The Wero Game System is designed to give people who want to create location-based games an easy to use platform that allows for fast publishing and global distribution.

Here’s what has been added with MEIC support:

Here’s a teaser screen shot before we release Wero Game System into the wild:

If you want to know more about the Wero Game System email adam@werocreative.com

During the fall term of 2007, a team of faculty, librarians, instructional designers and student volunteers will be hosting an internet-based alternate-reality game (or ARG) designed to teach critical thinking and information literacy skill. The game will be targeted to college students, yet will be freely open and promoted in order to attract a broad range of participants.

via Cross-Media Entertainment

Trailhead is here: http://helpmesolveamystery.com/

The Star has the article.

Set up by Avacture, a Quebec company that creates “adventure entertainment,” it’s a fun way to get around Old Quebec City, see the sights and learn a little about the city’s history and culture.

Home base is a tourist centre, the Quebec Experience, at 8 rue du Tresor, where you watch a video (in French, with English subtitles) and learn that, apparently, French explorer Samuel de Champlain carried a treasure with him when he travelled to Quebec. It’s hidden in Quebec City and protected by Champlain’s social club, the Order of Good Time.

The last surviving member of the Order passed the secret to a stranger (you), while an archaeologist stumbled across the prophecy. What you learn by unravelling clues will help the archaeologist uncover the treasure. But first, you must beat the bad guys – a secret organization called the Argus – who have locked up the archaeologist in a secret tunnel.

The clues (in English or French) reveal the whereabouts of that tunnel. First you solve the five keys, historic locations or monuments of historic figures accompanied by famous phrases or inscriptions. These phrases reveal the location of the locks and guide you to famous sites – post offices, towers, Freemason symbols on buildings.

You’re given a guidebook, map and clues to help you on your way. You can cheat, if you want, to speed things up or if you’re frustrated. Once you’ve figured out the clues, head back to the home base to see how it all turns out.

I won’t spoil the ending. I will say, the kids were quite into it, at least for the first few clues. I doubt I could have got them to run up the steps of the National Assembly, read the French on its walls, or talk about Quebec’s history otherwise.

The reason I mention them is largely because one of their other works, Day of the Figurines, has got me thinking. In this piece, there’s an actual miniature village full of figurines.

To begin the game, players are invited to create their own figurine: to name it, answer questions about its past and how it is represented to other players. They then see him or her placed in the town. Thereafter participation in the game is via mobile phone. Players receive a minimum of one text a day updating them on the progress of their figurine and are invited to make increasingly challenging decisions over the fate of themselves and other players in response to deteriorating circumstances. Players can join or leave the game at any time. One of the key aspects of this new form of artwork is that it is situated within players’ daily lives and can be accessed at any time.

This is interesting to me because players can participate in a narrative space through lightweight, structured interactions.

I love the idea of narratives that are molded through audience participation, and I love the idea of open source worlds like Saijo City. The problem in my mind has always been finding a model of participation that is relatively undemanding but still significant. On the one hand, very unstructured bottom-up participation, such as the kind practiced by fan-fic writers, is hugely compelling to those involved but ultimately pretty inaccessible. On the other hand, highly structured top-down participation, such as being able to vote for who the protaganist of a TV show should date, is cool but not very rewarding for the individual decision-maker. Day of the Figurines points to an interesting middle ground: participation that is structured and accessible, but still acknowledges the unique contributions of individuals. Despite the lowkey nature of participation, players still have a meaningful investment in the world, as manifested by their tangible avatar. Of course, there’s no reason to stop it there — you could have a sliding scale of interaction, moving from the structured to the freeform, so that engaged players who want to contribute more can do so.

1) the game must be fun
2) the game must be playable by pretty much anyone: young, old, straight, gay, transgendered, street-engaged, married, people living with disabilities, people living in yaletown, people who play World of Warcraft, etc.
3) the gameplay requires real-world interaction between people (such as online interaction, personal ads, phone-tag, postcards, flashmobs, etc.)
4) Players’ social networks are expanded to include people who are “different” from themselves

These are the exact requirements we set for ourselves when we made TorGame.

When I’m in Vancouver I’m going to hunt someone down and tell them to make VanGame.

My point, then, is that the emphasis on community and collaboration actually creates a barrier to play. And I ought also to point out that if a player is turned off by any of the above factors, buying out of the collaborative play is not really an option. The lurker can follow along with the game by monitoring the communications of the community, but meaningful interaction will probably remain out of reach. To be sure, this isn’t always the case — there have been examples of designers altering the trajectory of a game as a result of the actions of an individual. But for obvious reasons, that’s not a pattern that can be frequently replicated. ARGs are currently (and understandably) designed for scale, and the meaningful player-developer communication occurs on the aggregate-level, the group-level.

Read!

Here we have yet another good indication the type of cross-platform mixed media GOT attempts is well founded in today’s environment…. mediums are branching out to reach wider audiences.

In the coming film “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising,” a teenage boy travels through time, collecting the six different signs that will help him save the world. To market the movie, family-friendly film studio Fox Walden is sending viewers on a hunt for the same signs, hidden in the movie’s advertising and marketing.

Excerpt from an article by Stephanie Kang
The Wall Street JournalAugust 07, 2007

For the full article, click here.

Despoiler offers wiki space in the pursuit of more longevity to the reference guides current to the ARG community. Request a wiki via the contact form. Wiki administration will be maintained by Unfiction and subject to modified versions of the Unfiction Community Terms of Service.

Considering it’s a wiki that is supposed to track ARG information my first instinct is to make an ARG within the wiki itself. Seriously though, this can be a great place to plant info if one finds out that their players are contributing to the despoiler wiki.

Of course, there is already ARGhive (har har har) that does, but appears to be not doing a great job at it.