The project was presented as part of the “Keeping it Casual” Panel at ARGfest in Atlanta, GA in 2010.

4th Wall Installation at Parsons

Mapping the entire user experience took some time and energy, but was well worth it.

UX Whiteboard Sketch

User experience refined and mapped

Players must interact with these sites in order to solve the mystery of a missing reporter named Paige Stein who works for the Daily Informant online news organization. I built a site for the Daily Informant that streams live news from 4 different RSS news feeds and mixes it with news stories that are in the cannon of the game.

The Daily Informant

The players encounter a story on the front page about Paige going missing while working on a story about an unethical pharmaceutical company called Tyger Pharmaceuticals. The paper is asking for readers to help locate her.

Tyger Pharmaceuticals Home Page

If they fill out the contact form on the site, they will be emailed by Sam King, the Editor of the Daily Informant. He asks players to help find Paige by filling out a letter found in the wreckage of her apartment. The letter outlines her story about Tyger Pharma. The problem is that there are six missing key words. Players must pick up where she left off to find out what they are.

Letter from Paige

When the player gets a clue correctly, they are sent another email that will lead them to their next clue. The missing clues are hidden in the content of the sites in the game.  As the players discover more about Paige and her story, they discover other organizations including the mysterious Metatonic Society…

Metatonic Society

…and theyKnowWeKnow, a conspiracy theory group dedicated to finding out the truth.

They Know We Know

Players must also interact with web-based games and videos to get further information to fill out Paige’s letter and discover the real conspiracy.

Paige Chat Video

 

A video of a chat between Paige and Sam King also offers clues to the players.

Chemistry Diagram Game

A game where players must match up pieces of a chemical diagram.

Cipher Game

One of the last in-games in the project involves using a cipher to discover the truth of the relationship between Tyger Pharma and the Metatonic Society.

Full project site here.

The catch is that the players are also seeking to catch each other “in the act”. If a team is photographed by another with a piece of intelligence. That piece no longer counts toward their final score.

Here is a video of the prototyping process at Parsons the New School for Design.

I also created a Twitter Cipher for the Game Master to use to encode and distribute clues to the two teams. The application was built in AS3 for and allows users to write out location clues using 4 parameters. Click here for .swf file.

The Application then uses Twitter to generate obscured clues and then posts them to a blog that players use to communicate.

Contrasting Risk and Pandemic

I just finished six weeks of teaching two different classes of Game Design at Parsons as part of their Summer Academy and SPACE programs. to students ages 14-22. It was a tremendous experience.

I also set up a blog for the class that outlines the curriculum and syllabus for the class. It also functioned as an effective communication device for the students to communicate with me and each other.

Parsons developed an iPhone game based on the Mannahatta Project by Dr. Eric Sanderson at the Wildlife Conservation Society. I helped to design the initial prototype of the game with Katrina Bekessy, Mike Edwards and Kyle Lee working under the direction of Colleen Macklin at Parsons.

I also directed and produced this user-scenario video to promote the game and produced the music for the video.

The main impetus for the project was to explore new ways to design and prototype locative mobile games to help educate High School kids about the original Dutch Settlers of Manhattan in the early 1600’s.

Play-Testing on the Nokia

Players were playing as an advance scouting team gathering resources for the main settlement teams that are arriving by ship.

Players' Maps

Each team of settlers has different needs. Teams must explore the play-space to gather the required resources. They may also trade with other teams to attain the needed resources. The game was played by three teams of high school kids on December 9, 2009 at the PlayTech Festival.

Me, Introducing Settlers

Players consulting their map

One of the teams

Click here for a full PDF of the project.