Haha, holy crap. Out of control!

(It seems a month ago plus one day, Michael Abbott wrote, "Special thanks to PixelVixen707 for putting me onto Jordan Weisman and his creative work.")

I'm afraid I must divulge the secret: it is all viral marketing for GameSetWatch: the Board Game - a board game version of this website where you are a columnist desperately hoping to advance their own career. Coming out in March for $30, and it is a steal.

I must also divulge that my deal with the board game manufacturer has me forgoing any payment in favor of the board game coming with an excerpt of my forthcoming historical fantasy novel Milli Vanilli Battle the Zombie Prussians (out in January on Alfred A. Knopf).

I must also divulge that I may have lied to Dennis Hopper and told him that all of the book's proceeds were going to charity (when it may actually be none), in order to get him to record the audiobook version and perform in a few viral videos promoting the book.

I must also divulge that a Sci-Fi Channel original movie based on the book is going to air in June. Ironically, this stars Dennis Hopper.

I must also divulge that actually I scripted this original film and may have been hired by the studio to write Anaconda 5: RoboSnakes, but ended just scripting an adaptation of my book because the lack of oversight meant I could get away with it scot-free.

I must also divulge that I lied to a literary agent and may have said I am Clive Cussler's cousin, and this may be used for identification purposes on the front of my book.

Neither the New York Journal Ledger or Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital have Wikipedia entries. Googling Brinkvale only pulls of NYJL articles, but googling the NYJL brings up nothing of relevance ("Heath /Ledger/ found dead in /New York/"). Martin Grace is also a dud.
Damn. Never would have even thought to look for that.
Even if fictitious, the games criticism in her blog is still valid and awesome. Also, the insect story creeped me right the fuck out.

Dammit, Simon, I was going to do an "interview" of her, too.

Le sigh. Good job =P

It's hard to know exactly how to feel about this. On one hand, I think it's a clever and well-executed hoax that deserves a hearty "well-played!" But on the other, I feel duped by the personal emails that played on my willingness to be responsive and generous to readers of my blog.

But in the end, no harm no foul I suppose. And I've gotta tip my hat to whomever put this little hoax together. I fell for it completely and even attributed "pixelvixen707" in one of my posts. We do like games, after all...right?

Devising an extremely convoluted way to trick people into reading your hack writing doesn't mean you're not a hack. Anyone who'd involve themself in this sort of stunt is either unbearably cynical or unbearably pretentious.

It's interesting - I do feel a little weird about it, too, because I did chat to this person on email briefly and read her blog.

But I also feel like I'm invested in her story now.

Oh wait, I found out what this is promoting. Story update is imminent.

Is it really that terrible that this is happening? She's been posting since January. While it's possible that was laying a framework for this "betrayal", Occam says she was probably blogging just to blog, and that the ARG elements are something that are only now being inserted (obviously it's been planned much longer, at least since September). And the good, interesting writing remains good and interesting; if it is continued I see no reason not to consider her a part of the intelligent game-blogging (did you guys ever settle on a name? :p) community. Sure, she doesn't quite have the pedigree of a Manveer Heir or Clint Hocking, but as long as she keeps writing insightful game criticism I don't see any reason not to ignore the ARG if it's not to your tastes.
Me, I'm excited to see where this is going -- and to see what she writes next.

This is great stuff. A key tip off is the art therapist at any psychiatric facility being in a position to "judge" a patient or client's release. Awesome!

Actually, Chesh, the PixelVixen707 site was registered in late June 2008, so I reckon the older posts were backdated.

I do agree, though, if she does good game criticism, I see no problem in linking her even though she doesn't exist as that precise person.

I know the post has been updated and it's been "figured" out, but it's pretty interesting out of the folks who quoted and wrote about her, didn't notice that there was no address on the Brinkvale site (red flag #1) and at the footer of Pixelvixen707, it says "Hosting generously provided by the people who created me." (the only red flag you need to know it's fictional).

I'm pretty impressed with the list of blogs they link to though!

http://jchutchins.net/site/personal-effects/

Simon, how do we know you're not a part of this diabolical scheme? Welcome to the desert of the real, man!

I'm a 33 years in the making deep cover experiment to promote a book coming out next summer, yes.

