Fade to Play

At Convergence 2008 this year, I attended the presentation by Sebastian Seithoff, Global Marketing Director - Young Adults, McDonald’s.

As I am a player of The Lost Ring alternate reality game, I was interested to hear Sebastian speak. Not only is McDonald’s the main sponsor, but it is their first foray into the genre of alternate reality games. The Lost Ring, which is linked to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, kicked off in March as 50 bloggers receiving packages with an Olympic-themed poster and a clue pointing them to a website with a unique trailer.

My mystery package


Alternate reality games are part of a genre (e.g. I love Bees ) that mix online and offline realities through clues and activities that focus on the abilities of players to solve puzzles through collaborative means. For example, players of The Lost Ring have collaborated with local participants through The Lost Ring forums to construct city training missions, which may be shared via YouTube, Flickr, and blogs in order to compare times and techniques. The activity of players and characters on different social media platforms can be monitored on an online map.

Characters use a variety of social media tools such as twitter, YouTube, and Flickr to broadcast information relevant for players of the game. The Lost Ring is developed by AKQA, a marketing agency based in San Francisco and Jane McGonigal.

Sebastian Siethoff - McDonald’s


His presentation began with a focus on youth - how they are using social networks and how they are developing an awareness of their global environment and tapping into the increased interest worldwide in the social media culture.

Sebastian Siethoff - McDonald’s


He then provided a background on The Lost Ring for the audience before discussing the unique, less-overt, branding approach McDonald’s is using in relation to the game in order to strengthen ties with the global youth culture.

Sebastian Siethoff - McDonald’s

My complete flickr set from Convergence 2008 is here.


Relevance:
Although advertising has been linked to video games [see the recent design week article] this type of marketing by McDonald’s tied to an alternate reality game is still novel (see Donna’s marketing blog for her analysis after a presentation by Neil Golden, CMO, McDonald’s USA about their sponsorship. Will this lead to other companies seeing value in similar ventures and what are the metrics upon which this relationship will be considered successful?

Sebastian Siethoff - McDonald’s

Winners of City Chase Vancouver

Last Saturday I was the Blackberry station captain for the Vancouver location of City Chase 2008. City Chase is similar to the Amazing Race as teams of two race around the city doing activities at different stations in order to acquire points. The first team to acquire the necessary points wins.

It is definitely something that I recommend participating in as it is fun and provides the opportunity to get out of your comfort-zone interacting with strangers in your city while testing your physical and mental limits. Vancouver was the first city on the Canadian tour. If you are American, you can participate in the US events. The World Championship will be in November where winning teams from Canada, USA, France, UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Australia, Hong-Kong and Singapore compete.

The Blackberry Station that I was the captain of involved teams having to use the video and photo function to do creative activities. Five of the seven need to be completed within 30 minutes without being assessed a time penalty.

The tasks to choose from were:

• photo of 2 non-participants kissing
• 15 sec video of team members acting as cats (including meowing)
• 15 sec video of 4 non-participants singing O Canada
• photo of tatoo below the waist
• 15 sec video of team member eating food simultaneously with stranger
• photo of stranger drinking a coke
• 15 sec video of a team member tickling barefoot of stranger

I enjoyed being a part of City Chase and I definitely look forward to involvement in the future.

[update] flickr photos are here.

Relevance: Get outside and play a game with others. It is fun and will teach you skills to better your life.

City Chase 2007 participants

Next Saturday City Chase 2008 will be taking place in Vancouver. It is a fun adventure race in which teams of two run around to different stations in the city performing activities. The first team to complete the required number of stations in the fastest time is the winner.

The City Chase is a unique urban adventure that requires participants to exhibit teamwork, resourcefulness, determination and the ability to make decisions on the fly as they search for ChasePoints scattered in unknown locations throughout the city. ChasePoints are designed to test teams with a variety of physical, mental, and otherwise adventurous challenges.

To conquer this 4-6 hour urban event, 2-person teams will run, walk and use public transit to navigate their way throughout the city, while calling family and friends for help, accessing the Internet, and even employing assistance of total strangers. The first team to complete the required ChasePoints and cross the finish line WINS

It is a fun event and great opportunity to get to know your partner. People of all ages participate and alot focus on just enjoying themselves rather than winning. If you aren’t in Vancouver, check the schedule to see if it is coming to your city.

[update] Can’t forget about the Facebook event.

Relevance: Games are fun and teach us socialisation and collaborative skills that are relevant to everyday life.

