Congratulations are in order to 42 Entertainment and all of the staff involved in the alternate reality game ‘Why So Serious?’ for taking home the coveted Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Cyber Lions ceremony on Wednesday, June 24.

According to an article by Ed White, Lars Bastholm, the Chief Digital Creative Officer at Ogilvy and president of the Cyber Lions jury, noted that the ‘Why So Serious?’ campaign “aggregated the elements of the Batman cultural phenomenon with an ARG, and added that the 18-months build-up prior to the film’s launch heralded a welcome trend in brands taking more time to create deeper relationships with consumers.” The article notes that fellow juror Bram De Rooij noted the underlying metrics supported the campaign’s success.

This is the second consecutive year that 42 Entertainment has taken home the Grand Prix Cyber Lions award. Last year, the company took home the prize for their work with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor for their work on the alternate reality game, ‘Year Zero.’

Congratulations again to the crew, which included Steve Peters, the previous owner of this website, ARGNet staff writer and frequent ARG Netcast panelist Brooke Thompson, and former ARGNet contributor Krystyn Wells.

Coral Cross has finally launched, with the goal of “gaming a pandemic for greater public vigilance.” At the community level, the game aims to outpace infections with awareness. Pursuant to that goal, the main page features a map of “the progress of pandemic awareness in real time.”

Upon registration, players take a simple 12-question quiz assessing their pandemic awareness. The more you know, the higher your vigilance score. Further vigilance points can be gained by methods including exploring alternative prioritization values, participating in the forums, and tracking down elusive links to “FluFacts” hidden throughout the website.

The game has just launched, so more methods of interaction may arise. So head on over to CoralCross.org, follow the Coral Cross twitter account, and start exploring.

Click Here for our prior coverage of Coral Cross.

1. Although Martin Aggett isn’t real, the article will stay put. I’m going to trust that the person that wrote the article didn’t have a hidden agenda when he wrote the content, although submitting it in the guise of a future ARG character was… how do I say this… not the best option. The content is still a great read, and I have enjoyed the comments added after publishing it.
2. Needless to say, I won’t be accepting any more articles from Martin Aggett. Our web site shouldn’t be regarded as “in-game,” and I’m disheartened to find out that we were deceived about the fictional nature of the author before publishing the article. I hope that our readers understand that our goal here at ARGNet is to deliver news and report on games, not to be used as a promotional device for any past, present or future campaign.
3. We are going to change the byline on the article submitted by Martin Aggett. One of the troubling aspects of this situation is that I asked the person I thought to be Martin what name he wanted for the byline, he said, “Martin Aggett will be fine.” This was only two weeks ago. I had no idea that Martin was a fictional creation, and would have never published the article under that byline had I known.

Sunday night, after the ARG Netcast live recording, I received an article from the person who had created Martin Aggett. After reading the article (the text of which has been reprinted, word for word, in the aforementioned Unfiction forum thread), I had a lengthy conversation about this situation with the other panelists, most of whom had been previously made aware of the facts. During that conversation, I’ll admit that I felt betrayed, duped, and hoodwinked. However, I’ve since realized that despite my objections to the delivery of the article here at ARGNet, the content is still solid, worthwhile material for this web site. I still remember a heated discussion in 2004 in which I defended a person’s “right to state his/her opinion without having to out himself/herself.” I still believe that the message is often more important than the messenger, but that changes when the messenger is (or is going to be) a character in an ARG. To me, that’s trickery, not anonymity. For the record, not everyone on the conference call shared my opinion on that, and there’s certainly a point to be made that alternate reality gaming, by its very nature, often contains elements of deception, lies and mis-truths.

In my position as owner and senior editor though, I don’t appreciate having to reshape articles after publication because the author decided to credit the article to a character in a game. To me, that doesn’t seem fair to our readers, because it may lead some to question the veracity of our information. This situation has parallels to how video gamers have felt misled by PixelVixen707, who was revealed to be a character in the ARG for Personal Effects: Dark Arts.

While I would love to be able to guarantee to our readers that we would never again publish an article submitted by an in-game character, this situation shows how easy it is to game our system. We’re a news blog with a volunteer staff, and we often need help in reporting on particular games. Many times over the years, we’ve encouraged readers to submit their own articles. We love it when people help us!

