This is gonna be a long post, so strap yourself in.
Out of sheer curiosity, I decided to look through DiGRA's 2014 schedule, which has been made publicly available.
I came across the name "Tracy Fullerton" in that schedule and started digging into her. She's currently the head of the USC Game Innovation Lab, and a project that team is working on is called Walden, A Game.
Then, I notice something else. The NEH and NEA, both federal agencies, gave grants to the game. Okay, nothing out of the ordinary, right? These kinds of bullshit games get grants all the time.
But what they don't fucking get is almost 30 articles of coverage from publications like TIME, The Guardian, Kotaku, Polygon, Gamasutra, and Rawstory, just to name a few. Publications and authors listed here. This list is still incomplete, it was just tiring going through and archiving all of these articles
http://pastebin.com/7rBMJk9w
So, I began to wonder. Someone in that team must be mad friends with at least one journalist, right? I began looking at the people in the USC Game Innovation Lab here
http://www.gameinnovationlab.com/people/
Turns out, Tracy Fullerton and Bonnie Ruberg are both friends with Leigh Alexander. I noticed this going through both of their personal facebook and twitter accounts. Bonnie Ruberg especially, since she and Leigh have been colleagues since at least 07 or 08. Bonnie even wrote for Gamasutra a few times
And then a another interesting fact hit me.One member of the team, Sean Bouchard, organizes events for IndieCade. Sean Bouchard, as well as 4 other members of the USC Game Innovation Lab were all speakers at IndieCade 2015, and their game, Walden, was an award nominee.
While it isn't unusual for a "game" like this to get grants from the government, the amount of coverage it's gotten, especially compared to other projects the team has done, is not.
Lend me your digging powers. Look at the backgrounds of each of the USC Game Innovation people, search for any connections to IndieCade, GDC, or journalists/publications.