The film will document the next year of transmedia storytelling and will include a behind the scenes look at Remix Fiction’s flagship property.  It will also contain several other story threads that follow other projects, companies, organizations, alternate reality games, or transmedia campaigns.  The Remix Fiction story will be the anchor, but what else is included in the final cut will be left mostly up to the community.

The most common question I’ve gotten about the Wreck-a-Movie production so far is “what am I supposed to do?”.  We fully acknowledge that this film will succeed or fail based on whether or not we can build a community of people to help make this vision a reality.  So, we’re going to take on a large share of the workload and will try to make it as easy as possible for you to contribute.  Here are a few things you can do to help…

Join the production team:

The easiest thing you can do to support this project is become a member of the production team.  To do this all you have to do is hit the “Join Now” button and create a free Wreck-a-Movie account.  Even if you just complete this one task and contribute nothing else it demonstrates your support for the project and will enable us to send you an occasional email to let you know how things are going.

Ask questions:

Another simple way to contribute is to help us out with the Frequently Asked Questions.  To add a question to our FAQ all you need to do is click the FAQ tab on our production page and use the “Give it a Shot” button.  “Shots” are how members on Wreck-a-Movie contribute to productions.  In the case of the FAQ, shots are used to ask a question and a comment holds the answer to that question.

Take a shot at completing a bigger task:

The entire production is organized into more manageable chunks using “Tasks” that are created by the production leader.  These challenges could be things like; soliciting ideas for the film’s structure, creating DVD cover art, contributing video content, editing the film in Final Cut Pro, remixing raw footage into a trailer, and any number of other creative or administrative tasks.  Again, you can “take a shot” at accomplishing each task or just vote on which shot you like best.  Members who contribute the most shots that are incorporated into the final product will be recognized in the film credits.

I hope that answers some of your initial questions about the project.  If you have any questions please ask them below in the comments for this post or add them to the production FAQ page.

So, what can game designers do if they want to keep the “real time” aesthetic of traditional ARGs but still want to reach a large audience?  During his presentation, Patrick discussed several ways that VM-People is tackling the challenge, and Remix Fiction was busy taking notes.  Patrick noted that after the end of each campaign the most common question he gets is “Where do I have to register to get informed about the beginning of a new Alternate Reality Game?“.  VM-People’s answer to this question is their www.folge-dem-kaninchen.de website (in English “follow the white rabbit”) that allows players to register their interest and contact information so that they can be included in future projects.

We have done something similar with our Personalized Privacy Sign Up form where we ask questions about how you would like to interact with Remix Fiction characters and give you an opportunity to share contact information.  Like VM-People, we will never share this information with any third party and we will delete your information as soon as you send us an opt out notification.  So far, we’ve only used the contact information to send out a few postcards and a couple gifts, but as our game deadline gets closer we’ll be using our list to do more game mechanics testing,  and of course we’ll use it to send trailheads when our game launches next year.

What do you think?  Should game designers continue to create ARGs that play out in real time or should they shift to a more single-player and replayable mechanic?  Let us know in the comments.

[VIDEO] ARGfest – Follow the White Rabbit.

Jim has done something unprecedented in the independent ARG community.  He raised more than $7,000 in funding from one hundred people in about a month, and he did it with just a video proposal and a promise that the game would be “super duper fun”.  Pure Genius.

Jim spoke at ARGfest on the topic of casual games and we pulled him aside and asked him a few questions about Socks Incorporated.

RF: The majority of the backers pledged $25 and will receive “a limited edition Socks, Inc. embroidered patch featuring the game’s main character” – did you think that the patches would be such a big incentive to contribute?
JB: The value of the patch is not about it’s monetary value, but what it symbolizes.  The patch is similar to those given to girl and boy scouts for their achievements; and together we are making this game! Most of the backers are people who will be playing the game.  I also I sent a patch of 011iver to all of the players of Must Love Robots.

RF: How much influence did your internship at the Top Secret Dance Off have on the concept development for Socks Inc.?

JB: Jane McGonigal is a huge influence to everyone making ARGs and big games in general, but she has been an especially huge inspiration for me.  Seeing the behind the scenes of Top Secret Dance Off was a starting point for how a game like Socks, Inc. might work.