Speaking personally, I’m not going to let this situation change things around here — we’re still looking for great content and we’re happy to publish submissions when authors are willing to share them with us. We don’t need or want to start asking for verifiable identification from our authors, because that would be ridiculous and tedious. To be honest, I think there will continue to be people out there who attempt to game web sites like ours and the Unfiction forum, where rules have been put in place to deter/prevent members from posting as an in-game character. History shows that the reaction from the community is rarely positive in those situations when it is discovered/revealed that someone is operating as a fictional character in a play space that is clearly out of the realm of the game play area.

In conclusion, I hope that there are lessons learned in this unfortunate incident, and I hope that this is the last we will need to hear about this particular circumstance. We’re still optimistic that the author of “Anatomy of an Implosion” will continue to submit articles for our readers, albeit under his own, non-ARG-character name. Finally, we hope that all our readers understand the position we were placed in and the reasons for our decisions.

Photo courtesy of nr49.

Even for San Francisco, that’s a little out of the ordinary. But if Jane McGonigal and the American Heart Association have their way, you’ll be seeing a lot more of the elusive ninja rabbit and its cryptid compatriots over the coming months as part of Cryptozoo.

Cryptozoo (pronounced crypto ZO-oh) asks players to put themselves in the role of cryptozoologists, searching the city streets for cryptid tracks in the hope of a rare encounter with an elusive cryptid. Each cryptid has a particular method of running, and will be scared away unless the cryptid chasers match its movements. For example, cryptozoologists searching for a Slamina run backwards, making sure they don’t step on any cracks. More competitive cryptozoologists can challenge teams to a race mimicking one of the thirteen different species of cryptids. Players keep track of their steps with pedometers, and after completing 5,000 steps are inducted as official Cryptozoologists.

The first two official Cryptozoo chases occurred in San Francisco on June 5th and June 7th. Next week, the game is moving to New York City, where cryptic cryptid clues will be broadcast on the MTV screen in Times Square on June 12th from 11PM to 1AM. A second chase will occur in New York City on June 13th.

The game was spawned due to a prediction from the Institute for the Future that by 2019, the dividing line between exercise and play would erode. The American Heart Association challenged IFTF to make it happen sooner, and Jane McGonigal and her team picked up the gauntlet. Drawing heavily upon parkour for inspiration, Cryptozoo lowered the barrier for entry of the activity by focusing on simple tasks that transform urban environments into playgrounds such as running along curbs, sliding under railings, using parking meters as vaults, and spinning around trees. Natalie Cartwright created character designs and costumes for the various cryptids to add an additional layer of adventure to the experience. San Francisco cryptid chasers encountered a Slamina, Triptree, and Ninja Rabbit. Large gatherings of players organized on the Cryptozoo homepage may lead to additional appearances of wild cryptids.

Chasing cryptids is tiring work, but the experience is fun. Really fun. A number of random passerby joined the group for Friday’s late night run through the SoMA streets and gardens. And although this past weekend was the official launch of Cryptozoo, multiple groups met up in the United States, England, and New Zealand to give the game a try. Jane McGonigal explains that as people interact with their environment more in their day to day lives, there’s less of a need to go to the gym to get a workout. Her hope is that players will start to look around their communities and wonder:

Wouldn’t it be fun if I…

This ultimate stage in the interactive fiction (developed by Doner Canada and 1976 Productions on behalf of Mazda Canada) gathered all the players who had collected the keys — using various clues dispersed online, on television and radio broadcasts, on posters and in the field — to finally find out which of those keys would unlock the coveted car. Amélie Tremblay was the lucky owner of the winning key. Amélie and her famliy were very active players in the ARG and managed to find a total of seven keys!

It is obviously quite a satisfaction for the puppetmaster — as well as for the winner! — when that person worked really hard for the prize.

This ARG was developed exclusively for the French speaking market in the province of Quebec and was 1976 Productions’ first experience in the genre, and they got the bug! I met with Stéphane Raymond and Guillaume Bilodeau who told me the story behind the Mazda 33 Keys project.

“When we saw the amount of comments and also all the people that went looking for Pat Martin using GPS coordinates, we thought ‘This is unreal!’ I really, really loved it! The players were really absorbed by the gameplay. As the weeks went by, as soon as the White shepherd appeared, more and more people showed up, to the point where it became hard to hide the keys because we could always spot someone nearby with a cell phone ready to broadcast information about the game,” Stéphane told me.

