Alternate Reality Games
http://vanishingpointgame.com/
story on it: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16549073/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
The original inspiration for this project is Jane McGonigal’s I Lobe Bees. Although our project very different from an ARG like I love bees the concept of a quest going through multiple challenges to find a goal. I am going to site the Vanishing Point ARG put on by Microsoft as a promotion for Vista a few years ago. It is similar to our project in the since that it gives the participants an opening video to immerse the users in a narrative. The theme of the “game” are puzzles and quizzes which lead to the next step. The differences in the Microsoft project are that it is a much larger scale involving actual locations which had clues at them. Microsoft was using their ARG to promote a product ours on the other hand is to discuss this issue of growing up.
Interactive Fiction
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/zplet/shade.html
Another type of media which is similar to what we did is Interactive Fiction. The idea of interactive fiction is to immerse the user in a narrative which they get to interact with through puzzles and challenges. They are similar to our project because they immerse their user in a narrative which is carried through. They also contain puzzles or challenges in order to find the next state, similar to ours. What is different is it a more defined narrative confided within one text. The link is to the IF Shade by Andrew Plotkin which we discussed in class.
The remix Video
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/07/remix-culture-not-ju.html
I know that there are a lot of remix videos out there, but the points are similar. I used several different texts from movies about growing up to make my point about the issue. Clipping together several different clips, and taking them out of context I was about to portray a narrative which went along with our overall narrative of the ghost of students past leading current students on a quest.