Strutta Games

Today the fine folks at Strutta here in Vancouver have launched into beta. I have been fortunate to participate in their launch parties leading up this date and attended their soft launch private event last month. This is a very exciting day for them. I have found the entire crew to be fun as well as hard-working. It will be cool to watch as Strutta develops over the year. I wish them success, so get over there and get your game on.

From grassroots scrappers to all star pros, Strutta brings players together from around the world in the spirit of true competition. Whether it’s beatboxing, shredding up the slopes, or giving the legends a run for their money with a smack on Guitar Hero III solo, there is a game for everyone on Strutta. Players upload their original performance videos to compete with their peers and prove they are the best in their game. Performances are judged by friends and other members of the international community on a daily basis. The players with the most wins in a year qualify for a chance to compete in the Final Games.

Alexa Booth, Guitar Hero

Keep up to date by following the Strutta Blog
More info about Strutta here

Relevance: Another cool social media team in Vancouver with an fun concept for gameplay through videos

On April 3rd, Jane McGonigal, an ”Alternate  Reality” Game designer, games researcher, and Future Forecaster, was interviewed for the TVO show called The Agenda with Steve Paikin.  TVO is a publicly-funded, educational media organization that is available to Ontario residents both on cable and the Internet. 

The episode entitled Have a Nice Day, consisted of two parts: an interview where Jane discusses why online gaming may be the future of work and a debate with other guests in which the topic is “The pursuit of happiness: Is the happiness movement making us miserable?”

Each part is available separately in video and podcast form on the episode page. During the interview she also discusses her recent Alternate Reality Games project entitled The Lost Ring.

The interviewer starts off quoting her SXSW keynotein which she stated that “Multiplayer games are the ultimate happiness engine”. The SXSW keynote as a podcast is available here and her slides are here.  In the interview she responds to this by explaining how games “optimise your brain, your body, your heart and your soul” and how “engagement is the key”

Definitely worth listening to learn about how games aren’t played by oneself in a room but rather that  games have always been about social and collaborative experiences with others in the real world.  The interview also discusses her last alternate reality game World Without Oil.

Relevance: Games are just about fun but can involve working together to solve real world causes.

The Lost Ring

In Friday’s Globe and Mail, our national newspaper, Jane McGonigal, an “Alternate Reality” Game designer, games researcher  and future forecaster,  was interviewed by Patrick White regarding her latest alternate reality game: The Lost Ring.  The title: “Sucked into Real Life by Online Fantasy Worlds” absolutely rocks and the article is top-notch providing readers with an understanding regarding why people are playing this game and the motivation behind their involvement. 

As someone that has been actively playing the game, I can totally concure that it has become integrated with my real world. I check my blackberry for twitter messages from Ariadne, one of the game characters, and discuss the game with strangers I meet.  Yesterday when I met Aleteia, whose name has Greek and Latin origins, I talked about Ariande, the games relationship to the upcoming Olympics and  what I had learned through gameplay about Greek methology.

From the article:

A synthesis of conventional video game, role-playing adventure and scavenger hunt, ARGs have quietly nurtured a huge cult following over the past decade. The games start with a central mystery - a fictional murder, perhaps, or an abduction - and guide players through a months-long series of digital and physical clues placed all over the world. The key to unlocking one part of the puzzle might be placed in a blog; another in a Simon Fraser University locker.

What is really cool, as noted in the article, is the Canadian involvement. Ordinary people feel motivated to _do_ something, like Geoff May in Kitchener, Ontario.

Two weekends ago, a group of Kitchener players organized a labyrinth-running training session in hopes that one of the amnesiacs might show up. Mr. May, who has set up a wiki dedicated to The Lost Ring, persuaded 14 friends to form the walls of a human labyrinth on a snow-covered field. While participants comprising the walls hummed, a blindfolded competitor had to clumsily navigate his way out by sonar, avoiding contact with his training partners.

So get your game on and start playing — you won’t regret the experience and together across the globe we can work together to uncover the secret of The Lost Ring by the end of the Summer Olympics.

Pdf of newspaper version of article is here.

Flickr pictures of the Kitchener Labyrinth Training Event are here.

Follow Ariadne on Twitter here:

Relevance: Interesting how The Lost Ring becomes a part of everyday life and how the use of social media by participants and the game designers is used to extend the boundaries of gameplay.

One of the advantageous of living in Vancouver is being able to attend events being organised by talented individuals. Democamp Vancouver 06 is a fun event that shouldn’t be missed.

What:

• come in the door and post your demo idea on the board
• 30 minutes of meeting other attendees (promote your idea, get votes!)
• presentation process starts at 6:00pm
• 30 second elevator pitches by all presenters
• attendees vote on top 4
• we will have 4 x 6 minute talks (time limit enforced, includes feedback time!)

