THE GROUP

The ARG was developed by the Mary Helen Saba, Lucinda Abbott, Sarah Head, Cameron Entwistle, Ryan Griffin and Matt Franke.

MARY HELEN SABA

Project Manager
Website Design

LUCINDA ABBOTT

Promotional Materials
Art Direction

SARAH HEAD

Website Design
Art Direction

CAMERON ENTWISTLE

Forums
Video

RYAN GRIFFIN

Video
Casting

MATT FRANKE

Video assistant
Answering Machine

THE DRIP FEED…

Weeks before the game was to take place, a drip feed of information was sent out to all those who may be interested I playing. This feed included:

* Group emails sent that lead the participant to a teaser on You Tube:

* A Facebook profile created to leak a main character involved in the game

* Promotional posters plastered around UTS

And

* A mass email expressing to all UTS media students what was to take place:

"This year a special event is occurring before the Golden Eye Awards prize night. Created and orchestrated by a group of third year MAP students, The Golden Eyes Alternative Reality Game will take place at 4pm on the 18th of October.

An alternative reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements to tell a story.

The Golden Eyes ARG, is a form of treasure hunt, played in pairs, incorporating clues in the form of blogs, videos, notes and books which will culminate in uncovering a shocking secret.

It will be an exciting, suspenseful way to spend the lead-up the final Golden Eye Screening. The prize will be VIP entry for 2 into the Golden Eyes Pre-Drinks at 5:30pm that night."

THE ARG

The ARG game was constructed in the following way:

Firstly, all who wanted to participate were told to meet in room 327 at 4pm sharp. All were then told to form pairs. Each group placed their names and numbers down on a registry sheet. 7 groups participated. They were all given post-it notes in order to help then write down clues. Once all were registered and had received their post0it notes they were told:

“Once the video plays, the game has begun.”

POST CARD STAND

Familiar to those at UTS is the postcard stand shown at the end of the video. Those who travelled there took the postcard from the stand as shown in the video, on the back of the postcard was an URL:

http://studentwork.hss.uts.edu.au/crossm/step3/step3.html

LIBRARY

The website’s hidden link then lead the participants to a call number for a book at the library:

Communicating ideas with film, video, and multimedia: a practical guide to information motion-media
Shelton, S. Martin, 2004.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

NOTE:

Inside the book was a post-it telling the participant to call an extension number form with the Bon Marche building.

ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGE

The number would then ring through to an answering machine message proclaiming:

“Welcome to Blood Shot Eye Productions. We can’t take your call right now, but if you would like to see an example of our work then please look us up on You Tube. Thankyou.”

YOU TUBE

When the keywords “Blood Shot Eye Productions” were searched for on You Tube, it lead the participants to a video:

Comments on the video would tell of Jennifer’s skill in film-making and how her death lead to REG FIRRGES’ happiness. This is the first clue of who the killer of Jennifer may be.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

The videos info then lead to another website:

http://studentwork.hss.uts.edu.au/crossm/history/history.html

This site told the story of Jennifer Sarah-Baxter’s death, and how it was ruled an “accident”.

SMS

A banner AD on the page then told the participants to SMS a code to a mobile number in order to WIN VIP tickets to the Golden Eyes.

FORUM

Once they did so, a message was sent back telling the participants to enter this username and password to this site:

Username: investigator

Password: murder

www.bloodshoteye.ipbfree.com

TV STUDIO

The riddle lead the participants to the UTS TV studio located I the tower building, where they would encounter a “Janitor” that would tell them of a strange and haunted room:

The room was then set up as a murder scene, left untouched for years. Clues of a murder were displayed, including the left over I.D. of Reg Firrges:

RIDDLE

A riddle and URL displayed for all participants to then decipher:

A killer walks among you
and has been for a while
the letters are your clue
rearrange them in their style

http://studentwork.hss.uts.edu.au/crossm/killer/killer.html

KILLER IDENTITY

The site was an anagram-based game where the participants would rearrange the letters of Reg Firrges into the correct name of the killer: GREG FERRIS – a lecturer at UTS.

Once achieved the message would tell the participant to travel to his pigeonhole.

PIGEONHOLE

In his pigeonhole was a film canister, with a note reading:

"Hand to Megan. CB01.05.10A"

THE FINISH LINE

The first to get to through the clues and get the canister to hand to Megan was the winner of the ARG. All others that went to the pigeonhole read similar notes telling them to go to the same room, but as runner ups.

Cupcakes were provided for all those who participated.

The game was won in 50 minutes, but was designed to run for an hour.

A time frame of an hour and a half was given to cover all those who lagged behind, and the last pair took an hour and 15 minutes to complete it.