RF: Your last production included some adult-themed humor and a few swears – will Socks Inc. be rated G?  Are you trying to target a younger audience?

JB: Socks, Inc. is a family friendly game.  Everything will be PG rated, but there will be nods and winks to adult audiences, much like a Pixar movie.

RF: I know that you said you’re only in this for the “joy currency”, but are there any plans to monetize Socks Inc. in the future?

JB: The game will be free to play, but we are not eliminating other ways of monetizing it.  We are open to tasteful brand content, advertising, and merchandising.  Since this is one of the first funded indie ARG projects, we do want to start making head roads into creating a sustainable indie game ecosystem.  Another possible road to monetization is licensing our back-end platform that runs Socks, Inc’s core mechanic.  Daniel Grace, the super talented developer behind doomstick.com has been creating a robust system that can easily be used for other games in the future.  It is important to remember, that while we are open to generating $$$, our focus first and foremost is on making an awesome fun game.

ARGfest – Keeping it Casual (Jim Babb) from Martin Aggett on Vimeo.

In addition to being able to keep up-to-date with everything happening at Remix Fiction and the ARG community, you’ll be able to use the app to keep tabs on Martin Aggett.  Not only is Martin the Creative Director at Remix Fiction, he is also the lead fictional character in our own Alternate Reality Game that launches in 2011.

That’s right – our lead character has broken free of the traditional fictional boundaries and lives online and in the “real world”.  He shares his thoughts on the challenges of being fictional on his blog.  He hosts our video podcast and interviews leaders in the transmedia industry.  He travels the world on freelance photography assignments, and if you’re lucky, you can meet him for lunch when he visits a city near you.

This App will give you insight into his life, travels, and personality and will lead right up to the launch of his story.

To download and install our new app just click here.

This year’s event is probably the most ambitious in recent history.  The schedule is packed with former Remix Fiction Television guests and leaders in the industry.  We are going to send our own Creative Director, Martin Aggett, to report on the event live and record interviews for Remix Fiction Television (sorry no live streaming this year).

We’ve got lots of exciting things to announce at ARGfest this year!  Make sure you watch for our advertisement in the ARGfest program and follow Martin for all the up-to-minute updates, and make sure you find us and say “Hi” – we’d love to meet you!

All that changes today.  Today, we declare July 4th 2011 as our Cinderella moment.  This is an (admittedly self imposed) ultimatum that establishes a deadline for the launch of our alternate reality game.  If we don’t launch our game by midnight on the 4th of July next year we will shut all the websites down and call it quits.  That’s right, everything will just vanish from the internet and you’ll never hear from us again.

We hope that you’ll follow our progress over the next year and help us develop and refine our game.  We’re excited to renew our commitment to completing this project and will pursue it with a refreshed sense of urgency.

After several months and more than 70 people voting for their favorite logo we now have a clear winner.  The red remix with the hanging f i c t i o n logo will represent the Remix Fiction brand here on the website, on the television series, and all future outlets.

The close runner up logo will be featured as a secondary option when we need something that fits a more flatter/horizontal space.

For those of you who are willing to sit through an hour-long show we’re still going to broadcast the recording of the episodes live.  Those of you who make the effort to tune in while we’re recording will get a behind the scenes look at the making of the episodes along with some “bonus content” and bloopers that won’t make it to the videos.  We’re still going to spend about an hour with each guest, but we’re going to break the videos down into more digestible ten to fifteen minute chunks and release them as a series.  We’ve also got some ideas for producing some short, non-interview, segments related to the behind the scenes work we’re doing on our own Alternate Reality Game.  We would LOVE to hear your suggestions for these new segments so please let us know your ideas in the comments.

We appreciate Brian Clark’s patience with our first attempt at producing shorter interview shows.  Brian is the CEO of GMD Studios; an experimental media lab focused on the emergence of networked communities, audiences and marketplaces.  Brian put up with us for almost two hours while we recorded several episodes of Remix Fiction Television that spanned a wide range of topics relating to his company’s vision and practices.  Our first short-format episode with Brian is available now on our Vimeo channel.