ARGNet Insider - Issue 1.2
In which Michael attends an ARG wedding and doesn't fare too well in a nuclear apocalypse
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Another month, another newsletter! If you missed the first installment, while I do intend on shamelessly promoting recent articles posted to ARGNet, I also hope to use this to talk about interesting things that I didn't get a chance to share, either due to time or relevance. So, on to the exciting stuff!
- A Bit of Immersive Play for the Philly Crowd - The Philadelphia Fringe Festival is coming up, and one of the experiences on my radar is Spies! A Tech-Immersive Comedy, where audience members take on the role of spies, receiving instructions from their handler via text message over the course of the night.
One of the most intriguing features for me is the tiered ticketing system, where audience members interested in just watching the drama unfold can attend for a reduced admission rate. I'll be attending the show on September 13th...mum's the word on how immersive an experience I signed up for, though.
- Daisy Brown Ends - Horror-themed webseries and ARGs aren't usually my cup of tea. But there's something about the aesthetic of Daisy Brown that really works for me. In the series, Daisy lives with Alan, a monster of her father's making.
While the monster reveal is often a main vector for suspense in horror series, viewers meet Alan in the first video and Daisy's initial day-to-day interactions with her father's monster are an exercise in normality...at least, at first. The series looks to have come to a dramatic close with the aptly titled "Final Video". Be warned, the tone of the series shifts quite a bit as it progresses.
- That Time I Created a Puppy Dating App - For almost as long as I've been working at Digitas Health, I've been unofficially campaigning for an office puppy. So when HR brought in an adoptable puppy for a day last year, I created a resume for him that remains my greatest writing sample to date.
HR came through with another puppy adoption event this year, so I created a fake "dating" app prototype to help the new dog find a forever home.
- Called Out for Bearsplaining - Escape from Eden Park creator PJ-Scott Blankenship is working on an Oz-themed podcast fiction project called "Hit the Bricks", and I play a little pink bear in the pilot episode. Listen to me getting called out for bearsplaining alongside one heck of a cast.
- A Brief Case Study in How Metrics Lie - For the past few years, I've added tracking codes to ARGNet articles when I share them, so I can get a sense of how people are finding the articles, and these emails are no different.
Interestingly, the inaugural ARGNet Insider email had more people people click on one of the links than the total number of email subscribers this list has. While technically possible, this is highly unlikely.
The answer to how this happened is relatively simple: an ARGNet Insider subscriber clicked on a link to our coverage of the Jack Torrance ARG, and then posted it to the /r/NightMind subreddit, complete with the tracking codes. Because of the way tracking works, that made all the Reddit referrals look like they came from these emails.
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Last Month at ARGNet: August 2018
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Puzzlecraft Returns, with an as-yet-unsolved mini ARG!
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In the beginning of August, Mike Selinker released a new edition of Puzzlecraft that included a mini-ARG.
The hunt for the mini-ARG has led to a mild identity crisis on my part. What makes the trailhead to an ARG unique, if anything? Ordinarily, I'd point to the book's newly added "Pokemon Gone" hidden puzzle as an example (which might be my favorite puzzle in the book), but that might not be the case here.
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The Bunker: Three Perspectives on the Same Show
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I took a trip down to NYC to experience Broken Ghost Immersive's hybrid experience "The Bunker", that puts a group of people in a post-apocalyptic bunker together to survive based on their choices.
Through a little bit of planning and a lot of luck, I was joined by Room Escape Artist and No Proscenium. If any of these reviews sound intriguing, act quick! The final show is scheduled for September 15th.
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ARGNet Insider: More to the Story
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The Jack Torrance experience continues! In mid-August, multiple players received a package in the mail in response to their messages begging for forgiveness. The packages provided instructions to complete a ritual, along with a request to mail back a token that has personal significance. In response, Jack uploaded a series of videos featuring the tokens sent in by players.
Here's the video based on my token. You might recognize the pin in the video as the demon Orobas, from the Lovely Molly ARG that could have been.
On a more personal note, I had the extreme pleasure of attending an ARG wedding, where two veterans of TVTropes' "The Wall Will Fall" game made things official. The reception featured its own mini-ARG that involved appeasing one of the characters from the game who didn't get invited to the festivities.
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ARGNet Insider: The Archives
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One of ARGNet's earliest articles was about "...she's a flight risk", a blog purportedly run by Isabella V., a wealthy heiress turned international fugitive. The "real or fiction" debate has never conclusively resolved for this larger-than-life story. Whatever the case, over a decade later Isabella is gradually re-releasing her blog posts from that time, with additional commentary that brings how much things have changed since 2003 into stark relief.
Even (or especially) if you missed her the first time around, Isabella's reflections are well worth the read.
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