liveLOV3laugh819's blog

"The world is about to end in 2012... 'cause the Mayans made calendars, and they stop at 2012. I got encyclopedias on the bus... The world is about to end as we know it. You can see it already. A planet doesn't exist - there's no more Pluto... Mosquitoes bite you and you die. And a black man and a woman are running for president."
- Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr. AKA Lil' Wayne

I created an ARG based on the Mayan Calendar theory that the world will end December 21, 2012. It sounds a little strange, but it actually sends a message to players that I think will be influential in the future.

Read and enjoy!

Our ARG is based on the idea that a secret organization is manufacturing a virus to be sold to spy groups. Without going into too much detail about the science involved, the spy group could essentially use the virus as a hitman in case they suspected any of their spies of espionage. That way they never have to hire assassins and their spies would die of seemingly natural causes, so the company can never be held responsible.

Our main character Matthew was unknowingly a human test subject for the virus as a baby and is a carrier of the virus. He wakes up in a hospital bed and after a few minutes of wandering around the halls, he finds Dr. Johnson dead in his chair with three bullet holes in his chest. Johnson had already been contacting players for about a week at this time, telling them to get out while they still can, he works with dangerous people. Matthew uses the same email account to contact players to help him out of the situation he is in. Players must then solve puzzles and direct him to various websites that will remind him of his past. Eventually he must decide between his own life and the lives of the small town he grew up in.  read more »

After reading the article in the previous blog about Second Life, it really made me think about the game in a whole new way. Before I had envisioned Second Life as a game for people who were disappointed with their own lives and sought a virtual alternative. Maybe they had failing relationships, jobs, or friendships in their own lives and wished to create new ones in a separate dimension. For them, they're bored with the lives they are living and want a social change.

But the article addresses the idea of people who are medically unable to form the social connections most of us are used to in our lives. For example, Simon has cerebral palsy in real life. But in SL he has the ability to "freely socialize, dance, and even run a business" in his nightclub, all things that would be difficult for him to achieve in the real world. Ashley, a mute in real life, is in a similar situation, and is a popular, successful character in the SL world.  read more »

From the ARG presentations we've seen so far, I feel like some have been able to capture the idea of a believable alternative reality better than others. Looking at the two presentations that went today (Home Office and My Own Worst Enemy), the first was more realistic for a few reasons.

First, the videos were posted on Youtube, which is a site available for the entire public to upload information to. This way, it's easy for a player to imagine an in-game character uploading their videos for the world to see in order to convey their message (in this case, it's an effort to stop a cult organization). But the MOWE ARG has all of their videos on the MOWE NBC site, making it difficult for players to separate the "real" game from the obviously fictional television show.  read more »

Cathy's Book and Key novels both include a very interesting topic for 20th century literature - advertisement. Ads for Covergirl and various websites littered the books in an attempt to be discrete advertising for young audiences. In reality though, this really didn't surprise me. Advertisement has come a long way over the years, and can be found just about everywhere. Billboards line our streets, bumper stickers on the back of every car, ads on television and radio, countless pages in newspapers and magazines. It's everywhere! If this book had been published 50 years ago, it would come as a shock to the community to see so much blatant advertisement in a youth's novel. But today we take it in stride because that's simply something that we've grown accustomed to seeing.  read more »

An interesting question was raised during the discussion in Second Life... does your avatar resemble you? And if so, why?

Personally, my avatar looked a lot like myself. Blonde hair, caucasian, female, my first name plus a few numbers, and even the last name was pretty close. I just did this without thinking - it was my natural instinct to create an identity that resembled my own. Obviously in a fictional world though, there are no restrictions on how you create your avatar. In many cases, people create a totally alternative identity. Maybe it's someone they wish they were, or they're tired with their own images in real life (which ties into the whole discussion about how Second Life can be an escape for people who are disappointed/bored with their own lives) and seek a new and improved image.  read more »

So far, my opinion of the book has been varied. Sometimes I think it's extremely complex and there's a good mystery plot going on. On the other hand, Cathy will say something witty "'Life's a bitch and then you die'" and it will remind me that this is a teen fiction novel. It continues to flip-flop through each phase almost on a page-by-page basis, and although it can be a little annoying sometimes, the book has surprised me a few times with some spots of humor. I like how the story starts off quickly with a "mysterious spider bite" and doesn't bore the reader with a lot of background information.

