LAMP Alternate Reality Games
From Lamp-wiki
Mini Alternate Reality Games (mARGs), collaborative play and quests as part of LAMP residentials or AFTRS inductions in reverse chronology. Please note all games are Copyright LAMP@AFTRS 2009
THE STORY STEALERS AND FRAGMENTATION VIRUS
AFTRS Foundation Induction Feb 2010 - a 7 hr ARG
Created by Gary Hayes, Catherine Gleeson, Kathy Mueller, Peter GIles & Wendy Thompson with production support from Daphne Paris, Ian Brown, Martin Armiger, AFTRS Production Crew and starring Katherine Blashki
Humanity is in peril. It’s history. all our key emotional moments may be taken from us, turning the earth into a shell, an un-imaginative dark void. Can a group of rookie students at a renowned media academy, be able to stop the exodus as the final 'stories' are poised at the transportation portal? They are amongst us. For millennia the 'story stealers' of Odyss have secretly and invisibly roamed our earth, stalking & capturing humanities' most emotional and tragic events manifested as a coloured elixir. They are a lost race from a dying planet, a dark world without laughter, emotion or drama - a void. Thousands of years ago they arrived through a portal, a series of wormholes desperate for creative spark. They needed to bring back 'charged' stories, to steal moments of our time, make them their own, as if their race have lived them themselves – they are here to ‘mine’ our creativity, an energy force that will drive their existence.
SAFESETS, SABOTAGE AND MADAME BLASH MINI ARG
AFTRS Foundation Induction Feb 2009 - a 6 hr ARG
Created by Gary Hayes and Catherine Gleeson with support from Daphne Paris and Kathy Mueller
Last year six students were tragically killed in separate studio and filming accidents on six new film productions. At first groups of students are suspected and each were investigated for being 1) truly unlucky, 2) deliberately stupid and 3) criminals as sabotage for gain. All deaths were reported as accidents and eventually all were forgotten, hidden from the outside world, due to the major cover-up. Questions abound. Why would students sabotage productions? Why would they be messing around with equipment and procedures and why would some be documenting each and every accident? Who were the victims and where is the evidence of their demise? Are supernatural forces involved? Why are staff acting strange and in constant denial? Tension reach a climax as new evidence comes into play and this day and this day only all will be revealed...
LAMP Residential VIII Marysville, Victoria feb 08
Conceived and produced by Gary Hayes with writing from Matt Costello
A Mixed-Media, Cross-Reality Game "The Old Forest" is set in Marylands, a large old house and grounds hidden from time in the 'Mystic Mountains', part of the heavily forested Yarra Range and Great Dividing Range, Victoria, Australia. The story begins with one of the first settlers in 1875 Mary Baxter who was banned from England as a teenager for witchcraft and forced into the mountains by a nervous Melbourne Major (she was suspected of starting the Fire of London). Mary protested her innocence but, as in the frenzy of all such witch hunts, to no avail. A video was made of some of the experience on YouTube called Second Life - Mixed Reality Game 'OLD FOREST'
THE COURAN COVE ENIGMA MINI ARG
LAMP Residential VII Couran Cove, Queensland Nov 07
Created by Gary Hayes & Jackie Turnure © 2007
A Mixed-Media, Cross-Reality Game "Couran Cove Enigma" at the start of LAMP VII: Story of the Future Game on South Stradbroke Island Nov 6-12 2007. "Welcome to the Hall of Revelations. It's exactly 1000 years in the future. Couran Cove lies completely under water and there isn't a single sign of life. An ancient stone tablet in the shape of a pyramid lies on the sea bed, engraved with 21 cryptic symbols. What do the symbols reveal about what happened here? And how were the people who lived here responsible for this devastating situation?"
THE ZANCHETTA BROTHERS MINI ARG
LAMP Residential VI Freycinet, Tasmania May 07
Created by Gary Hayes & Jackie Turnure © 2007
"A multi part Italian mystery (similar to the previous on 6 months earlier), quest, mixed reality game which saw participants working together for the first time in an inextricably linked, parallel Second Life plus real life in surrounds around Freycinet Lodge. This included a virtual replica of the lodge itself built by Gary on site. After the usual random puzzle to create the teams we went into a quest for clues and credits (gold coins, codes etc) in both Second Life and a nearby forest so they could continue to part three. The teams talked on walkie talkies as they found locations in Second Life which mirrored hidden clues around the lodge, in the walkways along the coast and the long pier. This finished with an exercise to buy props for a presentation and work together to create a story incorporating as many elements as they could. As many people had been awake since 4am to get flights from other parts of Australia, the game functioned to revitalise people and set the mood for the next five days of the lab. (Catherine Gleeson did film a great edgy, infrared video of this game that lasted about two hours, into the darkness but sadly it was deleted by John Buchanan of Carnegie Mellon during the week!"
