After my last post on ARGs I could not resist the hype of CSI:NY going into Second Life yesterday. I put on my Hobart College T-shirt and followed Detective Mac Taylor into New York and a "compelling transmedia experience" as Henry Jenkins calls it. I certainly had fun... and I didn't even get to the serious part...
While on the CSI virtual set I spoke with others using the new voice chat - it was very clear - as were the US accents - and it added an odd kind of authenticity to the whole experience.
Viewers of this end-of-series episode of CSI:NY now have a few months to enter virtual Ney York and investigate the crime scene to solve the murders - before the series resumes next year. I saw many people earnestly following the murder trail while I was in-world. Could this be homework?
To construct this game I've created machinima in Neverwinter Nights to tell Arg's story - and leave clues for others to follow in his footsteps. The clues are distributed across machinima, a web site, Arg's MySpace (he has a 'portal' to 2007) and our physical campus.
Episode 1 (above) introduces players to Arg's Quest. In Episode 2 Arg gets vital information from Joe - our real-life security guard - and some penguins (which are a bit of a MySpace meme with our students this year). To progress in the game students have to talk to Joe and decipher a clue given by the penguins which leads them to Arg's MySpace portal. Only players who make friends with Arg get to see further clues.
Episode 3 brings the promise of gold - virtual and real - if players can solve the clues which involves them in finding the campus dog Louis - in real life...
What's next? I've no idea - the story now has a life of its own... :-)
Only a few students have discovered Arg Tinag to date... so I'll now sit back and see who else wants to play... A bit of an experiment in viral marketing as well... :-)
I've found this to be a fascinating mix of the virtual and real - and quite new for some students who had to be convinced that part of the quest involved them leaving their computers...
