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Ares Station, a popular grassroots alternate reality game, wrapped up yesterday with an announcement posted to the main page of the game's titular site. Not originally conceived as an ARG, the game was in fact a joint thesis project by two students at Indiana University Bloomington, Nathan Mishler and Will Emigh.

The Puppetmasters will be appearing on the player chat network at irc.chat-solutions.org in the channel #aresPMchat tomorrow, Saturday, May 7, 2005, at 8:00 pm GMT to chat with players about the game. A player/lurker survey about the experience is also in the works.

Congratulations to the entire Puppetmaster team on their successful run!

Well, in spite of the valiant efforts of the Beekeepers and the ARG community in general, the relentless onslaught of Gamespotters sent the People's Voice award to Gamespot instead of I Love Bees. But thankfully, the Webby judges saw the light and awarded the main Game-Related Webby to our favorite Haunted Apiary! Check out the results of all the other categories at the official Webbys website.

Congratulations to 4orty2wo and the entire I Love Bees team!

What is Zoe's World? We're pretty sure it has something to do with the following missive, which was delivered to us via email a couple of days ago:

The residents of “3rd” live along side us, and watch our every move but also keep their distance. The populous of “3rd” are there to protect us and watch over our interests. Occasionally holes (or leaks) are found in the boundary between dimensions and sometimes “3rd” is seen by us, but normally mistaken as paranormal activity.

The 5th dimension is a dangerous place, and houses the demons and evils in our lives. 5th is usually safely contained, however some problems are occurring and holes are appearing.

Time is limited, and the residents of our secret neighbour need our help.

PROVE YOUR WORTH.

The I Love Bees ARG has been nominated for a 2005 Webby award in the Games-Related category. ARGN has the scoop about how you can vote for the People's Voice award for this mind-bogglingly popular game.

There are a few events of note to the ARG world coming up in the next few weeks.

From April 19 through the 23, New Langton Arts in San Francisco will be presenting a week-long exhibit by artists Greg Niemeyer, Dan Perkel and Ryan Shaw called Organum, centering around Organum: The Game, a non-traditional form of videogame.

Organum: The Game is a collaborative video game in which three or more players sing into different microphones to control the three axes of movement (x, y, and z) on the game screen. Together, the players represent a grey sphere “character,” which they must navigate through an increasingly complicated path, hitting a series of targets as they travel through a luminous digital representation of the inside of the voice box.

Jane McGonigal assisted in development of Organum: The Game, and will be present at the 3 p.m. brown bag lunch to discuss development practices and collaborative methods.

Admission is free from 12-6 on weekdays and 12-8 on Saturday.

Those of you who are too far south to make it to the brown bag lunch at Organum, head over to Chimayo in Huntington Beach to party with Steve Peters of ARGN and Kristen Rutherford (aka Melissa, Durgan, the Sleeping Princess) of ILoveBees, along with whoever else might show up.

The gig's at 7:30 p.m.

Then back in San Francisco on Tuesday, April 26th, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is holding a meeting and mixer at 7:00 p.m. in the Action Theater, on the 2nd floor of the Sony METREON. Jordan Weisman, Sean Stewart, and Jim Stewartson will be presenting on the topic, "Thinking Outside the (X)Box (or 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bees')."

If this presentation were on Saturday the 23rd instead, I'd be seriously torn over which to attend, it or the party on the beach!