Review ofPandemic 1.0 and WoD possibility

Well, for a few days I let myself follow a story/ARG/experience a little more intensely than I normally do (my apologies to all my twitter and facebook and other social media people as I flooded my accounts with really odd stuff)

Pandemic 1.0 (or #pandemic11 on twitter) was a transmedia storyworld/experience created by Lance Weiler and others. It is loosely based/takes place in his HiM (Hope is Missing) storyworld from a few years ago (ck http://hopeismissing.blogspot.com/ and http://lanceweiler.com/work/case-study/ for more info on that)

Lance brought a short movie to Sundance as well as a surrounding game/story/ARG (http://www.argn.com/2011/01/sundance_film_festival_is_ground_zero_for_lance_weilers_pandemic_10/ ). He released water bottles, gold objects, phones, actual prop locations, a mission control for people to visit, and more physically at Sundance. He also coordinated a social media story using twitter, facebook, the official web site(www.hopeismissing.com ), Youtube and maybe more.

People at Sundance were encouraged to play and interact with people online.

What resulted was a wild ride, interesting experiment and a story that developed in very odd ways.

I know a lot will be written about this over the next months and such as sooooo much happened (good and bad)

Overall the story is interesting, but not easy to follow (this came out a lot in the social media aspect as wild theories abounded, which is fun, but it was hard to know what was in game and what was not as people were encouraged to play along and I admit, i was followed by at last one "non-official" story pathway/character). There is the promise that this was just the beginning, so who knows.

What I really like, is how much possible avenue there was for participation and how there was potential for not quite needing to have the whole story and yet you could have, potentially, still enjoyed pieces - hence a true transmedia narrative.

If I have time, I could write pages of my experience and what i noted and other bits, and i hope (ooo I made a pun ;) to be able to do that.

For now, I take the immediate that this experience has really piqued my interest and i'd like to run smaller scale versions at small cons and other events as I think this mix of traditional story/traditional gaming/ARG/LARP and digital gaming can work and be a major awesome experience.

I’d love to run/participate in an event along these lines for another storyworld I am very interested in – World of Depleted. I think a mix of this story involvement would fit and I’ve even written a general plot and idea for a few ways you could incorporate this type of interaction and story into the WoD universe.

so here are a few links if interested - and feel free to give a holler - I am always up for chatting (@geologylady on twitter and part of the Pandemic11 Facebook and I watch the World of Depleted Facebookpage too)