ARG story

Tuesday (today) I sent a trip out around the lake with a Garmin Etrex Legend to start collecting waypoints for me to use, and to come up with a narrative, NPCs, items, and puzzles for the first prototype. If all goes well, by Friday they'll have a handwritten, and manually coded game prototype for me to transfer (approximately) to the game editor. They seemed excited about the idea of being the creators of this "new thing" when I videotaped them today and have a the backbone of a structure developing already (this is good rich data -- even if the whole thing "fails"). Tomorrow, there will be more video of their progress, followed by more on Thursday, and more on Friday. If all goes really really really well, they make their trip article about the experience (written record) and if it went really really really really well, they may make their skit for Monday's Opera about it too. I think I'll offer that they can act out the characters they make up for the on-screen video introduction in the initial game. I mean, why not? if they're into it? It'd offer a greater sense of ownership for them to make cameos in their own game, right? And, it would definitely add a customized sense to the game, and possibly offer incentive for others to participate (when they talk about starring in their own custom-built Augmented Reality Game.

I am very excited about it. I think that's why I'm also somewhat frustrated that I'm not further along with it than I'd hoped to be right now, when I envisioned it in February.