I completely missed this one when it was happening (my defence is that I was travelling at the time), but you really should know about this if you don’t already. In July last year an audio drama began, Shadow Falls. It is a scary tale with high production standards, nice careful attention to the writing, and anagram clues that are issued in the audio fan forum…and so gathered alot of fans very quickly. The season one finale was in early November and fans were hanging out for more tales. And so, the writer Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, got together with some experts of another artform and added something new on the 22nd of November. On that day they launched “The Shadow Falls Experience“.
What they did was create the fictional world of Shadow Falls in the online virtual world Second Life. And then, over the next few weeks, released audio clues in the podcast. The listeners then logged into SL and sought out the information, based on the clues. Just like the ARG I Love Bees, the players had to solve a puzzle and go to a (virtual) place to retrieve an audio component of the story. The players do this, but for those who do not participate in the experience, the total story is podcast at the end. This story is the season two prologue, a podnovel/audio novel. Here is what Mark said about the experience in the “interactive fan forum”, companion #5 podcast (17/11/06) prior to it commencing:
Read moreCross-Media: Virtual Worlds and Podcasts > "The Shadow Falls Experience"