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The Internet Entertainment Games

Alternate Reality Games Grab Mindshare 153

Posted by timothy from the shades-of-a-bad-michael-douglas-flick dept.
An nonymous reader points to articles at the New York Times and on the BBC about online games that require a lot more audience participation and curiosity than conventional games do. "Known as ARGs or Alternate Reality Games, these immersive experiences mix real world clues, phone calls, voicemail, email chatter-bots, real people playing roles in real life and a bevy of bogus and legit websites, to create a fully rounded gaming experience that bleeds over into everyday life. With central sites like ARGN, Unfiction, and endless forums and Yahoo groups, the BBC claims that this is not only a quickly emerging gaming trend, but that it may also have real-world applications like group dynamics and problem solving. Chasing the Wish claims to already have a few thousand people worldwide playing since it opened for play on Feb. 28. One sure sign of having people's attention is the fact that it's already spawned a parody site, Chasing the Fish."
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Alternate Reality Games Grab Mindshare More

Alternate Reality Games Grab Mindshare

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  • warning signs (Score:4, Funny)

    by GoatPigSheep ( 525460 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:02PM (#5526210) Homepage Journal
    When games start bleeding into real life, it's time to see a psychologist.

    • Re:warning signs (Score:4, Funny)

      by anon*127.0.0.1 ( 637224 ) <`moc.amrakduab' `ta' `todhsals'> on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:32PM (#5526324) Journal
      Real life keeps bleeding over into my games. Who do I see for that?

    • Re:warning signs (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by Chasuk ( 62477 )
      Your .sig, verbatim:

      befriend me if you support free speach [slashdot.org]

      I do support free speech, but I also support good communication skills, which includes good spelling.

    • Re:warning signs (Score:4, Insightful)

      by knobmaker ( 523595 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @11:34PM (#5526563) Homepage Journal

      What's the point of playing games that aren't interesting enough to "start bleeding into real life?" Any game worth playing is worth taking seriously.

      Do you think that chess players never think about their games when they're doing other stuff? Do football players never watch a game on TV?

      You want to know when you might need counseling? It's when you display excessive concern about the mental health of folks whose hobbies you don't understand. I personally don't play computer games much, but it's not my business to criticize the mental stability of those who do. We'd all be better off if we gave a lot more attention to our own business and a lot less to other people's.

    • Believe it or not, there are people out there who find a controlled amount of madness in their lives to be a very amusing diversion from the alternative. I am one of those people.

      I think it's worth noting that the concepts of "game" and "real life" have different boundaries to different people. To me, playing a game is part of my real life. It takes up my real time and requires my real mind to work. What separates it is context. Games are "safe". Games have certain components behind them so that the

  • the game with michael douglas (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i thought 'the game' with michael douglas was decent. then again, i smoked a shitload of grass before i saw it.

  • Majestic? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Robert1 ( 513674 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:05PM (#5526220) Homepage
    Wasn't Majestic, the game released by EA pretty much the same thing? Charged a monthly fee to get calls in the wee hours of the morning, e-mails, movies, what-not. It didn't do so well, I guess customers didn't like waking up at 3 am to hear a poorly delivered line about the imminent danger they were in.

    Last I heard EA scrapped the idea since no one bothered to keep paying.

    • Re:Majestic? (Score:5, Informative)

      by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:08PM (#5526233) Homepage Journal
      The full scale release was supposed to happen almost exactly when the Trade Center attack happened, 09/11/01... nobody wanted to play a game that included anonymous e-mail, fax, mail, phone calls with terrorism implications at that time...
      • What? As best I can recall, it had been taken off the market before 9/11 - and it had been in full-scale release, including shrinkwrapped boxes on the store shelves, long before then. I was one of the beta testers during the live release, and the main problem with it was *not* that it was a terrorist-related plot, but that there was no frickin' *game* there. Sure, you could get cell phone messages and faxes, but there wasn't jack to *do*.
        • Does anything 'beta' release with full-scale armegeddon? NO. The game was supposed to create itself from user supplied plots.. not GM imposed story lines... that was part of the mystique...

          no players, no plot...

        • Majestic was well underway, and was suspended after the 9/11 attacks because of concerns over its content. It was reactivated a little later, but never got up any steam and was cancelled shortly thereafter (after episode 4, I think?).

          I was one of the early access players, but it just wasn't fun and compelling enough to justify what I thought was an overpriced monthly fee for the amount of play / quality of content. Technically, it was a novel concept, but without a fun, compelling story that just wasn't en
    • Yes, Majestic was a very well-publicized example of what the article is talking about, except it was a dismal failure which kinda contradicts the slant of the article.
    • The reason Majestic did poorly because it was a poorly conceived and implemened game. It was entirely linear and the player did not actually influence the gameplay.
    • Yeah I was very interested in playing that game but it seemed that almost as soon as it came out it was pulled from the market. It's a shame because the idea is brilliant.
    • The real problem people had with Majestic, I think, was that it wasn't a game, it was an AOL Instant Messager window and some websurfing. There was virtually no "game" aspect to it. And so EA dropped it.
    • Rockstar Games created a whole lot of web sites of things that were in their game. I even went to some of them, they were rather amusing.

      Love Media- http://www.rockstargames.com/grandtheftauto3/flash /loveMedia/

      for example. I just want to know where I can get a Bitch 'N' Dog Food t-shirt.

  • So this is why THAT game didn't work? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:05PM (#5526223) Homepage Journal
    Does anyone else think it was the most unfortunate timing possible for THAT game? You know that one about being a 'terrorist' or 'anarchist' or anti-whatever with these types of communique experiences going on....

    It seemed like the 'killer-app', of the century, for gaming at least.

    Anyways, I'm giving up moderation for this post so be nice... ;-p

  • "Chasing the UnSlashdotted site"? Flash + /. = death.

