function openNewWin(URL, winName, features) { window.open(URL, winName, features); } function showPop(ID) { var who = 'popSpot' + ID; var popUp = document.getElementById(who); popUp.innerHTML = '' + '' + '' + '' + '' + '' + '' + '' + '

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'; } function closePopUp(ID) { var who = 'popSpot' + ID; var popUp = document.getElementById(who); popUp.innerHTML = ''; } function getArticle(ID) { switch(ID) { case '1': article = "Jordan Weisman, creative director/co-founder of 42" + "Entertainment says that the company grew out of the concepts and experiments that he started at Microsoft, where he acted as CD for the entire entertainment group, which included PC and then Xbox games. Here, he sums up the five ARG tenets he sought to explore, tenets that inform 42's work.

" + "1. The concept of a hive mind. The generation we're speaking to now is so communications-obsessed and -enabled, we thought that if given a common emotionally charged history or mission, they would seek each other out and form into a cooperative to investigate and expose the story. We thought if we could get a couple hundred thousand people engaged in a project, various groups—with only one or two degrees of separation—would involve every skill base, every knowledge base on the planet.
" + "In reality, when that group formed (on the first ARG) and we had millions of participants instead of hundreds of thousands, not only did they represent every skill base and knowledge base, they didn't even need to go to degrees of separation—it was zero degrees of separation and they had every skill base. In retrospect, what we didn't realize was they had unlimited resources to devote to the subject—in terms of technology, canvassing, whatever was needed. It was very inspiring and daunting.

" + "2. The experiment was to develop a narrative structure that was organic to the web. In looking at the web, I realized that it had been and still is used primarily for distribution of narrative formats that existed prior to the web—audio, video written word etc. There wasn't a narrative structure that embraced the chaotic and frustrating nature of the web.
" + "Stepping back and looking at it, I realized a lot of the daily experience of the web is looking through stuff we don't care about to find one thing we do care about. I likened it to archeologists who go through a lot of sand looking for a piece of pottery. After they find that shard they have an idea of how to find more, and if there are enough shards they can reconstruct the society that made the pottery. Similarly, in each of our campaigns we write very elaborate character-driven emotional stories, which is, in any entertainment format the key to everything. Then we create all the evidence that would have existed had that story taken place. Then we throw the story out and bury all the evidence in puzzles that are organic in the story. As the hive mind discovers those pieces and starts to crack the puzzle, they start to gather those bits of evidence. They start with a wide range of theories about what's going on and as they get more info they come to more consensus." + "Eventually, they've reconstructed our story, but now it's become their story because it's moved through the filter of these millions of minds—it's now a personal piece.

" + "3. The 18-35 demo has grown up in a marketing-saturated environment and has developed a sophisticated set of tools for avoiding the vast majority of marketing messages. As a rule of thumb, the bigger the neon sign the faster they'll run the other way. So the premise here was, instead of shouting, go the opposite way and whisper—hide it. Finding it becomes an act of discovery—something they can feel proud of and are willing to talk about with their friends. It shifts entertainment presentation from exhibitionist to voyeuristic.

" + "4. The idea of hiding in plain sight. The premise here is that after building this groundswell of revealed info, we could then embed in subtle ways bits of info into the company's normal overt marketing campaign materials without disrupting the messaging they're doing in their normal campaigns. In doing so we turned those other media elements from \"must be avoided\" into \"must be dissected.\" For a very small amount of additional media dollars, it turns your large investment into something people will seek out.

" + "5. Surround the audience in what we call the electronic sphere in which they live. All demographics at this point live in sphere of communications tech that travels with them all day long—we didn't want these campaigns to live exclusively on their computer screen, we wanted to reach out through every communications mechanism to surround them and allow them to immerse themselves as much as 24 hours a day if they chose to. Whether that was reaching out to the campaign or having the campaign reach out to them, it meant that the campaign took place on the web, obviously, but also on cell phones fax machines, SMS messaging, voicemail, clues in newspaper personal ads, billboards, flyers at live events and at clubs around the world—every medium we could touch."; return article; break; case '2': article = "It's no coincidence that the main players of ARGs are tech-savvy 18- to 34-year-olds. ARGs began as viral marketing campaigns for products enjoyed by this age group -- starting with the first ARG, the Beast, unveiled in April 2001 to promote the Steven Spielberg film \"A.I. Artificial Intelligence.\"