The game started in mid-march with the distribution of flyers and other clues that led to the game’s rabbit hole, http://autocontrole.ca. Using a very rich cross-media campaign and the help of Dominic Arpin, a very well known technology and new media TV personality, the game had quite a timid start but gained momentum at a respectable pace. All in all, 20,000 players had some form of of interaction with the game and joined the “revolution” whose goal was to find a soul, with the help of an artificial intelligence named Reperio. According to official numbers, over 13% of the 20,000 players were active throughout the game play. This is a very respectable score given the restricted geographical area targeted by this campaign.

The 1976 Production team can be proud to have created a rich and exciting experience which turned out to be a very informative one, and a great success to boot. “There’s no doubt that we’re going to do more of those,” said a confident Stéphane Raymond, who is planning another immersive fiction, but a pan-Canadian one this time.

To learn more about this ARG, you can still visit Reperio’s website (www.reperio.ca) which offers a very interesting selection of the game’s archives. The follwing URLs are also still active:

patrickdeshawi.ca
twitter.com/patmartin
qik.com/patmartin
La Croix Verte (The Green Cross), an evil organization that we’ll hear more from in the future
unifos.org
Rabbit hole: autocontrole.ca

Other miscellaneous facts (including game credits) about Mazda 33 Keys:

Client: Mazda Canada
Agency: Doner
Media: Astral Média-Mix
Social Media Consultant: Ze Agence et TxT MKT
Conception: Doner & 1976.

At 1976 Productions:
Creation/Production: Stéphane Raymond
Creation/Project Manager: Guillaume Bilodeau
Creation/Director: Hoda Adra
Creation/Social Media Manager: Marie-Sophie Desormeau
Gameplay/Puppetmaster/Actor: Thomas Pintal
Executive producer: Élaine Béliveau
Actors: Eve Duranceau, James Murray, Henri Pardo. Jean Provencher
Ghost Players: Marie Milette, Bachir Sirois-Moumni, Hugo Jacques

1976 Productions is a business that evolved around two main poles of traditional production: fiction and advertising. For the past two years, they company has been specializing in interactive and immersive environments. A thorough understanding of traditional productions and new medias have allowed them to create successful ARGs, such as the one developed for Mazda.

Geneviève Cardin is part of Baroblik Productions and was kind enough to be our correspondent for this article. We can’t thank her enough for being our French-speaking expert and for arranging the interview with the team behind the game.

Back in December, Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo predicted that “[i]n the future and especially in 2009, the books that are popular will be much more interactive between the reader and the book.” Her theory will be tested over the next few months, as a plethora of cross-media books are hitting local retailers near you. If you’re interested in exploring a potential future for the publishing industry, here are a few recommendations of books that use cross-media elements to enrich the narrative.

Cathy’s Ring, by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman

On May 4, Jordan Weisman and Sean Stewart released the third and final book in a series of cross-media novels about an ordinary teenaged girl and her not-so-ordinary boyfriend. Each book comes with an evidence packet that continues the story through a series of clues that the novel’s protagonist encountered, in addition to intricate doodles in the margins. Some clues add depth to the story, while others forshadow the shocking revelations in future books. The first book in the series came under fire from consumer activists for its cross-promotional arrangement with Cover Girl.

Personal Effects: Dark Art, by J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman

Coming out on June 9, Personal Effects: Dark Art is taking cross-media to a new level. Like Cathy’s Ring, the book includes an evidence packet that extends the narrative through a series of clues. One of the characters in the novel, Rachael Webster, has been actively blogging for over six months, and recently landed a column on the Suicide Girls website as a cross-promotional effort. JC Hutchins is promoting the release of the hardcover novel by offering a podcast novel prequel, Personal Effects: Sword of Blood, for free on his website.

39 Clues: Beyond the Grave, by Jude Watson

On June 2, the fourth book in the 39 Clues series was released by Scholastic, Inc. The 10 book series follows the adventures of Dan and Amy Cahill as they compete with family members to uncover the secret of their family’s power. Each book is written by a different author, leading Time Magazine to refer to the series as “some lab-grown genetically engineered lifeform.” Websites, collectible trading cards, and the novels themselves propel readers through the mystery. Many libraries are capitalizing on the popularity of the series by creating 39 Clues Clubs that introduce chidren to the library and bring to bear the power of collective intelligence.

Other Books Worth Noting
In addition to their involvement with both Personal Effects: Dark Art and Cathy’s Ring, Smith and Tinker will be unveiling two new cross-media series: Nanovor and Lost Souls. The former will be supplemented by a video game and animated web series, while the latter will include a board game component.

