Casual gamers with some time to kill (actually, casual gamers are, by definition, people with time to kill) would be wise to check out the latest distraction taking the nation by storm - Chain Factor. This simple, Connect Four lookalike is enough to captivate numerophiles and puzzle enthusiasts for hours on end. But behind the pastel discs and perky staccato chimes, there's free advertising for CBS a pseudo-alternate reality game just waiting to be discovered.

Adrian Hon, ex-Director of Play at Mind Candy, has been suspiciously quiet since Perplex City's disheartening suspension. It now seems he's been sneakily setting up new companies with his brother Dan and starting new projects. Let's Change The Game is the first of these new projects and sees Adrian joining forces with Cancer Research UK in order to raise money for a good cause and give someone the opportunity to design their own ARG.

Teams around the world are required to submit a 500 word Alternate Reality Game concept to the panel of judges (including Heavenly Sword story writer Rhianna Pratchett). The winning team will receive £1000 to develop their game as well as the full resources of Cancer Research UK at their disposal for marketing purposes. This includes 600 retail stores, TV adverts, live event fund raisers and mail outs to 20 million people. Not to mention behind-the-scenes help from some of the most prolific ARG designers in the industry. Think of it like Dragon's Den, with less chance of being shouted at.

The due-in date for entries is the 16th of November. More information, including what an ARG actually is, can be found on the Let's Change The Game website. There is also a discussion board for anyone interested. Ultimately, you have the chance to raise money for a good cause and get your ARG developed. How can you say no?

Don't ever say we never gave you a good way to waste a few hours on a Saturday morning. From our friends at Cinematical comes the story of this strange ARG, one that is apparently promoting new J.J. Abrams movie currently codenamed Cloverfield. If you're into surprises, just click this link to a blog called "Ethan Haas Was Wrong" and you're off to the races.

For those who prefer a more direct approach, the meatiest part begins here, at EthanHaasWasRight.com. What you'll find is a series of games (within a game?) leading up to an even bigger mystery that will begin to unravel itself on August 1, so now's your chance to get in on the ground floor. If you need a little more help, try clicking on the blue star and asking for it. If you really need it, you can track down a few walkthroughs on the internets, but you didn't hear it from us.

[Update: Apparently, our friends at Cinematical were a bit off-base, as they're now saying that the site isn't related to Abrams' movie. But hey, it's still a game and still weird.]

[Via Cinematical]

It's all fun and games until someone gets 300 cell phone calls in a matter of days. That's what your mom might say about the story of Michael VanderZand, an innocent bystander whose cell phone got accidentally drawn into an alternate reality game promoting Halo 3.

It all started when ARG followers came across what looked like a cell phone number template in the Xbox Live motto for a mysterious Bungie.net user called Adjutant Reflex. The number led followers to VanderZand's cell phone which, coincidentally, had a Red vs. Blue audio clip as his voice mail message. The message set off alarm bells for callers, and the number was soon being passed around message boards and ARG sites all over the 'net.

In actuality, VanderZand is just a Halo fan and a business and marketing student from Michigan who has nothing to do with the game (Or is that just what he wants us to think? No. It's true). In an interview with Hushed Casket, VanderZand seemed mostly bemused, especially with some of the more nervous callers. "Most of you wouldn't even respond when you got a live person on the phone. ... How do you expect to get anywhere if you don't even have the balls to respond?" he asked. We bet these same people don't even have the guts to ask Jenny for a good time when they call 867-5309.

A mysterious press release sent out last week hinted at the formation of a new studio led by Company of Heroes producer John Johnson. The text pointed to cryptic website Exoriare.com, Latin for "rise", which was quickly recognized as a hotbed of secrets relating to both the studio and their first project. Now that Smoking Gun Interactive is out in the open, John Johnson has a lot to say about his plans for the fledgling studio.

Smoking Gun will focus on broadening the real-time strategy genre by looking for ways to "revolutionize and merge the strategy genre with others". According to Johnson, Exoriare.com offers a few clues about the game. One group of fans discovered a trail of hints leading to an abandoned airfield in Death Valley. Two runways crossed there, forming an "X" that hid an "artifact" buried by the Smoking Gun team. A plaque was there with strange markings and Morse code that read "this is smoking gun". A video of the unearthing is embedded after the break. Note to other game studios: this is how you promote your game.

An interview on Next-Gen.biz is filled with more of Johnson's often cryptic thoughts on his studio and videogames in general.

If you were a fan of alternate-reality game Perplex City, which finished its first season earlier this year, we regret to inform you that Season 2 has been unofficially canned. The writing staff has moved on due to some internal issues with the game's developer Mind Candy.

Adrian Hon, the lead designer of Perplex City, writes, "In particular at Mind Candy, there's the Story Team: Andrea, David, Jey and Naomi, all of whom are also moving on to different places and projects."

Hon doesn't explain in detail what happened, but it looks like the brains at Mind Candy have left the building. The next season of Perplex City was to start in June and Hon even says that the puzzle cards for the season are at the offices. Hon goes on to say that he's not at "liberty" to say what went wrong, but says fans of the series should feel free to email him. With any luck, Hon and some of the crew will move on to a company that they can work with on another ARG.

[Via Wonderland]

A rather cryptic press release was sent out today hinting at a new development studio led by the producer of the "most critically acclaimed real-time strategy game of all time". According to Gamerankings, that title goes to Company of Heroes, and the producer is John Johnson. The website Exoriare.com was listed in the release (a quick whois search reveals Johnson owns the domain), inviting everyone to "confirm the first clue and break the puzzle".