" + "Initially, the idea was to create a video game that would serve as an interactive sequel to the film. That changed when Jordan Weisman, the creative director of the project for Microsoft Games, read the script.\"

" + "I realized it was not a movie people were going to run out and say, 'I can't wait to play the game!' It was a very personal story,\" said Weisman, now chief creative executive of the ARG development firm 42 Entertainment.

" + "Confronted with the dual objectives of telling the story of \"A.I.\" without giving away too much of the plot and also attracting females as well as males (who dominate the video game market), he and his creative team developed a story set 50 years in the future from \"A.I.\" They created all the evidence for the characters' lives and actions, as if the story had actually taken place.

" + "Then they threw out the story and hid the evidence in puzzles. The ARG was born.

" + "Since then, some of the more popular ARGs have been run by other corporations -- including last year's Art of the Heist game from Audi. Part of the game played out during the Coachella Music Festival, where players had to find a way past security guards to break inside a new Audi A4 and steal a memory chip that contained clues to the game's puzzle. Also last year, the ARG Last Call Poker, promoting the video game Gun, had players meeting up around the country for late-night card games in cemeteries, including Hollywood Forever.

" + "Before that, there was I Love Bees. Designed by 42 Entertainment to promote the video game Halo 2, the game started when its puppet masters sent a real jar of honey to the bricks-and-mortar address of the Alternate Reality Game Network fan site (ARGN.com). Only by pouring out the jar of honey could the site's founder get to the letters floating in the goo. Unscrambling them yielded the words \"I Love Bees,\" which, on a hunch, he typed into his Web browser as the URL ilovebees.com, officially launching the game.

" + "I Love Bees lasted about three months, during which players deconstructed the game's website, downloading and dissecting corrupted photo files to find hidden messages written in the programming code. Players also translated GPS coordinates they found online into real-world locations that turned out to be pay phones.

" + "Michelle \"Hitshermark\" Elbert, 31, was one of the players who, for two months, faithfully showed up at a pay phone each week to answer it when it rang. The first time, she said, \"I picked it up and there was this crazy recording. It asked me a question, and I answered as best I could.... The very next week, some of the calls started to be live.\"

" + "It wasn't a recording of one of the character's voices, but an actor interacting in real time.

" + "The pay phone Elbert picked up at UC Irvine was one of 50 across the country, and a different one of those pay phones would ring every 15 minutes.

" + "Whoever answered would have to give a code word that had been relayed to them via cellphone -- like in a real, live game of telephone -- by whoever had been on duty at the previous location's pay phone. Once that task was completed, another piece of the story was unlocked online.

" + "Elbert knew I Love Bees had been launched as a promotional tool for Halo 2 -- a first-person shooter game -- but she was more a fan of adventure, puzzle and role-playing video games. Even so, she admits she was \"the monkey.\"

" + "\"Not only did I buy Halo 2, but I preordered the special collectors edition,\" said Elbert, who lives in Irvine.

" + "If she hadn't played I Love Bees, she said she would only have rented the game, but she bought it because \"I became invested in the world.\"

" + "It's somewhat surprising that games developed as elaborate marketing tools inspire the level of devotion they do among a generation believed to be the most ad-weary of U.S. consumers, but it makes sense to ARG pioneer Weisman.

