This last Friday, after a business meeting on the campus of the University of Pretoria, I decided to hook up with a friend of mine who works in the Computer Science department. So, I gave him a call and asked if he was available for a coffee. He said sure, if I was willing to wait a while, as he was busy checking out an ARG that was being run on campus by some multimedia students, if the rumors are correct..
Interested, I joined them to catch the tail end of the day’s activities. An excited crowd had formed outside the campus chapel where, after some shoving and neck-stretching, we managed to read a note that had been stuck up on the wall some time earlier. The note was accompanied by some cans of black spray paint, and implored the crowd to go to another location on campus and graffiti a url on to the wall.
The excited crowd, which now included a pretty excited me, moved halfway across campus to the dedicated graffiti wall, where we egged each other on to do the deed, which was shortly done. Some DVD’s with the url on were discovered nearby, and some handy geeks with laptops were roped in so the crowd could watch them. The DVD contained instructions for the next move, one that would, unfortunately for me, have to wait until the next week.
As an ex-avid gamer, who’s been bored to death for a few years now by the lack of real innovation in the computer gaming scene, I have to say this latest development has me very excited. Combined with the budding field of augmented reality, especially on modern mobile devices, this is probably the gaming arena of the future.
There’s a new way of interacting, of playing games, that’s on the rise, and this time it’s going to be a lot more real and much more exciting.
Count me in, and bring it on.
Update: There’s now also a Number 13 Wiki. Rad.
Date: April 20, 2010Author: Diaan Mynhardt
Camera: FxCamera on HTC Hero
Lens: Yeah, like, whatever man.
Film: Dee-gital
Location: University of Pretoria
Tags: alternate, alternate reality game, arg, game, number13, pretoria, reality, university
Oh wow. I wasn’t even aware this was going on here. Must. Join.
It finished a few weeks back. I managed to be there at the end. It was awesome, an ending with candles and chanting monks in tunnels underneath the Education & Law building at the University of Pretoria. Very creepy.
I took some photos but I’ve been too lazy to have them developed. Once I get that far I’ll put them up here.