The Lost Ring


I'm a couple weeks late, but thanks to Michelle, I didn't miss it.

The Lost Ring is a very nice alternative reality game by Jane McGonigal done for McDonald's and the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Despoiler has an excellent post about The Lost Ring, including the fantastic mailer that was sent out as a teaser. It included a ball of yarn: "The slip of paper, which was stuffed deep inside the ball, reads on the obverse: You will soon discover an alternate reality. The adventure begins when you meet Ariadne. On the reverse, it resembles a fortune cookie…fortune: You will soon take up a new sport."

From Aleks Krotoski at the Guardian: The ARG is developing around five characters who wake up with amnesia in South Africa, England, Korea, Japan and Argentina.

Each finds a tattoo on his or her arm reading, in the global Esperanto language, "find the lost ring."

Here's the post from Boing Boing. Jane's Avant Game blog details it as well as anyone.

A few more links:
Official site
The character blogs
Player's Wiki

Jane's bio is fab, in case you're curious. She's a self-described game designer, a games researcher, and a future forecaster.

I wanna be a future forecaster ...


Technorati Tags: arg, games, jane.mcgonigal, mcdonalds, olympics