" + "\"Our society's become increasingly adept at filtering out all the marketing messages they're barraged with constantly,\" said Weisman, whose company plans to branch out into non-product-pushing ARGs later this year. \"Our premise was, maybe it's time to whisper as opposed to scream. If you're providing entertainment and they enjoy it, then they'll seek it out as opposed to filter it out.\""; return article; break; case '3': article = 'The intrigue that spiraled out of the web site ilovebees.com, starting on July 16, 2004 and continuing through December, refers to a game for sure, but a game that defies easy explanation and categorization. Ilovebees was a one-time only game experience. It started when a select few notable alternate reality gamers received jars of honey in the mail. Suspended inside the honey were bits of paper, pieces of an anagram that formed a clue when assembled properly. Other players heard about the game through an ilovebees.com link on Halo 2’s preview trailer (Ilovebees was also a Halo2 promotional tool). At its heart, Ilovebees is an unfolding story, and those who choose to participate in the game must figure out what that story is. Banding together on forums and other online avenues, the participants collectively solved riddles and pieced together clues tied to the storyline. Players had to put their heads together especially when certain clues pointed them to physical GPS coordinates, for example, to take an incoming phone call on a payphone. Fielding and wielding clues gathered from phone calls, html files, JPG images, and so forth, individuals reported what they discovered to the other players on the forums who then collectively solved the next riddle.

' + 'FULL STORY:
' + '

download .pdf'; return article; break; case '4': article = '"Who hacked the website of a Napa Valley beekeeper, leaving behind a series of GPS coordinates? Why were pay phones at the Empire State Building delivering installments of a sci-fi radio drama? … As these questions gripped tens of millions of Web surfers last summer and fall, the answers led to a viral marketing campaign created for Microsoft by Seattle-based 4TwoEntertainment to promote Halo 2, the long-awaited sequel to the Xbox videogame hit.

' + 'The massive buzz set the stage for Halo 2\'s
hugely successful introduction. In its first 24
hours, the sci-fi shoot-\'em-up pulled down an astonishing $125 million—the biggest debut in console videogame history.”' + '

FULL STORY:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/...'; return article; break; case '5': article = 'The game required players to congregate together in both real and cyber space to collectively solve problems using information obtained online and then delivered to certain locations in the physical world. One puzzle required them to decrypt GPS location data, send participants at various times to hundreds of phone booths scattered across the continental United States, and respond within a matter of seconds to unanticipated questions delivered by a live actor. To give proper answers, each person had to trust an ad hoc group of strangers to instantly provide the information they needed.

' + 'The game\'s unlikely name is ilovebees, which was the website for a fictional honey company that served as the "rabbit hole" or jumping off point for their activities. But the real twist behind the game was that it was created as a viral marketing ploy by 4orty2wo Entertainment for the Microsoft Xbox game, Halo 2. '; return article; break; case '6': article = 'I Love Bees is the latest and perhaps most ambitious of the growing genre known as alternate-reality games. In it, widely dispersed players coordinate to find and answer thousands of ringing pay phones all across the United States.
' + 'For those who obsessively play I Love Bees, the point is to take part in the creation and distribution of the radio drama. To do so, players log onto the game\'s website each week to find the latest clues and a list of the pay phones that will be called. The site lists the GPS coordinates for each phone and the time it will be called. More than a million unique visitors have come to the I Love Bees website, the game\'s designers said.

' + 'The most exciting element of the game for some players is the possibility that they will get one of the rare live calls in which the drama\'s actors talk to whoever answers the phone and then incorporate the conversation into the show itself.

' + 'FULL STORY:
' + 'http://www.wired.com/news/...'; return article; break; case '7': article = 'I Love Bees, which comes to an end today, has become far more popular than any of its predecessors, with Internet traffic 10 times that of The Beast. More than a quarter-million visitors went to ilovebees.com on the day it opened in August. As many as 500,000 gamers returned to the site every time the game was updated, according to Jim Stewartson, 4orty2wo Entertainment\'s chief technology officer.

' + 'The game\'s following has been intense…. Part of the appeal may be that, unlike many of its antecedents, I Love Bees could not be played just by sitting in front of a screen. Over the Internet, players were able to work together on puzzles, usually hidden in corrupted image files on ilovebees.com. Those answers were just starting points, however. Players then had to use them to respond to the mysterious calls that rang at hundreds of pay phones across the country every Tuesday.”

' + 'FULL STORY:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/...'; return article; break; case '8': article = 'Captain Jack may be back in theaters, but the roguish protagonist of Disney\'s upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man\'s Chest has set his sights on raiding a whole new territory: the internet. And thanks to immersive marketing company 42 Entertainment, fans of the movie can jump onboard with "Dead Man\'s Tale," an interactive online adventure with Windows Live Messenger as the vessel of choice.