THE ITALIAN CONNECTION MINI ARG
LAMP Residential V Freycinet, Tasmania Oct 06
Created by Jackie Turnure & Gary Hayes © 2006
“The Freycinet area has a rich history. Today I’m going to tell you about two Italian brothers who tried to make their fortune here. Their names were Mario and Biagio Zanchetta and in 1933 they applied for a permit to quarry pink granite. For a while their business was successful and their granite was used throughout Tasmania and exported to Italy. A photograph of the M. V. Naracoopa (250 tons) used to transport granite is shown in the foyer of this hotel. The Zanchetta pink granite was highly sought after and if you tour the famous landmarks of Italy you can see examples of the beautiful stone. However one night a strange electrical disturbance was recorded in this area and the next day the Zanchettas abruptly closed down their granite business. No-one knows why. Your job today is to work together in teams to explore the Italian Connection to the Freycinet Peninsula and complete the Zanchetta’s mysterious story.”
LAMP Residential IV Milson Island Jul 06
Created by Jackie Turnure & Gary Hayes © 2006 other title - "The Ghosts of Milson's Island"
This 1.5 hour exercise is both an ice breaker and an introduction to the Island's history. The game is designed to immediately get the group thinking about the user journey, stories in games, pitching dramatically, and how to collaborate. Building on historical events, the game is made up of a combination of puzzles, riddles, physical tasks, online research and theatrical presentation. Four teams of 6 will solve, research and create a five minute story that they will perform to the group.
LAMP Residential III Perth May 06
Created by Christy Dena and Jackie Turnure © 2006
The local wineries in the Swan Valley area are battling claims that they use a controversial technique called ‘hung-long’. They’re losing customers and are struggling to keep their wineries. They’ve formed a coalition, RAC (Residents Action Coalition), to team together and battle the spin, which they feel is a conspiracy to close them down.
Local Real Estate company, Vino Resorts Pty Ltd, are offering good prices for the wineries who are facing bankruptcy, claiming that they will keep the staff on once taken-over. Vino Resorts have bought a number of wineries in the region, destroying most of the grapes and turning the wineries into resort/conference centres. Swan Valley was the first winery to be “acquired”.
AFTRS INDUCTION Jan 2006
Created by Gary Hayes and Jackie Turnure & Christy Dena © 2006 ...for 50 new students as part of a 'working together' induction. In late 2005, a grad dip doco student, Christine Greeves, is filming in and around the school when she notices a shadowy figure in her view finder. Convinced the school is haunted, Christine starts to research the AFTRS past and discovers a group of rejected applicants have placed a curse on the school. Christine is shaken by the intensity of their vitriol but she resolves to find the spell and overturn the curse. She confides in her boyfriend, Roger telling him she has found the spell to reverse the curse, but he wants no part in it. That night Christine goes alone to the school to do the spell and is never seen again. Guilt stricken, Roger is desperate to find out what happened to her but has been banned from entering the school, for some reason, by its directors. He has to work remotely and manages to hack into an induction student group who are taking part in a Working Together digital media exercise - using computers to research the school. He secretly appeals to the fifty students for their help in finding Christine and finally ridding the school of the evil curse. TEXT FROM LIVE ROGERTHAT.INFO WIKI
LAMP Residential II Dec 05
Created by Gary Hayes and Christy Dena © 2005 for an ABC TV LAMP residential
The story talks about an experiment that took place at the University to 'relatively' speed time up for the observer, by ‘time-slicing’ – cutting time into segments and getting rid of the ‘boring bits!’ . The story hidden on the itvformats.com site is written in very measured tones, but has an air of paranoia. Johnnie was sworn to secrecy but got caught up in industrial espionage and under the banner of an entertainment, interactive formats site, he was the webmaster passing information about the time slicer to competitors ‘WalMax’ – a company involved in drug trafficking amoungst other things. The WalMax heavies banished Johnnie to Time Sliced hell, he is locked for a lifetime in the AGSM building, a whole life passes in 40 minutes – 6.20 – 7.00pm – he has to be found.
THE LEGEND OF THE AMELIA ROSE MINI ARG
LAMP RESIDENTIAL I Oct 05
Created by Christy Dena and Jackie Turnure © 2005
October 9, 1905, Encounter Bay – exactly 100 years ago today! The Whaling Ship, the Amelia Rose, was heading across Encounter Bay towards the point where the Whalers Inn is located. Just off the beach in apparently calm conditions, the ship went down. All 14 members of the crew and Captain William Ackroyd were lost. Shipwrecks were not an uncommon event except for one thing. Not one of the bodies were ever recovered. What happened?
