What’s new in transmedia? A Swedish Bardo

Martin Ericsson has left The Company P to establish Bardo AB.



– We will be writing, designing, mentoring and producing hard-to-define, live, pervasive or transmedial games. Preferably stuff that makes people want to cry, fuck or blow shit up, says Ericsson. 



Bardo is Martin Ericsson (a.k.a. Elricsson) and Adriana Skarped (a.k.a Daggenfelt), the creative couple behind International Emmy Award winning participation drama “The Truth About Marika” (produced by SVT). Martin has worked as a creative director and designer with Christopher Sandberg’s The Company P for almost five years, writing, designing and running game-like projects.

 Bardo has been contracted to produce and run “quality participation” (including a documented larp, some live events and an online mystery) for The Artists (see Playground #2).

Also check out this interview with Martin about The Conspiracy for Good which ran during the summer of 2010 in London.



Web: Bardo

Article by Ole Peder Giæver

Conspiracies

 
“Conspiracy for Good can best be described as an amalgamation of an alternate reality game, a street theater show, and a social movement”, Wired Magazine writes. In this Alternate Reality Game, the players were charged with bringing down Blackwell Briggs, an evil global security firm. The game was financed by Nokia (an evil global cell phone manufacturer), and free to the players. 



– We achieved four newbie but pretty hard-core larplike street-events using prototype image recognition tech, telling a contemporary cyberpunk story about activism, surveillance and corporate greed. The players helped major NGO’s (Doctors of the World, Room to Read, KidsCO and Thames 21) as well as local charities while playing, says Martin Ericsson, previous creative director of Swedish The Company P, one of the organizers of the events.

Creator of the television series Heroes, Tim Kring, created a lot of the background story and scripts. The online ARG lasted for three months. In addition, there were four one day events in London.



- Think of a cell phone based rail roaded larp with SWAT teams in city cruisers, boat chases, and weird corporate expos. At one point in the game, there were even 100 Bollywood dancers, says Ericsson. 


The Company P has previously won the International Interactive Emmy Award for Best Interactive TV-service in April 2008 with “The Truth About Marika” and Conspiracy for Good has also received great critical acclaim. Awards include two Banff World Media Awards in Best Cross-platform Project and Best In Interactive, International Digital Emmy Awards 2011 nomination, finalist in SXSW Interactive Award and SXSW Interactive Award and a Webby Award Honoree.

Web: Conspiracy For Good

Article by Ole Peder Giæver

Finnish Troll Punks

Neonhämärä is a Finnish pervasive streetlarp campaign which started in the autumn of 2008. Episodes 10 and 11 are scheduled for March and June 2011.

– It’s about regular people getting mixed up in some weird happenings in modern Helsinki. One of the goals is to help players see their own home town in a different light, and also to make players think about themes related to the occult, spiritual growth and different world views, says organizer Simo Järvelä.

Gameplay emphasizes social interaction. There are roughly 25-30 regular players, plus 0-15 supporting cast.

Web: Neonhämärä (In Finnish, English with Google Translate).

Photo: Flickr/suviko

Article by Ole Peder Giæver