Pick apart the password to gain access to the map shown above. We're assuming the "activation threshhold" shown at the bottom of the screen, 12211, is a hit counter and not the date January 22, 2011. Once the number is met, one of two things will happen: candy will rain from the sky, or a few more clues about the studio will be revealed. Sounds like a win-win situation.

[Via Firing Squad]

Ever since the success of The Beast, the alternate reality game created to help pimp Spielberg's A.I. back in 2001, alternate reality games (ARGs) have been popping up left and right, most notably the I Love Bees ARG that was used to launch Halo 2. Based on what the panelists were telling us, there are a lot more coming down the pipeline.

However, one of the problems was that the panel promised to help define the term "alternate reality game," but that never happened. Wikipedia calls it "an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions." Which is quite a mouthful. But that makes us wonder, does it have to use the web as a medium to be an ARG? When people used to play T.A.G. or Killer on college campuses, that was definitely an ARG ... but where did those games go?

"They need to do an augmented reality game in here. I mean, don't you feel like you're in Doom already?
- A random GDC attendee talking about the labyrinthine, ExpoSuite corridors of Moscone West (pictured above, totally unaltered.)

Amateur archaeologist Andy Darley has discovered the Receda Cube, ending the first season of alternate reality game Perplex City and earning a hefty $200,000 reward (before taxes). Darley was joined by more than 50,000 other registered players, spread throughout 92 countries, on the two-year hunt. The cube was unearthed in Wakerley Great Wood, England, about 110 miles north of London.

Perplex City's first season was "played" using a deck of cards (collectible in packs) that featured various types of puzzles, from simple trivia to optical illusions; to an answer masked with heat-sensitive ink. Solutions often pointed players to further clues posted on websites, written in books, recorded in voicemails, and held by real-world individuals. Creator Mind Candy has confirmed that plans for a second season are underway.

In the Transformers movie trailer between :37 and :39 the frame shows "Sector Seven Org" at the top and "Takara 83" at the bottom. If you go to SectorSeven.org and type in takara83 as your password you are treated to a screen full of mess. It looks like a person's desktop and clicking on the exclamation mark on the dock brings up a video sequence where a Lt. Col. Powers talks about discovering a "blip." Beyond that we have no idea what's going on. Go forth puzzle-loving ARG folks and figure it out.

See also: Hi-Def version of the trailer

[Thanks Animus]

Gamasutra interviews Elan Lee, vice president of 42 Entertainment, alternate-reality game superstars. The company created I Love Bees for Halo 2, a project for the movie A.I., and other ARGs; one of its current projects is clothing with clues to an ARG game.

42 Entertainment recently released Cathy's Book, a story with an ARG built in. The book includes phone numbers readers can call as they progress and a few self-contained puzzles. Lee says that this is the company's first attempt at an ARG book, but that more releases are planned; he thinks that the main plot will always be delivered in prose, but he wants to add even more puzzles to unravel sub-plots.

We're uninterested in the ARG clothing line, but we're not big fans of collectable card games either; there's always something more to buy. But the ARG book sounds like an interesting twist on ARGs and fiction. Count us in.

For most gamers, 42 Entertainment gained notoriety after creating i love bees, a massive Alternate Reality Game (or ARG) that served as marketing for the launch of Halo 2 on the Xbox. Since then, Elan Lee has been busy. 42 invited poker fans to graveyards across the States as part of the promotion for GUN, and helped launch the Xbox 360 with a unique "casual ARG." Recent projects, however, are pushing Alternate Reality Games away from the world of marketing, and giving them a life of their own. In his chat with Joystiq, 42's VP of Experience Design discusses Cathy's Book, an attempt to design an ARG under the guise of a young girl's diary. We also discuss Microsoft's ARG mishaps with the Our Colony campaign, and EDOC Laundry, the first alternate reality clothing line.

And it just so happens than Elan is wearing one of the code-embedded garments during our interview.

For starters, great shirt. Is this your favorite piece of EDOC apparel?

You know, my favorite EDOC shirt is one that's coming out next week. We've got a winter line coming out with these really cool hoodies and sweatshirts, and long-sleeve shirts. It's this very cool serpent print, with a really fun code on it, and I'm very excited about it.

Are you excited because of the design, or because of the code?

My favorite shirts are always ones where the code compliments the design. One of the main problems I had with Season 1, the shirts that are currently out, is that we designed all the shirts, and then thought "Holy crap, we've got no time. Let's just throw codes on all of these." And we just found random ways to throw on the codes. For Season 2, we had a lot more time, so I got to sit down with our art director, Shane Small, and we designed them all at the same time. So it was "Well, what if that guy's head was tweaked a little to the left, and it was a weird semaphore type of thing?" and "What if that strange emblem was..." So, all of my favorite shirts are ones where the code doesn't seem slapped on, and it seems like this really wonderful synergistic merge of code and design.

At this point, internet starlet Lonelygirl15 should need no introduction, least of all to net-savvy Joystiq readers. But if you've been asleep all summer, here's a brief intro: Lonelygirl15's Youtube videos have garnered over 18 million views. She's the second-most subscribed-to channel of all time on Youtube, and she's crazy cute to boot.

But she's not real. In fact, but she may be part of an alternate reality game (ARG).

Bree's ARG-ness is discussed in detail over at the Alternate Reality Gaming Network. Admittedly, the evidence that she's part of some big ARG (ZOMG! The Halo 3 launch?!) is rather flimsy, but if we went with more mainstream conspiracy theories, we couldn't very well cover her on Joystiq now, could we?

Whatever the outcome, this whole episode shows how powerful storytelling and internet video might be interwoven to create compelling new forms of gaming that entertain millions of people who don't normally consider themselves gamers. The interaction between whoever's producing these videos (the game master) and the millions of players is intricate, exciting, and very game-like at heart.