And in case you’re interested in the underlying theories behind many of these projects, be sure to check out Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, due out on July 3. The authors have created a blog to continue the conversation past the publication date. Authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt have continued to update their Freakonomics blog four years after the novel’s publication date.

This list focuses on cross-media books coming out in the summer months. However, feel free to leave a comment if you have any other recommendations for books of an ARGish nature, regardless of publication date.

If you’ve been playing indie ARGs for more than a couple days you’ve probably experienced a game that started off with a bang but ended with a whimper and a quiet death rattle. Most of us take a few moments to grieve the loss of the imploded game but quickly get over it and start looking for the start of another game. As someone who is drawn to the idea of creating my own games, I dwell over the loss of a game a little longer and crave a eulogy that helps me understand why the game didn’t reach it’s full potential. One of the biggest challenges in analyzing a failed game is that the creators of failed games rarely come forward afterward to share the behind-the-scenes missteps so that the rest of us can learn from their mistakes. So, with that said, I’d like to share why I stopped playing a recently staged game Tyler Greek (also named PHH Interception) and invite the creators of the game (and anyone else in the community who’s interested) to join the discussion.

Background:
Tyler Greek was the story’s protagonist who led a group of paramilitary soldiers in an alternate timeline where the TR Corporation unleashed an army of “super soldiers” on the world and destroyed most of the major US cities. Tyler, along with his tech support guy Jacob, were trying to provide humanitarian supplies for survivors and planning a counter-offensive against the TR Corporation minions.

The story was introduced and played out primarily on Twitter, YouTube, and through instant messenger chat clients like Skype and MSN Messenger. There was an attempt to deliver story elements on a TR Corporation website and on Tyler’s MySpace page along with some leaked documents which filled in some of the backstory, but those delivery mechanisms went stale soon after they were discovered.

Personally, I was rooting for this game to be successful. The story line wasn’t all that original (Evil corporation tries to take over the world with the help of genetically altered mutants), but I liked some of the game mechanics and the opportunity it presented for players to contribute to the narrative. For example, I played as a member of a group of displaced journalists who were trying to set up an intelligence network for a burgeoning resistance. I even went so far as to provide intelligence reports to Tyler based on my travel to different parts of the country looking for survivors and tracking down rumors of “freedom fighters”.

My thoughts:

1. There has to be more than just role playing.

My first impression was that this was an interesting story that pushed the role playing aspect more than the “solve a puzzle – get a banana” methodology. There was a feeling among the players that the game was launched too early and didn’t have the requisite websites or other content ready, or that we had stumbled onto an online role playing community that didn’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end for the story. My guess is that is was a combination of the two – we discovered a role playing community that tried to introduce ARG elements and couldn’t keep up with player’s demand for content.

In my own ARG concept development this forced me to consider the fundamental differences between online role playing and Alternate Reality Gaming. Although similar genres of storytelling, I think the reason why I’m drawn to ARGs over role playing is the confidence in knowing that there will be a resolution to the conflicts presented in the plot. I may not like that resolution, but there should be some kind of planned endgame. In role playing, everything seems much too chaotic with the odds of a satisfying resolution to the narrative being extremely low. In fact, in many role playing communities the fundamental goal is to extend the narrative for as long as possible so that the role playing can continue indefinitely.

It was fun playing a role in the story world that was created, but after a while it seemed that the game designer wasn’t interested in guiding that player interaction into a clear story plot and a satisfying ending.

2. Give me a task–reward system.

After the main characters conveyed the backstory and current situation, information slowed considerably. Each chat session rehashed the information that was already provided, and when pressed for more details the characters would abruptly end their chat because of an “attack on the base”. They had presented the premise and gave us the boundaries of the story world, but didn’t carry that momentum into a well developed plot. Players were trying to think of creative ways to coax the game creators into telling them the objective of the game. Were we supposed to “Save the world”? Were we supposed to defeat the superhumans? If so, what were we supposed to do to accomplish these feats?

Setting up a reward system would have gone a long way to keep players engaged. ARG designers can learn from video games that start with a tutorial that unlocks levels with simple tasks then rewards the player with new content (cut scenes, new levels, more story, etc) as they master certain skills and complete those tasks. This game did have a few task/reward elements, but the players were constantly prodding the game to give them a “call to action” that came with a requisite reward upon completion.

