Friday, June 29, 2012

Watch Dogs ARG starting?

At E3 this year, Ubisoft showed off a new IP from out of nowhere. This game had everyone talking, and was arguably the biggest announcement to come out of E3. This game was, of course, Watch Dogs. In case you haven't seen it, here's one of the variations on the gameplay video shown:



It involves the protagonist infiltrating dotconnexion, the art showcase being held by his target, Joseph Demarco. Now, at around 2:45, people noticed something interesting- one of the serving staff has a QR code on their head. With a bit of tweaking, this code was eventually able to be scanned, and led to the site http://dotconnexion.ubi.com/index.html. The site had a section where you could send an email inquiring about the showcase, and when tickets would be on sale. All was quiet for a while, but now an ARG seems to be in its early stages.

I checked my emails today, and found this:


It's a little hard to read, so I'll write it out here:

"
Hi,

It is with great regret that we inform you that Joseph Demarco passed away in a tragic, yet unexplained accident. Being one of the most important philanthropists in the local digital art scene, his demise has left a deep void in the community. Out of respect for his friends and family, the dotconnexion exhibition will be cancelled.

Sincerely yours,

The dotconnexion Team
http://dotconnexion.com/"

Oddly enough, it is both from Joseph Demarco (dotconnexion@ubisoft.com) and sent to Joseph Demarco (dotconnexion@ubisoft.com).

The dotconnexion site has since been updated with a memorial page for Joseph Demarco, who was killed in the E3 gameplay video.

I was not the only one to get this email, but the interesting thing is that two batches of emails seem to have been sent out. The first did not BCC the recipients, meaning that everyone could see the other people's email addresses, but it's not known if this was intentional or not. This email for some reason was sent from dotconnexion@gmail rather than dotconnexion@ubisoft.com like mine was. What's also interesting, is that some people also got an email from d3m4rc0.j0s3ph@gmail.com, simply saying "THE REPORTS OF MY DEATH ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED." which is a quote from Mark Twain who wrote this when reports of his death were circulating.

It's unsure what, if anything, us players are meant to be doing at the moment but as big ARG players and websites catch wind of this I'm sure something will surface.

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