Posted by thebruce | Under Puppetmasters
Wednesday Aug 27, 2008
Creativity-Online.com has posted an in-depth behind the scenes interview with 42 Entertainment - the company that produced the Alternate Reality Game for Batman: The Dark Knight (aka “Why So Serious?“).
Read the interview with Susan Bonds and Alex Lieu about The Dark Knight over at Creativity-Online. Find out some hidden secrets and the way things were from ‘behind the curtain’ during the campaign’s run.
42 Entertainment is also currently known to be running the ARG for Sony’s upcoming PS3 game Resistance 2 (aka “Project Abraham“)
Posted by thebruce | Under ARGs General
Friday Aug 15, 2008
This week, Cassie’s voting crew chose Nathan Hale [wiki] as the next injection candidate. Thankfully, it appears another serum being delivered from Base Station Genesis has had far more positive results, and this will be the injection Hale faces this coming Tuesday.
Not only that, Cassie’s actions have been under observation, due to the ‘personal’ nature of some of her interactions with the candidate soldiers - specifically Hale and Khaner. Jarod Daltings has been suspended, and his observations catalogued in the SRPA Terminal [wiki].
But of most importance, is an image discovered in this observation package - a very high quality (1920×1200), surveillance photo of Katee Sackhoff Cassie Aklin. Of course, the image has now been made public, so who knows how many will now have Katee Cassie officially gracing their desktop background.
Posted by thebruce | Under ARGs General
Monday Jul 28, 2008
During Comic-Con 2008 in San Diego, many, many things happened. Viral drops are a growing trend at events such as this, and Year Zero’s headline-making flash-drive-in-bathroom stunts at Nine Inch Nails concerts seems to have opened the ‘flash-flood’ gates.
A number of reports have streamed in of people receiving USB flash drives for various exhibitors - one of which was Sony’s upcoming Playstation 3 game, Resistance 2 - the sequel to Resistance: Fall of Man.
Sony launched their ARG / viral campaign back on July 1st, with a “Popular Technologies” flyer ad in Gamepro magazine, which directed people to GetAWarJob.com. Since then, numerous videos and content and a few other websites have appeared or been discovered.
But this week at Comic-Con, a few lucky attendees managed to take home a special “America First - America Only” flyer, and a USB flash drive loaded with an image and a video. The flyer was primarily intending to direct people to AmericaFirstAmericaOnly.com.
But thanks to an unfiction community member, celina63, I managed to acquire the contents of the flash drive. Neither the image nor the video were ‘new’, at least to the online community already following the campaign, but rather intended to draw Comic-Con attendees/bloggers into the campaign. The image and video are shown below.
As the video explains, Cassie (Katee Sackhoff!) has been commanded to select individuals from a group of soldiers, who have been transferred to a secret base in Alaska, to undergo a top secret medical experiment - an injection supposedly related to an outbreak of influenza. But the moral toll the decision is taking on her is too much, and she enlists the help of the online community (hey this is an alternate reality - they had internet in 1950!) to make the decision.
Test subject #2 (the first, shown in the video, was Pvt. Joseph Capelli) has been chosen already - the voting results led to Channing Brown becoming the next injectee. He was informed on Friday (July 25), and the results of the injection will be made known tomorrow (July 29).
What will happen?
Resistance has a hefty back-story built up from the first PS3 game and other media. The Resistance 2 ARG looks to expand on the events taking place between the first and second game.
The Joker’s just released his HaHaHa Times volume 3. Once again making light of serious Gotham news, and yanking Batman’s chains. Check it out
Wednesday morning, on hovering the mouse over the upper left corner of the most recent Gotham Times, the paper slowly smolders to reveal the link to the Joker’s spoof.
Throughout the paper, in typical Joker fashion, are circle words and letters. The letters spell:
Herrings are red
Corpses are blue
You’re on the right track
But you don’t have the clue
And the words: party, chaos, level, aren’t, twice, world, level, Dent’s, Dent’s, faced, urban
Where’s the Joker taking us now?
UPDATE: Shortly after, people began receiving text messages from the Joker, containing image attachments labelled 1A.jpg through 6F.jpg.
After aligning all these image attachments in a grid once they were reported in, it was noticed that each image was made up of four smaller patterns. Replacing each of these patterns in the 12×12 grid with a letter produced a substitution cipher! The solution to that puzzle was another clue:
color me impressed just use the second letter of the fourth word to the right of each circled five letter word to find out where to go from here
That takes us back to the new HaHaHaTimes from the Joker. Looking for each five letter word, then the fourth word after each, and the 2nd letter of each of those words results in the Joker’s next game - Red Balloons.
Now, while it’s a fun game in and of itself (YMMV), it’s similar to the Joker’s previous game - LaughTilItHurts - there’s a ticket slot. The game requires pushing the clowns’ noses to blow up the balloons to exploding within the allotted time. But if you look closer, the clowns’ eyes turn blue at a certain ‘pressure’. Try getting each clowns’ eyes blue simultaneously! If you’re successful, you’ll be given a ticket, and a pass to Inept Lackeys, where the Joker left us a new message:
Hired goons are so unreliable these days. That’s why I only employ the ones who graduated at the top of their class from Clown College (and being opera-lovers didn’t hurt, either). But Maroni’s got his hands full with inept lackeys like little Stevie and Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? I’ll tell you where they are: sittin’ pretty with a smile on their face. They tried to reschedule their pick up service at Pasquale’s, but things didn’t go according to plan.
