So I’ve mentioned several times about my anticipation and roleout of the new ARG, Find the Lost Ring. Well it’s in full swing now. The main meta site has released two trailers (You Tube mirrors 1, 2) as well as some well placed banner ads on You Tube and Live Journal. Those kinds of things are going to constantly bring new people into the game.
The thing is, I don’t think I’ve explained to alot of you what an ARG even is. A great resource for an explanation and quickstart can be found here at Giant Mice. After reading that, you can read our wiki’s Beginner’s Guide.
Here’s what’s been going on so far, and hopefully it’ll pique your interest even further.
Current Nutshell
Six individuals woke up in late February – all in various Olympic attire, in a labyrinth, with amnesia (and a name given by whoever found them), blindfolded, and with a tattoo on their arms saying Trovu la ringon perditan, or “Find the lost ring” in Esperanto. Then we found Eli Hunt, who studies ancient Olympic mysteries. He’s studied the “lost ring”, and has decided to share his secret – a mysterious system not run by him. The six amnesiacs have been the keys to discovering omphaloi, which appear to be pointing towards hidden artifacts. Ariadne found the first in Cardiff, UK. A package containing two pages of a document believed to called the Codex of the Lost Ring. There are 27 chapters to find. Help us find them
Each of the primary 6 characters has an in-game blog, in their own language, as well as in-game forums to help coordinate the community that speaks that same language. One of the (in the beginning) protagonists has released 4 video podcasts of excellent quality detailing the lost history of the Olympics and providing alot of true facts about the games, while interweaving some plot devices for the game.
The game is still in its infancy, and I encourage you to check it out. It’s fun to be part of a community and to solve puzzles and do research. Plus, you’ll learn lots of things along the way. Right now I’m learning about Rhumb Lines and Great Circles as well as how to calculate the distance in km between two known coordinates at a constant bearing.
Sounds a bit geeky doesn’t it? It doesn’t *have* to be. That’s the cool part about joining up with a ARG, is that you can lurk, or get actively involved. When you get involved you speculate, learn, or even provide answers to the stuff you really do know. For example, we spent about 2 days trying to figure out why our coordinates were off when looking for the second location, until a GIS specialist explaining in great detail why the calculations were wrong, and provided the right ones for us — as well as online tools to use in the future. The next location was nailed within hours.
That led us to another part of the game, which is real-world retrieval. We’re trying to reassemble the chapters of the The Codex of the Lost Ring. So far, we’ve found chapter 1 in Cardiff, Wales, and chapter 2 in Austin, Texas!
As a community, we’re coordinating discoveries and discussion on Unfiction Forums, and Ariadne’s ingame community (English), as well as using IRC Chat, Twitter, Flickr, and plenty of other tools.
I’d love to have you join up with us. Who knows what obscure knowledge you can bring to the community! If this isn’t the right ARG for you, then there will always be others.