GIBSON GUITARS

[cordyceps]

Sooooo this is happening on tumblr.

THE PRIMARY SOURCES:
ZDK12
ZODIAK11 (Password: 1319243 ) AND THEIR NEWER BLOG (Password: quick) Hijacked Blackbird blog
ZDK10

THE SPECULAH:
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39662
http://threeselves.tumblr.com/
http://iris-ar.tumblr.com/
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/iris-arg
http://irisar.chatango.com/

Comments

[computationalsphinx]

Yo yo I got my DW shit back together so I can finally get my useless ass back into an actually functional mode of online discussion! Woo!
Oh yeah, and I'm still hashing out the IRIS-convo post; my email's been wonky lately so I'm gonna have to finagle a private post.

[cordyceps]

So, most recent news: apparently ZDK10 is starting to become a bit more communication-capable (!), and has confirmed that what they're selling on Ebay...is literally. A png file.
http://threeselves.tumblr.com/tagged/zdk10

ZDK11 said they're working on a vid hours ago but we still haven't heard jack shit from them.

[computationalsphinx]

Huh. Curious indeed.
Anybody got money riding on the idea that there's probably something useful/interesting/game-progressing hidden somewhere in the png?

[cordyceps]

Welp, it's too late for that as Threeselves@tumblr has confirmed that the PNG has disapeared, and ZDK10 seems to have NO idea what happened to it and has closed the auction as a result. http://threeselves.tumblr.com/tagged/zdk10

In better news, ZDK11 uploaded their "movie." It's a slideshow of shitty computer clipart (including the cutesy watermarked one that 11 calls "a picture of me") to a midi rendition of "itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini." And here I had been expecting more recordings of the Blackbirds.

Since it MIGHT be easier to analyse the vid if it's downloaded raw rather than recorded, here's the isolated video file on tumblr, which one can click "save as":
http://vt.tumblr.com/tumblr_n0z25o296c1tsl8ad.mp4#_=_

[cordyceps]

I've never actually PLAYED an ARG before, just read about them, but...

Is it just me, or is there a significant difference in tone in this ARG compared to most others that came before it? I mean, there's a lot of humor in the AI characters in this game. Part of me thinks that whoever's behind this game MUST have some familiarity with tumblr culture (specifically the text-heavy geek/humor side, rather than the more photograph-heavy "hipster" side), because they have been REALLY GOOD at giving the game a strong memetic-humor quality.

I still can't get over how the first two "movies" 11 made were very typically ARG-spooky and blatantly cryptic/informative, with muffled recordings of the "blackbirds" in them...and then, after we've come to expect and anticipate serious spooky clue-ladden vids, the long anticipated third video is a fucking clipart slideshow featuring a midi rendition of "itty bitty teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini." That's some glorious shitting around with expectations.

[computationalsphinx]

Agreed.
I get the feeling it's really difficult to do an ARG unless you've got the kind of pervasive knowledge of the media you're working with, and in a community like Tumblr that requires a powerful grasp of the dynamics of shitposting.

[cordyceps]

It's interesting...while it's hard for me to process all the info on wikipedia or any other website regarding the history of ARGs, I get the feeling that truly "immersive" ARGs kind of became less of a thing after personal websites became less of a thing. Transmedia continued to exist, but stuff like the "Something in the Sea" website is so obviously commercially made and related to a prexisting work that it's hard to suspend one's disbelief and truly tell oneself that This Is Not A Game. The ZDK ARG started off by presenting its "Rabbit Hole" as nonfiction, and then waited for followers to gradually realize that things weren't what they seemed for themselves and begin the game. To tumblrites who didn't dig deeper, the rabbithole still convincingly passes as a work of nonfiction, or to the more skeptical as a hoax with no more of an overarching storyline than Horse_ebooks or the "sburb.exe" hoax from a few years back did.

It's very much an ARG for the post-"Web 2.0" era, what with its narrative being hosted on tumblr instead of corporate or personal "homepage"-style websites, and the characters being ais who take more after Horse-Ebooks than after traditional AI and robot archetypes. Yet at the same time, it seems to be a throwback to the heydays of the genre - at least to myself, and admittedly I know very little about ARGS exept for fuzzy memories that I read about other people playing them as a wee bobin on the internets.

We've been noticed!

[cordyceps]

http://www.dailydot.com/fandom/semi-conscious-robot-zdk-12-tumblr/

It's kind of interesting to read an outside perspective on the IRIS phenomenon and its fandom/community.