Author Archive

Transmedia Panels at SXSW: Vote Now!

Well, this is the obligatory SXSW Panel Picker Post. There are lots of great Transmedia/ARG panels up for voting this year (including three by NMM partners), and here are our favorites, for your consideration:

FILM:

INTERACTIVE

If you’re a transmedia fan, please take a look and vote! :)

ETA: Sara Thacher’s panel

ARGFest 2010 Recap

From ARGNet: Our own Maureen McHugh’s no holds barred keynote, complete with a menacing lightning backdrop!

Near, far, wherever you are – ARGFest 2010 in Atlanta, GA was a blast. Whether at ARGFest or its virtual Twitter counterpart #PretendARGFest, the annual…(read more)

Creating Buzz vs. the Player Experience

A long time ago in an ARG far far away…

…a payphone rang. Quite a few payphones, actually. As an integral part of the award-winning I Love Bees Alternate Reality Game, a War-of-the-Worlds-esque radio drama played out on payphones around the world. Players drove miles, sometimes crossing international borders, sometimes braving hurricanes and even ridicule to be at a payphone at the appointed time in order to have a chance at answering it, unlocking story content for everyone online, and perhaps even getting to talk to an actual rampant AI from the future.

Are we but marketing sheep??

In another instance, people gathered in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles to take part in an Anti-Robot Militia (ARM) rally. Puzzles were put together (literally), actors were interacted with, info was shared with those online, enduring friendships formed. All in order to lead online players to new websites to further the story.

Elsewhere, players descended on a cybercafe in Chicago, a shop in Las Vegas, a gazebo in Florida, all looking for a hidden CD-ROM full of scanned documents, photos, sound files. All in order to help find a distraught mother’s missing hacker son.

Why did people do this? Why did they spend their valuable time heading off to a place sometimes pretty far out of their way (maybe enduring border searches), to take part in what was, at least to many people, just a giant advertising campaign? Read more

USC/UCLA Transmedia Hollywood Panel

Click to Download Video

Last month, Maureen and I were honored to be part of a day-long series of panels put on by USC and UCLA Film Schools called Transmedia Hollywood: S/Telling the Story.

Now, videos of the entire day have become available. You can download our panel, ARG: This is Not a Game…. But is it Always a Promotion? (Jordan Weisman, Will Brooker, Ivan Askwith, etc.) directly from their site, or go here to catch all the videos from the entire day (they’re still in the process of adding all the videos).

The “New Internet,” and what it means for ARGs and Transmedia

I was thinking recently about what life was like online for me before the advent of browsers and the World Wide Web. Now, I wasn’t a hardcore hacker geek or phone phreak back in the 90′s like some people, I was more your typical casual user, a layperson, I guess. My very first email address was a CompuServe address (7751.234501osmething something @ compuserve.com). My online experience lived basically on CompuServe, with its various communities and discussion areas etc. Geez, it’s tough to remember. The main benefit for me

was that CompuServe was a place that most of the music software companies had updates, patches and goodies for their products, so I could keep Cubase up to date, and maybe even download some samples for my sampler!

Then all of a sudden, the bigger world of the WWW opened up. I remember when CompuServe suddenly offered a portal to it, and you could use their version of Mosaic to “surf.” Suddenly, the internet meant something other than just Compuserve. My online horizons broadened immensely. I discovered…..that I didn’t know how to find anything (Google wasn’t around yet). Read more

Transmedia, Hollywood Asks ‘Are ARGs Always a Promotion?’

Here’s a nice @Tubefilter writeup of our Transmedia/Hollywood Panel:  Hollywood Asks ‘Are ARGs Always a Promotion?’

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