Late in the game, the game designer did give the players a task that could have advanced the narrative, but at that point many of us had lost interest. In the story, the source of the superhuman’s mutant powers came from a formula created by the TR Corporation. A syringe containing some red goo was discovered at a live event location and presumably was a sample of this formula. A video was released by James Serbus (FreakonaPeach) asking the players to give him advice on what to do with the syringe. Soon after the video was released, most of the players (including myself) abandoned the game — read on to find out why.

3. Stop peeking at the audience from behind the curtain.

Most ARG players are very forgiving when it comes to ignoring the little things that break the illusion of the events in a game being real. We’ll ignore the fact that the protagonist’s twitter account was created in the last month, or that a company that has operated for years has only recently created a web domain (and registered it anonymously). I was even able to accept that Tyler Greek was communicating with me through Skype from an alternate timeline even though Tyler himself gave just a virtual shrug in response to players asking how that was possible.

So, what killed the illusion? After one canceled live event a second was scheduled, and even though a few people expressed an interest, apparently no one attended. In an attempt to get information that was supposed to be revealed at the event to the players the game creator released a video of himself claiming to be the only player to attend the live event. Upon discovering the video, the established players invited the new “player” to join the community discussion at Unfiction only to get the single word email response of “TINAG” making it clear that the new player was an in-game character.

Here’s what ruined it for me. The game creator decided to use his own YouTube account to release in-game video instead of bothering to create a new account. So when players searched through the archived video blog entries of this new character to find clues or other material relating to the story they only found the ranting of a teenage video blogger. To make matters worse, after three game related videos were released the game designer went back to his “regularly scheduled video blogging” and started the next video with an apology to his “regular viewers”:

“Hello You Tube, again. Well, actually this time it’s for real, cus uh well yeah my last video I posted the uh Hail to the Master one thats… my regular viewers can either ignore that or watch it. Its just a uh… little project I’m doing, don’t need to worry about it I’m not going to die”

It also didn’t help that he grouped the three game related videos into one playlist and labeled it “PHH ARG”. The game designer also communicated with the players overtly through the unfiction forums using the profile Liesoften, and apparently has done this in a past ARG (Bookerville).

I don’t want to sound to harsh, but this is just laziness on the part of the game creators and just ruins the experience for the players. I support the idea of game creators taking ownership of their games, but there should be a clearly defined line between what is in-game and what is in the realm of meta discussion. If the game designers want to communicate with the players on a meta level they can do what David Flor has done and set up a meta-blog. That way players have the choice to either peek behind the curtain during a game or stay oblivious to what is going on behind the scenes.

Steve Diddle is a photographer and aspiring ARG creator, and was inspired by Cross-media entertainment researcher Christy Dena to write this article.

May 21: “N” sent us in the following game tip which he found on “this new site online”: I found this article below on this new site online. There have been random texts with riddles going around about it. What do you guys make of it? I figure this is your area. ——————————— Is When they were Pharaohs really an A.R.G. in disguise? by E.A. Wallis First there was The Beast, then there was I Love Bees and Lost Experience, now an A.R.G. in a story on ancient Egypt? In an age where alternate reality gaming has taken on many forms, there are practically no limits in the way that mass online adventures are now being played, but in the novelization of an upcoming theatrical stage play? In a way When they were Pharaohs might represent the ultimate in reality fact finding, puzzle-solving missions, in what is looking to be another world-hopping adventure, but you’ll need to be an Egyptologist or hieroglyphics expert to crack some of these modern takes on ancient riddles, because though some clues are hidden out in plain sight with hieroglyphic translations conveniently included, others are presented completely without. Of course the ancient Egyptians themselves had games and other leisurely pastimes to remedy their boredom (although without Facebook) but a modern-day reenactment of the mythological quest of Horus and Isis to revenge Osiris? With the re-discovery of the mummy of Hatshepsut in 2007, this real life saga has enough drama and irony, worthy of a Greek Tragedy. I may have found the eye of Horus, but if you can tell me where Osiris is laid, you might as well solve the riddle of the Sphinx. We did a little Google-fu and found this exact text (save for one line) on Craigslist ads from Los Angeles and Baltimore. After looking at the web site from the ad, I’m going to go out on a limb and say no, not an ARG in disguise. However, prove me wrong and earn a place in my heart.

