Second Life Future Salon

SL Future Salon on ARGs *Tonight* Friday, Nov. 27th at 4 PM PST

Aaaaaaaarg, it's the future salon on ARGs. Theater with your software and stories gone wild:

Come to the 5th floor auditorium of Sheep Tower on Sheep island (<--SLURL) at 4 PM PST *tonight* 11/27 for the Second Life Future Salon meeting and podcast on alternate reality games (ARGs). Tonight's guests are:

*Tony Walsh, Clickable Culture

*Elan Lee, 42 Entertainment

*Dan Hon, Mind Candy

*hosted by Jerry Paffendorf, The Electric Sheep Company

If we fill the sim (likely since we often do and this one got picked up on Boing Boing), overflow access will kindly be provided on the web by DestroyTV.com -- the hardest working avatar in show business -- where you'll see and hear streaming video and audio of the salon, and can even chat with everyone from the comfort of your browser.

For those new to the salon meetings you can subscribe to this blog for future updates (please let me know if you're interested in helping on some light, credited design work on the SLFS blog--we've been between looks for a while), join the "SL Future Salon" group in SL for inworld announcements, and the Yahoo! group for emails. Last month we began posting SLFS podcasts to metaversesessions.com, so you can check there for audio archives.

For some background and scope of what's fair game at the salon, here are some links ranging from ARGs to just plain AR that influenced my prep:

ReGenesis (one of Tony's ARGs, via Clickable Culture)

I Love Bees (one of Elan's ARGs, via Wikipedia)

Perplex City (one of Dan's ARGs, via Wikipedia)

ARGNet

"Lisa the Skeptic" episode of The Simpsons

ARG influence on the Lost TV series (via Clickable Culture)

lonelygirl15.com (I really liked this month's Wired cover article, but there's no link yet)
Borat

Infocult on ARGs in Second Life

Gary Hayes on ARGs in SL and virtual spaces

Andy Havens questions for the salon (in a comment on this blog)

Chris Carella/Satchmo Prototype on Software Theater

Nick Yee on The Blurring of Work and Play

The Yes Men

Ze Frank

Incident at Loch Ness by Werner Herzog

The Idiots by Lars von Trier

Four Eyed Monsters

Cory Edo's response (and follow-up here and here) to the SLLA's bounty for attacks on Electric Sheep, Millions of Us, and Rivers Run Red

Who Killed Miss Norway?

Zombo.com

As you can see from the links, I'm drawing this pretty widely, not minding dropping the G in ARG, like SL drops the G in MOG. I'm really interested in exploring the possibilities of all imagined stories and characters that mix with reality as usual (are purported to be true or real -- or in the case of events in a virtual world, are technically very true and real with the caveat that they take place in cyberspace); alternate/reality generated content (like Sasha Cohen interacting with people that don't know Borat is a character, and recording the encounters -- which has it's ethical and legal issues); co-created storylines that take on a life of their own; community and culture that grows up around ARG stories and challenges and how widespread and sustainable it can be (I think of the characters in The Idiots, as a kind of obscure example for anyone who's seen that, who try to take their idiot behavior home to their families as a test of how committed they are and find themselves completely shunned); ARGs as a more efficient platform for celebrity for their participants (so the best contributors to the stories are more fully recognized for their talents and further incented to participate); ARG business models and how they can reward their participants; real work and ARGs (ARGsourcing, ha -- couple of wild ideas here), and anything that a big fat, unfolding interactive story that spreads across many kinds of media would just make more interesting. Which is pretty much everything, and a lot more things in virtual worlds like Second Life.

As the poet Muriel Rukeyser put it, from the human side: "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone how the future of unchained interactive stories might meet with the future of work and production of media. Lots to noodle on, and hopefully some very cool creative ideas for people to run with. Definitely some theater with your software, or your new media. Send me any questions for tonght. It's all fair game.

SL Future Salon on Alternate Reality Games, Monday, November 27th at 4 PM PST

Update: More posted here. The SL Future Salon on ARGs will meet in the 5th floor auditorium of Sheep Tower (<--SLURL) at 4 PM PST, Monday, November 27th (if all goes well the tower will be talking to us ;)). Destroy Television will be present so you can watch, listen, and chat from the web, and the audio URL will be made available for overflow. IM SNOOPYbrown Zamboni/Jerry Paffendorf with any questions. And heya, Boing Boing readers, come on inworld.

Thanks to those on the SL Future Salon Yahoo! group who chipped in with thoughts on this one: On Monday, November 27th from 4-5 PM PST the Second Life Future Salon will meet on the topic of alternate reality games or ARGs with Clickable Culturist and ARG designer man Tony Walsh; I Love Bees-making 42 Entertaiment creative Elan Lee; Adrian Hon and/or Dan Hon from Mind Candy, the creators of Purplex City, and me on the 1s and 2s. Please send any ideas for questions or topics for these guys to jerry[at]electricsheepcompany[dot]com, and I’ll post an outline and location later this week.

From Wikipedia:

An alternate reality game (ARG) is a type of game that overlaps the game world with reality, by utilizing real world media, in order to deliver an interactive narrative experience to the players — a kind of surrealism.

ARGs are typified by involving the players with the story and its characters, by encouraging them to explore the story, solve plot based challenges, and interact with game characters. ARGs can be delivered via websites, email, telephones, or any other means of communication which is readily available to the players.

ARGs are growing in popularity, with new games appearing regularly. They tend to be free to play, with costs absorbed either through supporting products (collectable puzzle cards in the case of Perplex City) or because they support or promote an existing product (Halo 2 in the case of I Love Bees).

Tony points me to some thoughts by Bryan Alexander that popped up on the Infocult blog yesterday, who’s riffing with Andy Havens (probably my favorite commentor on Terra Nova) about ARGs in virtual worlds like Second Life. Since Destroy TV came on the scene (she’s now streaming video after the big move to Chris and Becky’s place) I’ve thought about ARGs and involving people in co-creating massive stories quite a lot (how can something like DTV take on a life of its own?), and the recent Wired cover article on lonelygirl15 and how it came about completely pushed me over the edge. I’m completely hooked on ideas for stories that are platforms for people’s creativity and involvement. More on that later in the week as we approach the salon, and of course nothing but that stuff at the salon. I’m psyched.