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So the International Game Developers Association has a Special Interest Group for Alternate Reality Gaming and it recently released a "whitepaper" on ARG. This is a document that is intended to be authoritatively informative about a certain subject (although UrbanDictionary defines it somewhat differently).

The whitepaper is an interesting read and certain sections are well done but Jackie Kerr has raised some pointed yet quite valid criticism of the paper and its editorial process. There are some major problems with this whitepaper that deserve scrutiny and correction; it is apparent that whatever process of production was in place broke down somewhere along the way, without pointing any fingers of blame at specific individuals. Somewhat ironically, it seems much of this could have been avoided had some sort of peer-review been solicited from the community of ARG players before the paper was published.

And that's exactly what should happen now. Declare the current version of the whitepaper to be a "working draft," submit it for review and comment to the ARG community as a whole (and listen!), then research and revise from there. There is a lot of potential in this whitepaper and it is in the interest of everyone who wishes to see this genre grow and succeed to support the effort. It seems to me that if that support is invited, welcomed, and taken heed of, the whitepaper can only improve.

From September 27 through 29 this year, the Cross Media Week PICNIC '06 convention will be held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. ARGN has entered into a network partnership with Cross Media Week and is offering discounts on registration to the three-day convention.

Some of the hard-hitting scheduled speakers at the event include Simon Guild, President and Chief Executive, MTV Networks Europe; Dr. Michael B. Johnson, Moving Picture Group Lead, Pixar Animation Studios; John de Mol, Co-Founder of Endemol and Founder of Talpa; Philip Rosedale, Founder of Linden Lab/Second Life; Craig Newmark, Founder, craigslist.org; Jamie Kantrowitz, Senior VP Marketing Europe, Myspace.com; Reinier Evers, Founder, Trendwatching.com.

Imbri and I will be meeting up with Giskard to attend the convention. We'd love to organize a get-together of European ARGonauts who can make it to Amsterdam sometime that week, probably Saturday the 30th of September. Watch this post for updates with exact details; meanwhile, anyone who would like to get together with us in Amsterdam at the end of September, sound off in this thread!

We hope you see you there!

Elonka's book is out, in the US as The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms (in the UK it will be called The Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles), by award-winning code-breaker and game developer Elonka Dunin. She's got a page up on her site with more information about the book and links to purchase it on Amazon.

An email tip to ARGN yesterday revealed the mysterious site for Last Call Poker. It appears to be a free online poker site, but posts on the site's forums talk about strange new users and pages on the site, which seem to have been placed there by someone called "The Dealer."

Lucky has a story to tell and a niece he'd like us to help. Are you willing to accept the wager?