. We told him to make sure he cleaned himself up (would look a bit suspicious walking out there with a bloody nose!) and calmly make his way out the shop as if nothing happened. I don't even think he knew that he might just have saved the world.

Once this was done the PM, Paul, gave us an out of game tip that the game was now over until 4th January. We still aren't sure if we won - did the salts kill the plants and stop MeeM from achieving eternal life? Was it all in vain? Will Jack Morgan top the charts this Christmas with "Little Mouse"? The answer to the first two questions will come early next year. The answer to the final one: No. It's Matt Cardle. Stupid.



Writing About ARGs

You may have noticed the new page which has appeared at the top of the blog ^ just up there entitled "ARG Report: Looking for Guest Writers". I'm well aware that a lot of the people who read this blog are forwarded from the link in my UnFiction signiture, welcome to my world uF readers! I wanted to make this post to announce we have our first guest writer coming up this time next week!

Ellocia will be writing on the subject of "Great Big Jerk" - this is a game which I was involved in at the start, but then quickly lost track of as shinier and more "Black Ops"-y things came on the horizon. Personally, I'm very excited about how this weekly spot is going to shape up. So, be sure to check back here on Friday 10th December (probably be up sometime in the evening GMT) for Ellocia's post.

If you'd like to get involved yourself, either leave a message here or on the unFiction forum post and I'll get it sorted. Literally anyone is welcome to contribute, on any ARG subject, so don't hesitate to ask me a question and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

So, to recap:

FRIDAY 10th DECEMBER

FIRST EVER WEEKLY ARG REPORT

ELLOCIA: GREAT BIG JERK

Argh! Porcelain Bees!

I've mentioned in a number of my posts that I am an avid gamer. However, what I haven't mentioned is that I also like to indulge in a bit of ARG-y goodness now and again. ARGs or "Alternative Reality Games" are games in which the player can get totally involved, the story unfolds in front of them through a number of different mediums and more often than not the puzzles are solved through community collaboration. I've mentioned my interest in online communities and their composition, evolution and cohesion in previous blabberings.

One of the most widely known ARGs is the horror/thriller game Marble Hornets (although, it is often seen as more of a chaotic fiction). MH tells the story of a group of friends who are haunted by the ghostly figure of Slenderman, as well as a number of other unsettling characters. The story revolves around the character Jay who is given a bin bag full of old videos by his friend Alex and told to destroy them. Instead Jay watches the tapes, originally meant to be film from the budget movie they and a few friends were filming, and sees Alex's sanity unwind as his is stalked by Slendy.

The story is mostly told through youtube and Twitter (@marblehornets) posts, with updates coming in the form of "Entries" - beginning with The Introduction and culminating in Entry 26. I don't want to give too much of the story away, just in case you are interested in getting involved, but its certainly worth watching from the start - also keep an eye on the video responses!

The main reason for this post is that "Season 2" appears to be starting, with Jay's Twitter being updated with 3 new mysterious and cryptic pictures - the ARG forums are furiously attempting to decode them, check out the action on unFiction here. I would thoroughly suggest getting involved in the forum and contributing, they are all very friendly and the community spirit of solving each problem as a group is really rather thrilling. There are tonnes of other viral and grassroots ARGs to get involved in on the unfiction forums, it was a big part of my life in the early part of this year and I've lost contact with the group of late, I'm hoping to get back into it with the new season of Marble Hornets.

Just.. erm, watch your windows, do not start to film yourself and, whatever you do, don't go into the freaking woods...