May 21: The good and wonderful Tony Walsh send in this tidbit about an upcoming event: Hi guys, just wanted to let you know about this upcoming event in San Francisco. Tony Walsh (Phantom Compass), Lance Weiler (the WorkBook Project), and Ken Ecklund (sic) (World Without Oil) will all be appearing at KQED in San Francisco next Saturday. http://www.bavc.org/index.php?option=com_registrationpro&Itemid=935&func=details&did=903 On Saturday, May 30 at 1:30PM Pacific in the KQED ATRIUM, Tony Walsh (Phantom Compass) and Ken Eklund (World Without Oil) will present on the topic of games for change: Games for Change has turned into its own movement of creatives, technologists and gamers who are developing interactive and game projects driven by social issues.Tony Walsh, CEO of Canadian game design firm Phantom Compass, and Ken Eklund, developer of the award-winning ARG World Without Oil unpack some of the most successful social change games and related creative experiments and provide a blueprint for filmmakers looking to get into “game space.” Hey, that’s only three days from now! Hopefully this meas that some of our Bay-area readers can make it down to see this presentation!

May 21: Wow, this was one busy day for tips! Barbara Chung (I suspect this is a pseudonym of some sort) sent in the following press-release-style game launch tip: Life1K Serum New Drug Application Submitted to DDEA GROVER’S LANE, May 20 – DNArgus, a world-class biopharmaceutical and health services company, today announced that it has submitted a new drug application for its novel life extension therapy Life1K to the DDEA. Life1K is an oral liquid nutraceutical that is administered once a month. “The Life1K submission is a milestone for DNArgus and mankind,” said Dr. Dan Collins, Founder & CEO of DNArgus. “Once Life1K becomes widely available, humans will enjoy longer life spans and increased resistance to disease.” Life1K was studied extensively over a five-year period in two major clinical trials, EXTEND and DREAM. 77% of elderly patients in both trials significantly improved their health and vitality after one year of treatment. The most common side effects associated with Life1K treatment include headache, nausea, migraines, blurred vision and constipation. .005% of patients in DREAM and EXTEND developed cancer of the esophagus. In all cases, the cancer was cured after standard medical treatment. DNArgus expects the DDEA to make a decision on Life1K within six to eight months. About DNArgus DNArgus is a world-class biopharmaceutical and health services company specializing in the development and commercialization of life extension therapies. Our flagship cryobooth, AICryogenesis II, is the safest and most well-studied product of its kind in the world. Learn more about the company at www.DNArgus.com. There’s already a thread at the Unfiction forums about this one, so perhaps you might want to jump in now while it’s early.

May 24: marc, a fan of the TV show Lost, shared this bit of info: hey! i’m a big lost fan, and it looks like someone’s doing a fan-made one during the hiatus and i thought you’d want to know about it. the pm cleared up confusion in the ‘purge’ post on the blog so its not a hoax i don’t think. anyway it looks pretty active with new things to do happening everyday so maybe you’d want to know. here’s the links i found connected to it: http://whoissimeonhobbes.wordpress.com http://twitter.com/elliottgraves http://twitter.com/simeonhobbes http://twitter.com/epithetalpha http://www.youtube.com/whoissimeonhobbes http://the8thspoke.co.cc/ i guess there was a lot of gamejacks so the pm put up the relevant sites on the ‘watching’ thing on the blog. anyway just thought u would want to know, later. Thanks marc! Some of us on staff are big fans of Lost as well, and may be checking on this one soon.

That brings us to today, and a chance for us to take a bit of a breather. In the coming days, we will have updates on some of the game tips we published previously, as well as a look at Xi (Playstation Home ARG). Thanks to everyone who was kind (and diligent) enough to send in their tips and news!

April 22nd: A reader named Laura was kind enough to send in this newsworthy item: Kaede writes a monthly column in the Japanese creative magazine “Brain”, and this month’s column is all about ARGs! I (@lauraehall on Twitter) and a few other players (@jasper_su, @cubicgarden, Roberta Romero and @redbanshee) were contacted about using our photos, and they sent me a copy in return. The PDF is available at lauraehall.com/brainmag.pdf. They talk about Find the Lost Ring and Art of the Heist, and Unfiction gets a mention too, so I thought you guys would want to see! Thanks Laura!

April 23rd: We received this game tip from someone calling themselves Reasonableman: A game called “Help Lisa” is now playing. The start point is: http://www.youtube.com/pandoralee999 The game is promotion for The Ennead (enneadseries.com). There is a thread dedicated to this game at the Unfiction forums.

