jokeefe's blog

I decided to have my project take the form of what could be considered a trailhead for an ARG. It’s a letter from a woman who claims she is participating in a research study against her will. Her letter is a cry for help, because as she claims, she is being electo-shocked by subjects of the research study. I wanted the letter to act as an introduction to a multitude of considerations regarding virtual reality. I think one of the most important themes of the class was the suspicion that a fictionalized concept of reality may or may not be false. I think this concept is particularly problematized when the fictionalized concept of reality requires an ethical reaction or engagement from a real-world participant.  read more »

Our ARG is based off of the movie "Children of Men." In the movie, human beings have stopped being able to reproduce, and are about 20 years away from extinction. The problem lies in female infertility. The only pregnant woman is discovered, and the movie centers around her protection in order to discover the key to solving infertility and the human race.
The player of our ARG enters into this world, and eventually ends up either assisting a geneticist who has disappeared. The player can choose to assist him by delivering his research to "The Human Project" or choose to assist the police-state government by turning him in. Our ARG gameplay relies on a paper flier trailhead with an embedded message, fake gmail accounts and fake blogs, and clues hidden in website source code.
After creating our own ARG, I can appreciate how time-consuming and difficult being a puppetmaster is. Aside from constructing a playable game, you have to predict multiple paths a player might take, and set up your game to meet those possibilities.
Creating a prototype ARG was actually kind of fun, and I can see why many people construct them as a hobby.

I saw this on CNN.com today. Sad/extreme example of how over-immersion can impact your first life.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/14/second.life.divorce/index.htm...

As I've been researching my group's ARG, The Jejune Institute, I've been realizing more and more how closely these games can blend into our everyday "realities."
I discovered that our ARG has set up an entire floor of an office building in downtown San Francisco strictly for the purposes of the game. You can literally go to the address provided for the Jejune Institute on their website and interact with a receptionist hired to sit in this office suite JUST for the purposes of a GAME. I just thought this was crazy, that the makers of the game had hired people and rented space all for the interaction experience of participants of the ARG.
I started to get a little paranoid wondering if ever in my life, I stumbled into an ARG setup without even realizing it. From what I've gathered from the Jejune Institute, people hired to interact with participants are trained and expect players to ask specific questions which indicate their knowing participation in the ARG. But, what if you accidentally indicated you were playing the ARG, but weren't?  read more »

I think its safe to say that advertising has made its way into almost every aspect of Western life. We accept a seven minute stretch of commercials at least three times during the average 30 minute t.v. program, we look FORWARD to the new batch of Super Bowl commercials that debut every year, and I can't imagine opening a newspaper or magazine without finding an overwhelming amount of sales pitches.
As a society, we have come to expect a barrage of advertising in almost every form of media. I don't think ARGs would be any different. Anything that attracts human attention is a fair template for advertisement. As we saw with The Beast, a significant amount of people were willing to devote a significant amount of time to the solving of that game. It seems obvious that a creator of an ARG would be willing to allow advertisements in his or her game to offset some of the production costs.  read more »

I think I agree with most people when I say, I don't think the Second Life classroom experience was quite successful. It was interesting in theory, but in practice, everyone literally flew off, ran into each other, left the pumpkin room, and generally got distracted.
Maybe, our virtual class session didn't work out because of the format of Second Life itself. It is kind of overwhelming, and there is a lot to explore, so maybe if the instructor limited the domain of the virtual program to just the classroom, it would work out better.
I guess I can see online classrooms catching on in the distant future; they seem like a likely step society might take. It's still hard to wrap my mind around attending school in virtual reality though. It could impact society greatly; consider the possibilities "The Machine Stops" explored.

I didn't mind reading the Cathy books. They were a nice adolescent break from the usual English course readings. I think that the concept behind the books is pretty interesting.
I'd have to agree that Cathy's Book and Cathy's Key are not actually ARG. While the accessories in the pockets mimic an interactive experience, they are basically unnecessary to understanding the outcome of the story. The little hints and props are cute, and I admire the writers for being so ambitious in their concept, but ultimately, the series falls short of being a game or interactive. It's more participatory if anything- you learn things ALONG with Cathy, but she'd discover them with or without your insight.
Shadowpuppet said:

If we're going by that definition of game (which I think is an effective definition), then no, Cathy's Book and Cathy's Key are not ARG. The reader's participation (I won't classify it as interaction) in the books does not actually facilitate or structure play, it simply enhances it.