HAHAHAHA.
Analyzing this message, and the number of subtle opera-related hints, composer Giuseppe Verdi seemed to be fairly important. Calling Pasquale’s business number, 1-877-678-7277, forwards you to voicemail, where you have the option of providing a 5-digit administrative PIN. Guess what? “verdi” is 5 letters. Entering 83734 gets you into the voicemail. The first and only voicemail says:
Hey, Frenchie - me and, uh, Rosolio ain’t gonna to make it to, uh, Sunday Night Crepefest. Something came up - in the Gotham River. I think his name was…Fred. Anyways, we’ll be there Monday night for our ‘box of pastries.’ Baker’s dozen this time, capiche?
This eerily seem to explain what may have happened in regards to to this security feed at the end of LaughTilItHurts…
It certainly hurts, playing the new and frustratingly unending game that’s shown up at Whysoserious.com, care of the Joker.
Earlier today, holders of the Joker’s cell phones received a new text message, though a few variations were reported. One read:
Welcome to Short-Attention-Span Theater: Align This Tutu Hurl (-un)
The letters of the strange phrase form an anagram which leads to whysoserious.com/laughtilithurts - a typical fairground race game where you spin a wheel, and move ahead a number of spots, trying to beat out 3 other cars. There’s a ’skill shot’ spot, however, which if hit, doubles the spinner value and moves your car ahead faster. So you play. And play… and play… and scream at the universe… then play some more.
Until you realize that hitting the skillshot spot continuously in a row leads to a colour pattern on the spinner - make note of the colour pattern (of Blue/Yellow/Green/Reds): “bgygbrgbyrygbgybbrbyg”, and manually click that same pattern on the spinner itself (any number works). The machine spits out a ticket! Clicking eventually leads to a new location - whysoserious.com/laughtilithurts/static.htm
Security footage of Acme Security Systems - CAM 4131 Dock 138. Watch carefully. Before the video ends, you’ll see a familiar face.
Posted by thebruce | Under Puppetmasters
Thursday Jun 19, 2008
The 2008 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival began Monday in France, and awards have already been announced in many categories. Yesterday, the Cyber Lions category was addressed, and some familiar faces were rewarded with some hefty recognition!
For last year’s Halo 3 Believe website website, AKQA (www.akqa.com) received silver for “Websites & Microsites”.
Synopsis:
The Halo 3 “Believe” site is the interactive companion to the global advertising campaign which positioned Master Chief as the greatest of Earth’s heroes. Utilizing sophisticated motion control cameras and digital compositing, the 1200 square foot diorama was transformed into a fully immersive experience, giving users the ability to interact with and explore the elaborate monument to humanity’s greatest battle as well as a wealth of other content.
(Halo 3: Believe - view the site)
Secondly, 42 Entertainment (www.42entertainment.com) received two awards for their Year Zero Alternate Reality Game with Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails: the Grand Prix for ”Viral Advertising” and a Silver for “Interactive Campaigns”
Synopsis:
The ambitious Year Zero alternate reality game (ARG), a work of cross-media art involving websites, emails, phone calls, album packaging, tour t-shirts, thumb drives, music videos, murals, and live concert events with the new music of Nine Inch Nails at its core. Playing out over 10 weeks, the Year Zero ARG engaged over 2.5M participants. It started with a message hidden in the back of a concert t-shirt that lead to online websites - ultimately over 29 websites discovered over several months, 7.5M page views, 7M forum postings, 2M phone calls and thousands of original art submissions.
(NIN: Year Zero - see the overview)
What kind of stunt is Gotham City Pizzeria trying to pull? Sponsored by Dominoes Pizza, reports are they’re selling their pizzas in new boxes that have cut-out Batman custumes for people to run around in. And this, just on the heels of Gotham Cable News‘ report of Batman sightings, and asking the public to send in their pictures and videos? This is just asking for chaos!
Also, Gotham Tonight’s first episode, originally airing only on Comcast On Demand, is now available on GCN.
UPDATE: Free pizzas are to be delivered as part of Gotham City Pizzeria’s one-day-only promotion - today! Go to their availability map to find out where the free pizzas are available! Get ordering! Only 245 will be available across the country!
Update: The SMS picture puzzle has been solved. (spoilers below)
The three groups of cellphone owners received from three sets of 6 related images. Group 1 received images representing names of Dominoes games; Group 2 received words anagrammed from Commercial; Group 3 received fractions all multiples of 3/8, multiplied by 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 - the missing fraction in the pattern is for 2, or 6/16. Together, the clues seem to indicate a Dominoes Commercial 6/16.
Gotham Cable News is reporting that Gotham Tonight will be airing online at noon on Monday (June 16th). Will we see a Dominoes commercial on the air? What does the Joker have up his sleave?
Creativity-Online.com has posted an in-depth behind the scenes interview with 42 Entertainment - the company that produced the Alternate Reality Game for Batman: The Dark Knight (aka “Why So Serious?“).
This week, Cassie’s voting crew chose 
It certainly hurts, playing the new and frustratingly unending game that’s shown up at Whysoserious.com, care of the Joker.
The 2008 