I... don't really understand the relaxed reaction from everybody here.

This is not a real person; this is a marketing campaign. It's not going to say anything, "intelligent commentary" or not, that would contradict the goals of the marketing campaign. How can it therefore be trustworthy or worth paying attention, from the perspective of discussing video games?

Mark, different people have different attitudes. I'm guessing you haven't read her before? Because the clues were there the entire time yet no one figured it out.

I guess the question for discussion is what if a person provided you a free service and had subtle advertising that you didn't notice? What if it were easily ignorable? For those of us who never noticed the blog's true purpose, these things don't get to us. Good free content is fine with blatant advertising; what's the problem with easily ignored, subtle advertising? The clues made it so it wasn't dishonest...

Mark, most writing about games is simply not of a quality and most critique superficial, but the blog was well-written and attempted to delve in deeper critique.

A sad reflection on the state of games writing? Probably.

I am reminded of the joke "My father thinks he is a chicken. We'd take him to the doctor, but we need the eggs."

What Michael said. If nothing else, she ("she"?) gave me an interest in Fable 2, which I was utterly bored by before. I really enjoyed her post on Fallout, as well... I think there may have been a few more, but those are the ones that stick out for me.
I don't give a shit about being marketed to if I'm getting some quality writing out of it.

Weisman made Shadowrun and MechWarrior, yeah. Earthdawn, too. Then he ran what he could of them square into the ground.

He canned ED, then licensed the tabletop rights to _two_ different publishers _simultaneously_. When FASA went totally under as a tabletop company, he threw Shadowrun to a third company, which fucked continuity between the settings all to hell.

He sold out to Microsoft, and with him as Creative Director, MS Games finished MechWarrior 4 and killed the franchise on PC, then put out two Xbox 1 MechAssaults and threw Majesco some DS shovelware before killing the franchise on consoles. They sat on Shadowrun before puking out that Shadowrun FPS clusterfuck. Crimson Skies got one good game on the original Xbox and then buried. Topps just shut down Weisman-founded WizKids, his last boondoggle before S&T, yesterday.

I don't know the guy, maybe he's swell. But outside of marketing projects, everything good he's had a hand in has ended with disappointment (WizKids, FASA Interactive, the handling of FASA's tabletop franchises) until it's been taken as far from him and handed to someone else (FanPro, MicroProse/Activision/BlueSky, Redbrick).

Hell, scratch that. THIS marketing ARG even ended in a steaming pile. It wasn't good enough to have a respected games blog, he had to shit out its credibility to turn it into a book pitch?

Dennis at GamePolitics got bit by the Quaker MMO, Simon and Kyle got screwed here. When Kyle Orland is quoting people who aren't real, things have gone wrong, but it's hard to blame any of them because they got torpedoed by sources who spent months, if not years, building credibility to trade for page hits.

Weisman did nothing here but confirm he's just a creative marketer, and people who've followed his trajectory. That's a huge step down from what he used to be - one hell of a game designer.

Anyone who bothered to look at the site and click on a few links could easily tell that site was meant to be a trailhead. I think people who read what she posted on her site without bothering to check, don't have much room to complain. Most people who have played ARGs would have clicked on those links in an instant and discovered she was fake. I wonder if they've been waiting for months for someone to finally figure it out so they could move forward with their marketing efforts.

On the other hand, to the extent the character might have commented on other blogs or emailed people, basically any interaction off-site interaction. I can see why those people were fooled. Not everyone is going to check back to links of people who leave comments on blogs or who send out tweets.

With ARGs, I think that it isn't smart or fair to have people not realize that they are playing a game. People like to pretend that the game world is real, but they all know that it isn't.

When people find out that a website they thought was "real" is a game and that some of the people are fictional characters, they feel duped and often angry. That isn't a positive feeling.

It's all a game till someone gets hurt. I wonder when someone is going to fall in love with a fictional character or marry a game :)
I think there needs to be some sort of universal message or something that says "hey this is an ARG" to prevent some misunderstandings. Ah well.

"When Kyle Orland is quoting people who aren't real, things have gone wrong."

Um, the person I was quoting is a real person. I don't think the fact that her site is part of a viral marketing scheme makes her insights any less valid...