The Lonely Gorilla ARG

Back in the Fall semester of 2009, Dr. Whalen’s class “New Media: The Virtual and the False” created it’s own alternate reality game called “The Lonely Gorilla.”

This video shows the highlights of the game, although it doesn’t even begin to show the amount of work, time and effort my classmates, Dr. Whalen and I had to put in this ARG to make it work.

The video is dedicated to Gavin and LeAnna who has inspired my roommate and I to create our own alternate reality game this semester as part of an independent study.  (:

Just for those who care how the inspiration for this video came about:

Originally I decided that I wanted make a video for Assignment 3 for Ds106 because I thought it perfectly embodied what can happen because of Web 2.0. Also, “The Lonely Gorilla” was a totally kickass project and deserved a video documentary!!

However, I was obsessed with making the video the best it could be and it wasn’t going to get done by the time assignment 3 was due. So instead I did this for assignment 3 and saved my video project just for fun/ to get credit for creating my own assignment?

I ended up creating the video with One True Media. Since my video ended up being a little over 3 minutes long, I signed up for a month long subscription for about $4  in order to download it. But as I plan on making a few more videos on the site, I think it’s worth the money. The one problem I did have with One True Media is that because I had over 50 slides, it was kind of a hassle to go through all the slides and change any typo errors etc.

Cartoon Egypt(?) Vs. Real Life Egypt

On Wednesday I was flipping through “The Washington Post” when I stumbled across this comic strip for “Speed Bump” of his little kid asking his daddy to ride a mechanized camel in the middle of desert.

I thought it pretty funny, but there is such a contrast between this cartoon and what’s going on in Egypt right now with all the rioting/protesting against the government.

The juxtaposition between the two photos I thought was really interesting (if slightly blurry).

Cartoon and Real Life

Egypt

What are your thoughts?