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.

Engl314 & Dr. Whalen prepared me for this class

So I would like to thank my Engl314- Literary Magazine class and Dr. Whalen for helping prepare me for DS106!

For the entire last semester, I was working on a online literary magazine, Times Zones Lit Review, devoted to traveling and adventuring. As a result of this, I learned how to add many of the widgets that I needed to have on my blog here.  I wasn’t the main person responsible for putting everything on the magazine website, (shoutout to Andrew who’s also in this class), but I learned through association. Not to name drop or anything, but Dr. Claudia Emerson and Jim Groom also helped out with this project, as did my other teammates (shoutout to Colleen who is in this class, surprise, surrprise!) and if you are interested at all in traveling, check it out and/or submit to the next volume!

What also has helped me in creating my blog is the few classes I have taken with Dr. Whalen which has taught me various internet skills and also lead to the creation of: Pluto Strikes Back (also made with several teammates including the same Colleen as above.)

They got you

The only app I had a problem with at first on this website was the one I am using for youtube, but that was solved once I actually read the directions [see I can be very smart (: ]

Also, thanks to the person (his/her name is escaping me now) who posted about how to get a gravatar!