April 28th: A tipster named Greg sent in this mysterious tip: I found this site: http://calvada.chatonka.com/index.html after watching an ad in an episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show that was posted on youtube (I forget where–I think it might have been taken down. Copyright issues?). The header/title of the page is the name of a Dick Van Dyke episode, but not the episode in which I saw on youtube. It doesn’t look like what it’s purporting to be, which I why I thought it might be an ARG. –Greg After looking at the site, which currently discusses the “Giant Woodpeckers of the Northwest,” we’re as confused as Greg is. ARG? If it is, it’s a very unique trailhead.

May 9th: Intrepid blogger Rich A. found the following web site and thought it might be a long lead-in to some sort of ARG experience: I think this site might be a new ARG http://www.itstartswiththeflu.com/ when you hit “select all” you’ll see a “hidden message” that says “Daniel 12; 1-13″ not to self-advertise, but i wrote a bit about what i’ve found out on my blog, including the text from that psalm or whatever you’d call it http://thegrayhoodie.blogspot.com/ Good luck! The web site Rich links us to includes a countdown with an end date 472 days away. Not much news on Rich’s blog since then, so take this for what you will.

May 13th: After taking in a Nine Inch Nails concert, Michael sent this in: Saw Nine Inch Nails last night and think that there is a new ARG starting, but I don’t think it’s actually NIN doing it. www.globalfearenterprises.com. Another three game tips about this came in from readers Bob, Diana and godisvoid. We headed over there and found a forum chock full of messages, but without context, we’re at a loss. Oh look, a countdown! Could this be related to a recent post at the Unfiction forums regarding NIN|JA codes?

May 14th: We won’t say who or where this tip came from, but here it is: http://thisisnottom.com Not sure what other information I should provide. I run this site along with New York Times Best-selling author John Green. If you have some questions, feel free to email me. Thanks, . Um, okay. On the site, there is a picture of a man we assume is not Tom, with a note in the source code — “If you are reading this, you are a step ahead of the rest. There is one clue on the homepage.” We haven’t found the clue yet — can you find it for us and send us the deets? K THX.

May 15th: Author A.W. Hill alerted us to the following project he’s involved with: Nowhere-Land. Not a game, but… a book about a game about the story in the book. It’s a Lynchian scavenger hunt across the upside-down topography of L.A., Taos, and Eastern Turkey to a place called Na-Koja-Abad (Nowhere-Land) that should be on every ARGamer’s itinerary. Nominally a detective novel, but look closer. I owe Dave Szulborski big-time for this one. The URL is http://www.awhill.net. Fair warning - some of the language on the site may be NSFW, depending on where you work.

May 19th: Another game tip from someone we’ll keep anonymous told us this: http://spider-of-the-web.blogspot.com/ I am starting this game now.It is somewhat of a scavenger hunt.The overall point will uncover things that are real and exist.It will be somewhat cryptic.It is based around ufos and strange artifacts. When arriving at the blog, we were asked to sign up to play, so we closed the window and moved on with life. Sorry, Spider of the Web, we don’t sign up for just anything.

So, that takes us up to the beginning of this week, and more tips are waiting for us to follow up on, so check back in the next few days to see what other trailheads await you.

Back in April, Hollywood party blogger The Cobra Snake posted a series of Star Trek mixers in Hollywood and Paris. Hidden in the background of some pictures were barely discernable text strings that led players to a distorted video of the Narada, Captain Nero’s Romulan vessel in the film. Further code lead to a chat log of five Romulans conversing in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, and German.

One of them left an item in France, which was recovered by “Malako.” Following a series of clues, players uncovered a staged Romulan crash site with Romulan symbols visible from the air. They also gained the ability to manipulate a digital hologram of a starfield via webcam by going to Experience the Enterprise viral.

Eventually, players received phone calls explaining the situation: two sets of Romulans crash landed on Earth, with one group attempting to help Captain Nero destroy Earth, and the other group attepting to prevent it. By recreating a transmission at AlertVulcan.comand reposting the file across the internet, players were able to prevent the end of the world.

Capping off the alternate reality game, Leonard Nimoy personally congratulated the participants on YouTube, five players in particular. Matt was selected to receive a replica of the USS Enterprise, while the other four top contributors received a collection of Star Trek related products pictured here and here.

Special thanks to ellisrico for putting together a great video summary of the game.