Overall, good read so far!

Even with all of the grammatical frustrations, I really feel that this was a successful project. It took a while for me to get used to the language that the Inform program demanded for a working system, but I learned to appreciate that little golden stopwatch when it flashed onto my screen. Of course, it took a lot of the images of the broken pieces to get to that success point. Rulebooks were particularly frustrating to create, and I really just gave up on creating the more complicated ones that I had seen as I was perusing the Inform catalogues and indexes.  read more »

I have been, and always will be, a huge Office fan. My first encounter with Second Life was the episode where Dwight's SL identity is revealed by Jim, who in turn creates his own SL identity to keep tabs on Dwight's avatar. Anyone who has ever seen the Office knows that Dwight is just about as creepy and awkward as anyone can be, and therefore fits the "typical SL stereotype". However, Jim still makes one too so obviously there's no barrier for personality in entering this world, and normal people do actually exist in it.

Jim believes that Dwight has used SL as an escape from reality after his nasty breakup with Angela. To escape even further, he has created a second world inside SL, known as "Second Second Life". This is when Jim realizes he should do something to save Dwight from his misery and bring him back to reality.

I feel that people usually use SL for this same purpose. Yes, it's an escape from reality, but it also gives users a sense of pride and accomplishment in a world outside from their previous failures. In Dwight's case, an "alternate alternate" reality is his way of coping with a loss of a loved one and shutting himself out from reality.  read more »

When we were first introduced to MOO, my first thought was that this was simply a chatroom similar to one I've used in AIM in the past. Just a lot of people talking at once, with multiple threads of conversations merging together. It was a little overwhelming, but manageable since I've been in chatrooms with large groups of friends before.

But then the next class we were introduced to some more complex aspects of the program. We could now create things to hold, throw, and give to other people. We could navigate through (or get lost in) the virtual Combs building. This meant that MOO was now more complex than a simple chatroom, and instead more like an Interactive Fiction game. Although we were not entirely immersed into the room as Hiro is in the Metaverse, we were still able to interact with our new world in a few more ways.

Unfortunately it is not as complete as the Metaverse because it lacks the visual input. Although there are textual descriptions of the environment, it's still not as complete as the world Hiro can see with his goggles on. Still though, I feel that MOO is a step above the average chatroom, even if it's not as visually appealing as Hiro's Metaverse.

So my first link didn't work, and I also forgot to mention something unique about my site in my last blog entry.

With the amount of advertisement in society today, I can only imagine that things will get worse in the future. Under the "places" link is my own source of "advertisement" on my site, as though my VR identity was paid to mention locations of interest within the personal blog. As professor Whalen mentioned in class, this is like the "commercial break" of my project, only more subtle.
Check it out here .

Well after I finally got the hang of it, HTML really isn't so bad after all. There were a few frustrating points along the way when I couldn't get the CSS to correspond with the HTML, but after some time things finally started to click and I think I ended up with a pretty satisfying product.

When I first began this project I wanted to create a Utopian society for people to escape to, because I feel like the real world can be a little stressful for some these days. But of course, the VR I created must be supported by either a fee or a small payment of labor. I figured a few hours a week doing something you liked wouldn't be too bad, so I settled for the enforced labor idea (3 hours a week for free access to the VR world). Sounds like a fair trade to me. There is, of course, the heavenly food, beautiful landscapes, comforting massages, etc. But it's also an opportunity for people to get together to discuss ideas in a peaceful environment. Coexistence is an important value in this society, and no one is every discriminated against for any reason. Enough of that already goes on in the real world, I wanted to create an alternative area where race or creed would never be an issue.  read more »

This had to be one of the strangest games I've ever played. It reminded me of the Crimson Room style games that the player must interact with a visual environment and solve puzzles to escape the room they have been imprisoned in. In this case however, the player depends greatly upon the author's ability to describe the surroundings in a more literal format since the graphics are not available to provide a visual for the audience.  read more »