'; return article; break; case '9': article = 'One of the few Game Set Watch semi-
obsessions is innovative ARG-totin\' firm 4orty 2wo Entertainment, so we\'re pleased to note their latest project, an IM-centered puzzle game promoting the Johnny Depp-tastic Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man\'s Chest…. The webgame/IM hybrid sounds like fascinating stuff.

Full Story:
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2006/06/...'; return article; break; case '10': article = 'Microsoft is teaming with the upcoming Disney flick "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man\'s Chest," to promote its web-based \'Live\' brand. The centerpiece of the deal is “Dead Man’s Tale,” an interactive game featuring Billy Bones, the movie\'s skull-and-crossbones title icon. Created by agency 42 Entertainment, the game is designed to immerse consumers in the world of the movie using Windows Live Messenger tools.

' + 'Players are encouraged to join the crew of the Black Pearl as they move through challenges using Messenger\'s communication, sharing and interactivity features. As users complete challenges, they unlock details about the "Dead Man\'s Chest" storyline from Mr. Bones. Once they conquer the final challenge, players are rewarded with an exclusive film clip from "Dead Man\'s Chest" available only through Windows Live Messenger.'; return article; break; case '11': article = 'Captain Jack may be back in theaters, but the roguish protagonist of Disney’s upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest has set his sights on raiding the internet. Created by immersive marketing company 42 Entertainment, “Dead Man’s Tale” is an interactive online adventure with Windows Live Messenger as the vessel of choice. Taking full advantage of the instant messaging service’s latest chat features, the experience allows players to fly solo or band together with groups of friends as they vie for the honor of joining Jack Sparrow’s crew aboard the Black Pearl. Players must navigate a treasure trove of pirate-themed games and puzzles, including sailing, cannon battles and decoding treasure maps. Each challenge completed unlocks images and story secretes, with the ultimate prize being an advanced look at an exclusive scene from the movie.'; return article; break; case '12': article = 'Even though ilovebees was designed to capture the interest of the core market, it took off to such a degree that coverage of the campaign spilled out into mainstream media such as The New York Times. A similar pattern emerged with the Hex168 promotion for the Zero Hour event, where more than 56,000 gamers had to decode Web sites to figure out how to even enter a contest, 3,000 winners of which would be invited to an Xbox 360 launch event. However, it was still up to the winners to find their own way to the event, which was held in a remote location in the Mojave desert.

' + '"What we thought would be really interesting about this were the many human interest stories that resulted from people moving across countries to be at the event," Chris Di Cesare, director of Xbox marketing, said. One such story involved a man in Sweden who won two passes to the event but had no way to get there. He managed to trade his second pass to a man in Texas in exchange for airfare to the United States. Once the winner landed in Texas, he and the stranger who brought him to this country set off on a road trip to Zero Hour. Another story involved the first two gamers on the scene, a pair of gamers from Mississippi who got there a day early and wound up being covered by 20 news outlets.

Full Story:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/...'; return article; break; case '13': article = 'We half expected to see U.F.O.\'s when we neared the empty military hanger that\'s serving as the site for Microsoft\'s Zero Hour launch party in Palmdale, California. Seriously, coming up to this thing was like approaching a set of the X-Files. Attending were mostly throngs of Hex 168 contest winners who\'d managed to fly, drive, or otherwise cart themselves into one of the strangest locations imaginable for a launch party.

Full Story:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/... '; return article; break; case '14': article = 'It all began with a whisper here and there. Rumblings about something called Hex 168. Then came an avalanche of evidence that provide some needed information. Pictures were released through various sources showing the appearance of a mysterious crop circle-like phenomenon embedded with the Roman numerals I, VI, and VIII. Meanwhile, the only explanations for the strange events came via the emails and postings of one Professor Jason Q. Lutz. Professor Lutz was the only man willing to publicly discuss the power of this symbol, and its effects on humanity. Lutz seemed determined to expose this event, but he needed the help of fellow believers. He directed people to the home of his Lutz Report publication, http://www.hex168.com. Visitors to the site were greeted with an ominous countdown. And when the clock hit zero on November 18th, the true power of Hex 168 was revealed to the world: the mystery of Hex 168 is all about the Xbox 360. And now that the secret has been exposed, the real fun begins.

