The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft
This show is all about the new Halo Alternate Reality game known as IRIS. We explain what an alternate reality game is, the story so far on this one, and how to participate. Joining us this week to unravel the mystery is CapnKrunk, who as you can see has been following the progress pretty closely. Show’s about an hour. Enjoy!
Do you know this man?
If you hang with us, you should. His name is Jordan Weisman, founder of the company 42 Entertainment, ARG and storytelling extraordinaires, and he’s most likely the mastermind behind the current “Iris” ARG we’re currently losing sleep over. I can only imagine what his workday might be like lately: [Make sure the fanboys have enough vague techno mumbo jumbo about the Halo universe to keep themselves busy for the next week…check. Make sure the press is frenzied about the Halo 3 release…check. Daydream about next multi-million dollar startup…check.]
Not surprisingly, there’s a whole lot more Weisman is responsible for that we should probably thank him for. Ever hear of a little company called FASA? That’s right, FASA was founded by Weisman in 1980, became popular for the Shadowrun series, spun off FASA Interactive, which was later bought by the Microsoft juggernaught. He served as Creative Director for the Microsoft Games Division for a period after the aquisition before starting up another company.
Read this article from The Escapist about his experiences with ARGs of the past, and his experiences in the industry as a whole.
Some previous ARGs he’s directly or indirectly responsible for:
The Beast (For the movie “A.I.:Artificial Intelligence”)
I Love Bees (For Halo 2 Release, wait..what do bees have to do with Halo?)
Year Zero (For the Nine Inch Nails album “Year Zero”)
Vanishing Point (For the release of Windows Vista)
Dead Man’s Tale (For the release of “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”)
Hex 168 (For the launch of the Xbox 360 console)
Last Call Poker (For the release of GUN)
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XBL GT: Mikeulus
The first trailer for Hail to the Chimp, Wideload’s upcoming political party beat-’em-up, is available now at 1Up, and it shows actual gameplay, including the creation of a temporary player alliance. 1Up has also done a preview.
The basics? Up to four players, who choose from among ten animals, who then fight it out in an arena in one of several game types, including variations on territories and last man standing.
Being a fan of serious games that take themselves seriously and cover serious topics like universal armageddon, this looks like a fun change of pace; I’m really looking forward to it next spring.
Welcome back for our second roundtable episode. This weeks topic was about “Video Game Addiction”, which was inspired by a recent article about how the American Medical Association is investigating whether or not to include videogame addiction as a mental disorder. When we saw this, we just knew we had to go all out for this show, so we brought in some of our friends from all around the gaming community. Join us as we give you our points of view about how gamers can be perceived as addicts. And thank you to all our special guests that came on for this amazing discussion.
Guests:
JVB – Podtacular
Vicious696 – Uncle Gamer
Liquilife – Uncle Gamer
Duff – Gamercast Network
Godfree – Gamertag Radio
As always, feel free to send us your feedback at dcradioshow@yahoo.com or send us a voicemail at 1-206-350-7197.
