bill writes "Ares Station finished yesterday. The game, which swept in totally under the radar just two short months ago, came to a successful conclusion. It turns out the PuppetMasters produced the game as part of a thesis project for graduate degrees in Telecommunications at Indiana University Bloomington. We have the details below.

From Ares Station:

May 5, 2005It's time to take off our masks.Ares Station was designed by Nathan Mishler and Will Emigh as a thesis project. We are graduate students at Indiana University Bloomington in the department of Telecommunications. This project represents about a year of work (and around three complete concept overhauls: we didn't even start out thinking we were going to make an ARG!)First off, we would like to thank our entire cast. We, collectively, put in more hours than we ever dreamed we would need and everyone pitched in without complaint. Special thanks to Rory, who constantly surprised us with new art we hadn't even asked for (hope you liked the wallpapers!), and Ian who stayed up late every Tuesday getting Jacob's sound files ready for Wednesday. We wouldn't have made it without you guys!Secondly, we want to thank our players: both those who actively came and solved puzzles and those who simply came and watched. Ares Station wouldn't have been the same if our audience hadn't thrown as much (or sometimes it seems, more!) energy into it as we did. You guys were our co-pilots through this whole story. It'll be hard to go back to writing on our own after this.
Two things before the credits roll:
1. Since this is a thesis, and we're going to be writing big thick papers about this whole thing, we'd like to ask everyone who even looked at Ares Station casually to fill out a little questionnaire about the experience. We won't be asking for names or anything that we can use to identify you; we just want to know who you are in a general sense. The questionnaire isn't ready right this moment, it will be up sometime next week, we hope. It'll be up on the main Ares Station page and we will probably put it on the Ares Station unfiction board as well.

2. Nathan and Will will visit the Ares Station chat room (#aresPMChat in irc.chat-solutions.org) at 8pm GMT Saturday May 7 for an hour or so. Come around if you want to chat.
Without Further Ado, Ares Station is:

Developers: Will Emigh and Nathan Mishler

Technical Lead: Will Emigh
Story Lead: Nathan Mishler

Puzzle Design: Nathan, Will, Ian Pottmeyer

Art:
Art Director (Fall '04): Trip O'Dell
Art Director (Spring '05): Rory Starks
Station Design, Poster / Desktop Graphic / Most Everything: Rory Starks
Main Site Design / Character Design: Michelle Buddie
"Charlie" Model / Miner Ship Models: Mat Powers
"Charlie" Graffiti Design: Ian Aliman
Gas Mask Design: Steve Brennan
Blackbird Design: Nathan Mishler

Bloggers:
Michael Trathen, Rory Starks, Michelle Buddie, Will Emigh, Mat Powers.

Sound:
Sound Engineer: Ian Pottmeyer

Voice Actors:
Simon Miller, PIRSIG (the robot), Simon's computer, Charlie, monkeys, Ohmega's voice: Ian Pottmeyer
David Severn: Trip O'Dell
Jacob Jones: Sam Saharani
Mary Haynes: Michelle Buddie
Hanna Redfoot: Melissa Beaver
Garith Yung: Addison Rogers
Ship Traffic Controller: Nathan Mishler
Blackbirds: Will Emigh

And, of course, you guys were responsible for half the story, even if you didn't know it at the time.

We'll cover the PM chat and follow up when the survey is posted."

Posted on Thursday, May 05 @ 22:36:39 EDT by editor

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