Full Story:
http://xbox360.gamespy.com/...'; return article; break; case '15': article = 'To the many players who took part in the game since its late-September debut, especially for those able to take part in one of the cemetery events, "Last Call Poker" became a way of joining a large and widely dispersed group of creative thinkers.

' ' "One of the things that makes these games great is the community, because it brings together people not just from around the country but from around the world," said Bret Shefter, a Los Angeles attorney known in the "Last Call Poker" world as Shadow. Indeed, at the Graveyard Games here in Los Angeles Saturday, there were players on hand from a number of states and Canada. '; return article; break; case '16': article = 'It\s becoming increasing rare for a high-profile game to launch only through traditional advertising these days, without leveraging net-word-of-mouth. That’s certainly what Activision is doing to promote its forthcoming multi-console shooter Gun, by employing ilovebees creators 42 Entertainment to create Last Call Poker, their latest alternate reality concoction, giving gamers a chance to unravel the puzzles and mysteries surrounding a group of posthumous poker players. The live meetings have just started underway across the states.'; return article; break; case '17': article = 'Last Call Poker isn\'t a game you\'ll find coming to an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or Nintendo DS. It\'s the latest Alternate Reality Game and it\'s starting to pick up momentum. By registering at the website, players dive into a world with more depth than the topical poker-playing aesthetic the site boasts. Expect cryptic phonecalls, emails and answering machine recordings of 911 phonecalls while trying to make the leaderboard for the next week. '; return article; break; case '18': article = 'Following the recent launching of the mysterious Last Call Poker site, a gambling website with roots in the Wild West and a number of apparently deceased players frequenting its tables, fans of the \'alternate reality game\' (ARG) began to notice that a formidable new effort was taking shape.

' + 'A number of website puzzles centered around mysterious characters playing on the poker tables at the site have already revealed insights into the complex story. Last Call Poker itself, which, according to an official press release, was "designed and funded by deceased millionaire, Lionel "Lucky" Brown", has now been linked to pre-order card deck bonuses for Neversoft and Activision\'s Wild West video game Gun, leading many to believe that the ARG has been designed to promote Gun\'s November 8th multi-console release.'; return article; break; case '19': article = 'Here\'s the putative backstory: A wealthy cardplayer, Lionel "Lucky" Brown, set aside in his will a small sum for poker games to be held in his memory in some of his favorite cemeteries. Now, the real backstory: Game-maker Activision is developing a game set in the Old West called "The Gun." Saturday\'s game was an elaborate stab at guerrilla marketing, selling new products by word of mouth and other nontraditional means, which emerged with the Internet.
' + '"It does what a lot of people say the Internet should do -- bring people together," said Ralph Supper, 24, a theology graduate student in Berkeley. '; return article; break; case '20': article = '“Microsoft launched a viral marketing campaign that chronicles the experiences of six MSN users who find interesting things on the Web with MSN Search. "What better way to advertise search than to use search itself?" says Joseph Jaffe of Connecticut-based consultancy Jaffe LLC. "This was a really smart and well-executed campaign."'; return article; break; case '21': article = 'The MSN Search Spoof site is a tremendous accomplishment in satire. Enter a name and personal characteristics, and the site delivers an authentic-looking MSN search results page with hilarious headlines and summaries. Even the contextual ads are faked—and definitely contextual. I’m not going to get a damn bit of work done today, that is clear.”'; return article; break; case '22': article = "People love the fantasy-world of film, especially during the summer blockbuster season, and Microsoft has duly tapped into the appeal of movie magic. The company is relying on Captain Jack Sparrow and the rest of the pirate gang from the much-anticipated sequel to \"Pirates of the Caribbean\" to endorse its new Windows Live Messenger. With the help of 42 Entertainment, Microsoft has released an interactive online game that utilizes the premise of the movie while showcasing the unique chat features of Windows Live Messenger.