I had never played interactive fiction games before this class, and if I thought playing them was frustrating, creating one was even worse. Interactive fiction is kind of a cool concept though, and once I got my game working, it was definitely gratifying.

In my game, you are dropped into the forest with no memory of how you got there. The goal is to explore a cabin you find, escape the cabin, and figure out why it seems you are back in the year 1907. I used dreaming as my alternate reality, but I also play with the concept of time travel (despite it being within a dream). I built the world mostly through description, but also through clues I thought the player would pick up on.

I also thought today's discussion on Second Life got pretty hilarious. It seems like there are some pretty strong feelings about virtual role playing games in general, but the concept of virtual sexuality and relationships seemed most controversial. I mean...a Second Life stripper?? Maybe I'm ignorant about the nature of most role playing games, but I found the concept of a virtual stripper making Linden money within a virtual economy a little surprising, and definitely hilarious.
On a more serious side of the same coin though, people getting married in Second Life and conducting that relationship seriously within the game is absolutely ridiculous to me. It makes me wonder what is missing in these peoples' lives that makes them turn to virtual relationships. And then of course, is the matter of breaching fidelity in real life based off of your actions in virtual life.  read more »

I was thinking about the question the last group answered today, and the concept of language as mind control. In Snow Crash, it seems that the character L. Bob Rife (who actually reminds me of L. Ron Hubbard in a lot of ways...) and his followers "speak in tongues," which is derived from Sumerian culture and their use of "me." In Snow Crash, "me" is like software for life activities. In this way, like Dr. Whalen suggested in class, information is power, and a narrative controls human action.
Without getting super controversial here, I'd suggest that in a way, religious narratives function in essentially the same way. Followers of a religion invest in a specific narrative, and alter their behavior according to the rules and principles of the religion.
I just thought the parallels here were too strong to ignore. I think that given some of the other aspects of culture Stephenson criticizes, religion would probably be another issue he takes issue with.

I thought the MOO experience we all had on Wednesday was an interesting way for Dr. Whalen to prove his point about how we all conduct ourselves in the classroom. It was sort of a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" sitation, and I thought the results were pretty interesting.
At first, I just felt like I was back in middle school, in a chatroom with my friends; the more people joined, the faster the conversation flowed, and it was hard to keep up. But the fact that we were all participating in a virtual classroom while in a physical classroom was strange and different. I found it kind of eery to be in class without oral communication, and in its place, furious typing and occasionally, a literal "lol."
I think it'd be an interesting thing to try again, since it seemed to work well, in its own right.

http://students.umw.edu/~jokee3rp/

After finally figuring out why NetStorage wasn't working (BIG thanks to shaddowpuppet), I've finally posted my website.

http://netstorage.umw.edu/oneNet/NetStorage/Home%40MARY/public.www/The%2...

This was my absolute first time writing HTML, and I found it pretty overwhelming. Enjoyable?...not quite, educational?...definitely. Here is the memo for my project:  read more »

I'm finding it impossible to post to net storage! I've been trying all night. Anyone logging on to submit their project, please let me know how you did it!?

I really liked the premise of The Machine Stops. I think the concepts Forster explores in his futuristic piece are quite relevant to today's world. Writings about the future almost always over-estimate the abilities of the projected era (we're supposed to have taken jet-packs to 5th grade right?) but that doesn't mean that the possibilities they foretell for a future time period are irrelevant. Imagine the state of sheer panic around the world if the internet were to suddenly fail. The impact would be enormous, and probably surprising in some ways. I think Forster picked up on a fundamental goal of human nature: convenience, and took that goal to it's absolute extreme. It's difficult to imagine letting convenience so rule our lives that we are reduced to living in pods beneath the earth, but consider just how far technological conveniences have taken us, even compared to our parents' generation. You can imagine, as Forster did back in 1909, the frightening trajectory society might follow if we do eventually give up our self-reliance to machines.