Embedded Files
Overview
Overview
Focus: 15-min Alternate Reality Game (ARG)
Group Members: Frazer, James and I
Prompt: "cold" - we chose to interpret this as a Cold War conspiracy setting.
Summary: This Is Not A Drill is a Cold War-themed Alternate Reality Game (ARG). The player stumbles across the first of three puzzles, which draws them into the story.
A Secret Service agent was investigating a foreign espionage threat, trying to uncover a plot to infiltrate the Australian government and take over, but mysteriously never finished. He managed to encode his discoveries in various forms of media and it’s up to the player to put the pieces together.
Task allocation for this Prototype. In addition to these tasks, we also documented our own progress and worked together to complete the LDD.
Research & Design
Research & Design
In-class plotting:
cipher of some kind [removed]
video containing relevant info that plays independently
legit-looking google site with three hyperlinks
photos of rooms where the puzzles are? [removed]
"avoid suspicious persons" [removed]
found footage trope to create story [removed]
the character was trying to figure out some code - each puzzle is denoted by a symbol
each puzzle contains a section of a link to another, and when the player has all three they can access the final page
References:
Extra History. (2012, May 21). ARGs - I: What Are Alternate Reality Games? - Extra Credits [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiU4AYPdIOw&t=46s
We watched this video (Extra History, 2012) as a class, so that we could get a fair understanding of what an ARG is. I found it most interesting that ARG's don't have any marketing or make any money - they rely entirely on you stumbling across it and becoming hooked.
Process
Process
1. The prompt we chose was "cold", and we're interpreting this as the Cold War. Our idea is to give the player the feeling of having stumbled across an old conspiracy, that the Secret Service began investigating but mysteriously never finished. This image is from the 1962 film This Is Not A Test (Cusson, 2022).
2. This is an example of how the analogue game will look. It will be sort of like a jigsaw puzzle, where this image is cut up into pieces that the player must put back together. Only once the puzzle is complete will they get the code for the next.
3. The actual image I will use (Parrot, 2019). Because we are not sure which spaces we will be able to use for the Prototype presentation (Week 6), we changed the code to a random number within the specific shape.
4. This is the puzzle itself. I printed it out and sliced it up to make a rudimentary kind of jigsaw puzzle.
5. Ronan put together the websites that link all our games together.
https://sites.google.com/student.sae.edu.au/agent-nightingale/home
6. James made the video part of the project, complete with appropriate music and the hidden code.
7. Unfortunately, our digital game that utilised the Makey Makey didn't work. We tried to get it running before playtesting in Week 8, but eventually we had to just leave it out.
References:
Cusson, K. (2022, November 8). Best Cold War Horror Movies of the '50s and '60s. Movieweb. https://movieweb.com/cold-war-horror-movies/#the-war-of-the-worlds-1953
Parrot, J. (2019, November 22). No Title [Black and white photo of an atomic bomb being detonated off the coast of a tropical island]. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-atomic-the-manhattan-project-1991237
Playtesting
Playtesting
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