Who is Jan Libby?

Jan Libby is a writer for the lonelygirl15 video series. The Creators announced her addition to the team on May 25th, 2007, the same day the first episode she wrote, Sing With Me, was released.

Originally from Connecticut, Jan spent many years in Topsfield, MA before moving to Los Angeles, California, where she lives today with her dog, Wally. Her background includes experimental filmmaking and all-around storytelling.

In 2003, Jan bought a ticket to something called "The Angel Project," which was a theater installation piece by Deborah Warner. This "journey" was part solo scavenger hunt and part spiritual quest, but not in a traditional religious manner. The experience amazed Jan and got her thinking about the bridge between reality and alternate reality. She then read an article about the ARG "I Love Bees" in The New York Times, and quickly found herself reading everything she could find on Alternate Reality Games (ARGs).

After lurking in ARG communities for many months, Jan took part in her first game, called Zoe's World. The experience inspired Jan to create her own game, which she wanted to dive in and do almost immediately. However, she waited and worked on plotting her story out for a year and a half. Such a large amount of preperation time was practically unheard of in the "puppet master" community, but Jan was working to create the entire game herself and wanted to make sure she had spent the time to do it properly.

In 2006, Jan released her first game, Sammmeeeees, and found that it was a huge hit. After the conclusion of the game in winter 2006, Jan began working on a sequel, Sammmeeeees II, which she released in June 2007. Jan had joined lonelygirl15 in May 2007 and despite the fact that her time was somewhat limited Sammmeeeees II was also a great success. While her time remains constrained, Jan loves writing and says that she will always find a few moments in the day for "dreaming up the next big thing," no matter how busy she gets.

Jan has said that she enjoys the contrast of working on lonelygirl15 and her smaller "grassroots" alternate reality games. With lonelygirl15, she is able to reach a larger audience and affect more people, but also realizes that it is much harder to incorporate the interactivity she loves and pushes so hard for. Whatever ideas she is not able to use with lonelygirl15, Jan applies to her smaller games. She has commented on how interesting it is to learn what works with larger and smaller audiences.

Jan's upcoming projects include a new Alternate Reality Experience (ARE), which should launch in late March or April of 2008. Although the project was first conceived as a small experimental project, it has now been redesigned for worldwide release. However, in keeping with the rules of ARG "curtains", she has not publicized the name of this game. She is also working on a television show based somewhat on Sammmeeeees, which she hopes will embrace the idea of cross-media entertainment. While working to pitch this show, Jan ran into a great deal of difficulty in trying to explain what ARGs were to network executives. However, in the past few months, Jan has found that they have been significantly more familiar with the concept and have generally embraced her show's idea.

Interestingly, Jan has found similar troubles explaining what ARGs are to her mother. She laughingly quotes her mom as saying, "Honey, I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm glad you're having fun."
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The name of Jan's game "Sammmeeeees" comes from the word "samaritan." She found this title appropriate, as she considers ARG players the "good samaritans," for they are the only people who stop and take such a great deal of time out of their busy lives to help people they don't know.

Jan Libby on LGPedia.

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