When: April 10, 2008: 5:30-7:30pm (drinks afterwards)

Where: Workspace - 21 Water St.

Battledecks: Don’t miss the latest version!

“Gesture, Flow, Credibility and Jargon”

• 2 people from the crowd are chosen (by elimination or volunteering or voting…) and go head-to-head in DemoCamp’s installment of BATTLEDECKS
• Each contender is given a 6-to-8 page Keynote Presentation on the spot and will present their fabulous, ground-breaking, earth-shattering, mind-blowing business/project/idea/nonsense to the crowd, inspiring us all on whatever it is they are revealing.
• Think: “Gesture. Flow. Credibility. Jargon.” It will really help.
• Winner will be professed by crowd applause and cheering.
• Prizes may be awarded, but bragging rights is the ultimate goal.

Linda Bustos @ Democamp Vancouver 06

Democamp Vancouver wiki

Democamp Vancouver Facebook event

Relevance: A great opportunity to network and socialise with Vancouver people

Strutta Home Page

Last month I was fortunate to be one of a select few to take part in a super-duper secret demo of Strutta. I began hearing about Strutta around August/September, although there wasn’t much information about it, they subsequently organised 3 related launch parties: Launch Party, Launch Party with a Twiist, and Launch Party 3 — each was bigger and better than the one previous.

Alexa Booth

Strutta is a company that is founded by Danny Robinson and Maura Rodgers. I have been lucky to personally get to know some of the members of the Strutta team (Lyal Avery, Jordan Behans, Alexa Booth, Danny Robinson, Maura Rodgers) and have found them all to be super friendly, intelligent, and good at what they do.

Danny Robinson & Maura Rodgers @ Launch Party with a Twiist

So what is Strutta about? Here is what I able to disclose from the demonstration. Basically you treat your video like a game. You upload a video of yourself or friend preforming a task (e.g. playing guitar hero, or doing a catwalk on the street) and then other people will also upload a similar video to compete against you. The videos will be able to be recorded and also viewed on the Strutta site. People will rank your video against others submitted or upload their own “one better” version in that particular category.

More features have been added since that initial demo according to the most recent Strutta blog update as some of the bugs have been fixed and suggested feedback has been implemented. I wish Strutta success. If you can, get one of their cool t-shirts you might have seen around SXSW.

Relevance: A rocking startup from Vancouver by some talented and cool friends.

Find the Lost Ring

I am playing an Alternate Reality Game (arg) called “Find the Lost Ring” and I began playing shortly after receiving a box in the mail from a mystery sender.

Basically 6 olympic-fit athletes have woken up in various locations around the world on Feb 12th with a strange “trovu la ringon perditan” tattoo on their arm and complete amnesia. I am following Ariadne, the only one that is writing and providing videos in English.

You can begin playing here.

[LPV3_Kinzin]Ktrb6JPNzwA[/LPV3_Kinzin]

Jane McGonigal discussed the game at her SXSW keynote. She describes the game on her blog here.

Relevance: my first arg experience. I am enjoying it and it contrasts nicely with urban games that I usually play.

Canadian Games Studies Association Conference 2006

I attended the first annual CGSA conference and it was a great experience. If you are into games, you should submit a paper. Plus Vancouver, a beautiful city in early Summer.

—-

2nd Annual Conference 2008

Canadian Game Studies Association

University of British Columbia

DATE: 31 May 2008

Paper and panel proposals are invited for our second annual conference
to be held in conjunction with the Congress of Humanities and Social
Sciences (http://www.fedcan.ca/english/congress/about/). This year’s theme is “Thinking Beyond Borders | Global Ideas: Global Values”. Not all presentations need be related to this theme. Submissions are invited on all topics related to digital games and digital games research, especially those that can show an interdisciplinary or international perspective. A selected number of presenters will be invited to submit a full paper for publication in an edited collection.

General guidelines

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent no later than Feb.
28, 2008 to Dr. Jennifer Jenson (jjenson@edu.yorku.ca) or Dr. Suzanne de
Castell (decaste@sfu.ca).

Panel presentations will also be considered in limited numbers. Panel presentations should include an overview of no more than 250 words, in addition to a brief summary of papers/presentations to be included of no more than 100 words each. A discussant and/or chair for the panel should also be specified. Authors submitting papers should also join CGSA (see http://contagion.edu.yorku.ca/cgsa for details). Papers selected for presentation (blind review by a minimum of two reviewers) will be grouped by conference organizers by subject and/or topic area.

Individual paper presentations will be given 20 minute time slots in
multi-paper sessions.
—————————————————————————-