" + "The game/adventure, called \"Dead Man’s Tale,\" is a blend of storytelling, chat, collaboration, and game play. In \"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,\" coming to theaters on July 7th, Jack looks to recruit souls to man his ship, The Black Pearl. Alex Lieu, VP of Creative development for 42 Entertainment and the Creative Director for Dead Man’s Tale, tells ADOTAS that he saw this as the perfect metaphor for inviting people into the game. Players compete for a berth on the ship by showcasing their pirating skills with various activities, puzzles, and games. By incorporating Live Messenger, the player doesn’t go it alone.

" + "\"The core aspect of Messenger is communication and so we were really trying to work at some interaction that could be produced between two people,” Lieu explains. “[We] really focused on the idea of having them work together and to communicate and leverage all of the different aspects of Messenger in order to do so.\"

" + "Live Messenger allows users to play a game or open an activity in one window while having a conversation in another, creating a relationship between the activity and conversation. In Dead Man’s Tale, one aspect utilizing this feature allows players to man the ship and beat enemies with cannon fire. One player assumes the role of the lookout while a second controls the cannon, all while being at their own separate computers. Other puzzles actually pit players against each other.

" + "The game is narrated by the film’s mascot Billy Bones, the skull in the red headdress seen on all of the movie posters. Susan Bonds, Producer of Dead Man’s Tale and VP of production for 42 Entertainment, saw Billy Bones as a solution to attracting uninformed users. \"One of the challenges for people who had never been exposed to Windows Live Messenger was to give them a chaser of what Dead Man’s Tale was going to be like and the way we were able to do that was using this bot technology,\" she says. Billy can be added to users’ messenger contact list and will introduce them to the various activities they will get to do.

" + "\"You have to prove you have sea legs [in the game] and he’s talking with you and leading you through that,\" Bonds continues. \"And then in the end he leads you through [the next steps]: ok now invite a buddy, invite someone from your contact list, to really go forward and complete the rest of Dead Man’s Tale.\"

" + "In the end, if a player succeeds in getting a berth on the Black Pearl, they are rewarded with an exclusive film clip from the movie featuring \"a scene…that really shows the personality of Jack and Jack interfacing with his crew.\"

" + "While Windows Live Messenger targets all age groups, the Disney movie has proven to be similarly attractive across generations. Bonds feels that the universal appeal of both was a strong attractor for the partnership and inspired 42 Entertainment to work to include things in Dead Man’s Tale that people would enjoy at all levels.

" + "Dead Man’s Tale also aims to connect people across the country or even worldwide through the medium of fantasy that \"Pirates of the Caribbean\" provides. \"I think it’s great to have an opportunity to try to take something like the ‘Pirates’ property and the desires that everyone has about being a pirate and learning more about being a pirate or doing pirate-type things, and [have] entertainment experiences [that] kind of showcase naturally some of the features of Windows Live Messenger,\" Bonds says. \"[Messenger] is all about bringing people together and giving people the opportunity to do things together and talk together about things.\"

" + "In conjunction with its own website, Dead Man’s Tale can be accessed from the official movie portal for \"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,\" as well as through the Windows Live Messenger website. Windows Live Today also connects users to the game, while the MSN Network will be promoting the experience with promo spots for the next six weeks.

"; return article; break; case '55': article = "Gamers looking to take their couch-potato-style play to a new level should keep their eyes peeled for the elusive \"rabbit hole.\" The term, inspired by Alice in Wonderland, refers to the beginning of an alternate reality game (ARG), a largely underground genre in which players follow mysterious storylines via websites, blogs, e-mails, newspapers, faxes, online forums, voicemails and staged events.

Full Story:
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/technology/..."; return article; break; case '66': article = "Jordan Weisman was named one of the most influential creative people of the last two decades by Creativity Magazine in their 20th Anniversary Special (March, 2006).

