Kick-ass (Press)

[entelein]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1103884,00.html

Thousands of people who had never heard of Args, but were convinced this was a creation of the Wachowski brothers, signed up. The game looked professional. Some newspapers claimed it was an official online publicity tool. Although the game didn't explicitly use images or copyright names from the films themselves, the setting was obvious.

It became the most successful Arg ever, with around 12,000 players and visits logged from 118 different countries.

Comments

[ozy-y2k.livejournal.com]

Well, and then of course they had to give the story some balance, so they made sure to get a quote from the folks who were angry that it didn't turn out to be "official".

But that's okay. It was a risk we ran, and knew that we were running, when we put it together. All in all, it turned out to be a net positive for the genre, which makes me happy, at least. Plus we got a whole new generation of freshly-minted ARG fanatics out of the process, some of whom will undoubtedly go on to create their own totally excellent new games as well!

[entelein.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had sent a private e-mail to friends and family about this article, and explained that yes, we had concise legal disclaimers (Oswald E. Mandius, in the hizzy!), and that it was essentially an issue of taking personal responsibility for what information you give out on the net.

We didn't charge anyone a dime for this game, nor did we ever require registration.

The tag paragraph is what I like the best, though, personally. There was a lot of armchair punditry about what we were doing, concerning copyright and derivative works, perhaps claiming we shouldn't have done what we did.

I'm glad we did it. I don't think we 'lucked out,' nor do I think that the risk we took harmed a single hair on a single head. If anything, we helped boost the genre, and really, what more could you ask for?

[iko.livejournal.com]

I think ARGs are so cool and I wish I had time to really get back into it (was heavily involved in the A.I. game and Majestic before that went bye bye). Alas, I've been spending my time with Star Wars and solo Uru (hopefully online Uru soon). I suspect there may be such a thing as too many games.

[entelein.livejournal.com]

I wanna get into Uru myself, and I've been allowing myself fifteen minutes here and there of Knights of the Old Republic, so I totally hear you. And of course, I like to spend some time messing about with Age of Empires and Diablo II.

I still have so much left to play in Neverwinter Nights, as well.

And yet, I end up spending so much time making games. Meheheheh.

[predicate.livejournal.com]

*blink*

This is downright weird. You're involved in ARGs? I've been really interested in them for a while now but haven't put time into digging up the details; a lot of the interest is for the near-future scifi wankery I've been working on for a few years. Back in '99 or so we decided that ARG-style games would be a cultural phenomenon in our hypothetical future.

I'd be really interested in talking to you about it sometime and picking your brain -- i'm supremely curious.

[entelein.livejournal.com]

Definitely! Let me know how you wanna go about picking my brain.

[ozy-y2k.livejournal.com]

Eww, no brain picking. Or at least do us a favor and don't wipe it all over the furniture when you're done.

[entelein.livejournal.com]

Just like you did with the nacho cheese in some Orlando hotel?

Don't think we don't hear about these things just because we weren't there.

[martavius.livejournal.com]

For the record, it was a bar. And it was shrimp nachos. Plus, it was shrimp bits, not cheese. Ozy also refused to table dance there, as well, saying something about "Glass table? Not a chance." - after consuming a Hurricane or two.