" + "\"It was the first-ever alternate reality game, a piece of marketing for the Steven Spielberg film A.I. that told a story and formed a community dedicated to solving a puzzle that tied in to the plot of the movie. Launched by 42 Entertainment in 2001, the game–a murder mystery–was developed as it was played. It started when posters for the movie showed a phrase that tied in with a quote in the film's trailers and characters. 'Evan Chan was murdered/Jeanine was the key' led players through websites, phone numbers, live events and puzzles meant to create interest in the movie's plot. It's estimated that 3,000 people were involved in the game, and though the movie didn't quite rise to the industry's expectations, 'The Beast' laid ground in the interactive marketing world that set huge precedent for work that is still considered groundbreaking.\""; return article; break; case '77': article = "The pay phone rings. This much you know: in the 26th century, a young girl's personality was uploaded into an artificial intelligence called Melissa aboard a military starship, which was then thrown back through time to your own year, 2004. Now the starship's crew is dead; Melissa survives, damaged and stranded on the Internet server of a beekeeper in California's Napa Valley. From that beekeepers website, ILoveBees.com, you gleaned this phone's GPS coördinates. You cup the receiver to your ear as Melissa speaks...

" + "If this seems familiar, you were probably among the 600,000 active players of I Love Bees in 2004. To date, it remains the most widely played \"alternate-reality game.\" Jane McGonigal, who recently completed her PhD in performance studies at the University of California, Berkeley, was tapped to become one of the game's four \"puppet masters\" after she began working with 42 Entertainment, a company in Emeryville, CA, that creates entertainment-based marketing campaigns and original content.

" + "Microsoft had hired the company to promote Halo 2, the video game it was about to introduce, by creating a massively multi player alternate-reality game. McGonigal designed the real-world \"missions\" that took advantage of and shaped the way the players organized themselves. Creating and engaging this worldwide community helped make I Love Bees so successful. McGonigal argues that alternate-reality games use network technologies--e-mail, websites, Internet chat rooms, text messages, and phone calls--to construct new types of communities whose \"collective intelligence\" lets them solve problems no member could solve alone. In 2005, she and the I Love Bees team won the Game Developers Choice Awards' Innovation Award and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences' Webby Award.

" + "McGonigal has continued working with 42 Entertainment. In 2005 she developed Tombstone Hold 'Em, part of a 2005 promotion for Activision's game Gun; crowds congregated in historic cemeteries to play poker using tombstones instead of cards. Such novel uses of public spaces are another way she engages players. Her own work as a game designer is fed by watching players interpret the missions she designs: \"They always think of far more interesting things than anything I could imagine.\" "; return article; break; case '88': article = "\"This teen novel boasts interactive stuff like working cell numbers, websites, CoverGirl product placement, and...whatever. It's just a good read. The concept: Artsy high schooler Cathy has left this diary for her BFF, Emma, in case something happens to her as she investigates why her older boyfriend dumped her. No, she's not over-reacting; he's involved in secret genetic testing, his lab co-worker's murder, and an ancient Chinese myth come to life. Cathy's struggles with school, romance, and intrigue recall geek heroines like Veronica Mars. If we gotta wade through extraneous URLs to get to her, so be it. A-\""; return article; break; } } function swapImages(ID, state) { rolloverImage = document.getElementById(ID); if(state == 1) // rollover { rolloverImage.src = imageArray[ID + '_on'].src; }else // rollout { rolloverImage.src = imageArray[ID + '_off'].src; } } function preLoadImages() { } function preLoadImages2() { /* imageArray['beast_on'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_beast_on.jpg'; imageArray['beast_off'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_beast_off.jpg'; imageArray['bees_on'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_bees_on.jpg'; imageArray['bees_off'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_bees_off.jpg'; imageArray['found_on'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_found_on.jpg'; imageArray['found_off'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_found_off.jpg'; imageArray['poker_on'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_poker_on.jpg'; imageArray['poker_off'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_poker_off.jpg'; imageArray['hex_on'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_hex_on.jpg'; imageArray['hex_off'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_hex_off.jpg'; imageArray['dead_on'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_dead_on.jpg'; imageArray['dead_off'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_dead_off.jpg'; imageArray['cathy_on'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_cathy_on.jpg'; imageArray['cathy_off'].src = 'nav_images/nav_case_cathy_off.jpg'; */ }