  • The Man Who Knew Too Little (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JediTrainer ( 314273 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:08PM (#5526232)
    He's on a mission so secret, even he doesn't know about it.

    One of my favourite movies [imdb.com]. Stars Bill Murray, who's supposed to be taking part in a 'reality' spy play, but he accidentally ends up in the real thing. Hilarious!

  • Disturbing trends in anti-individualism (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AEton ( 654737 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:08PM (#5526236)

    I've played MUDs and I've talked on BBSes and I've collaborated on all sorts of projects with AIM and cellphones (anyone catch the reference to "smart mobs" in the linked BBC article?). But I can't see how this could be fun, since the individual's efforts are always subjugated to solving someone else's computer-aided puzzle. The BBC article compares this online fake problem-solving effort to EverCrack, perhaps unfairly:

    Already multiplayer games such as EverQuest struggle to cope with the groups that play and the creative communal tactics used to tackle each challenge.

    But really, this isn't special. It's just people seeking an outlet for their otherwise desperate life-empty frustrations; they'd be far better off contributing talent somewhere [everything2.com] worthwhile [wikipedia.org] rather than playing with someone else's hacked-together Flash animation. It's nothing to write home about--just Internet puzzles that take away your individual exploration and innovation and replace it with someone else's idea of a good time.

    No offense, of course, intended to anyone who does in fact derive a good time from this kind of thing; but please remember if you're that desperate to express your smartness [mensa.org], there are much more productive and creative things you could be doing. Read [gutenberg.net]... [textz.com] Write [everything2.com]. Scram. [go.outside]

    • Did you ever consider.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by xtal ( 49134 )
      That people might do it.. just because it's -fun-? I'd be quite happy if I did nothing but play computer games, talk to my friends, golf, race cars, and play around with my other hobbies.

      There's nothing wrong with doing things for no other reason than fun. If people like Everquest, and they have fun doing it - more power to them. The point of it is that it isn't productive at all.

      • The point of it is that it isn't productive at all.

        I disagree with the philosophy behind your premise. There's no demonstrable proof that a form of recreation can't eventually result in the production of valuable services and resources.

        We're in the infancy of the information age, frontiers are being explored. Time will no doubt reveal any multitude of productive and pleasurable activities. Just because you hate your job doesn't mean you're doing something worth while.

      • Re:Did you ever consider.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fusiongyro ( 55524 ) <faxfreemosquito@ ... IOTom minus poet> on Monday March 17, 2003 @12:34AM (#5526835) Homepage
        There's nothing wrong with doing things for no other reason than fun.

        This is true. But at the same time, the atmosphere in America (at least from where I'm sitting) is getting so passive that the thought of sitting down and actually doing something is really getting foreign to us. Why bother making a game, you can just wait for the next one to come out? Why bother writing? You can just wait for another novel to come out. Why bother learning an instrument? You'll never be as good as your heroes.

        The bar has been raised so far it's effectively beyond the reach of your average person, unless they dedicate their lives to it.

        Strangely enough, a lot of people like that wind up really good at games, because it's just something they find themselves in front of long enough to excel at. I think that's kind of the point of the parent poster. If instead of saying, "fuck it, I'll go play EQ" they said, "I'll spend an hour on my guitar tonight, and an hour writing, and an hour beating off" they are quite likely to eventually find themselves very good at guitar and writing. You can't help but improve if you do something enough.

        And there are two good reasons to have your fun doing something "productive" as you put it.

        1. You'll feel better about yourself. When you're laying in bed awake at night wondering what you're doing with yourself, it's easier to remember your skill with whatever you've been doing. It helps your memory ("remember when I was totally pathetic at Python? That was four years ago!"). You're not going to remember that you made it to level 30 in EQ after losing countless hours to the game.

        2. You improve the world for other people. Commercialism pervades television, radio and is a visual nuissance in basically every direction you can look. Originality is unheard of on TV and the radio. Bringing some originality to the world is something community doesn't forget. You make friends, you make fans, you grow in vision and perspective. None of these things happen on EQ, except perhaps for making friends, and you'll be lucky if you can retain an EQ friend outside of EQ.

        Also, to specifically knock EQ, I haven't met anyone yet who claims that EQ was a "pure joy." The players are confrontational, the company is disinterested, etc. At least with a pen-and-paper role playing game you're spending time with people you honestly enjoy and exercising your imagination.

        All that said, if you spend all day being "productive" I understand if you don't want to do it at night. But in my experience, we put a little too much faith in the power of money to make us happy. It shouldn't be about that.

        --
        Daniel

        • If instead of saying, "fuck it, I'll go play EQ" they said, "I'll spend an hour on my guitar tonight, and an hour writing, and an hour beating off" they are quite likely to eventually find themselves very good at guitar and writing. You can't help but improve if you do something enough.

          Not entirely true, so far I've noticed I'm pretty damn good at the latter 2, but haven't quite mastered the former :D

        • This is true. But at the same time, the atmosphere in America (at least from where I'm sitting) is getting so passive that the thought of sitting down and actually doing something is really getting foreign to us.

          I'm not an American, so my experience would be different. Provided the resources are there, I have no problem doing things. I know many other people who have no problem doing things. Do I do things for free? Not unless they make me happy. Mmm, utility. Much of the apathy you notice in the USA see
        • but then again, /. is kind of a departure from reality in and of itself.
        • Why bother writing? You can just wait for another novel to come out.

          True, but I believe there isn't a strong emphasis on writing in this country [US]. Everything is READ READ READ and absorb. I've never seen a post that said WRITE WRITE WRITE in a public library, and I'd be happy if someone has.

          Ralph Waldo Emerson basically said the same thing a little under 200 years ago in "The American Scholar". Amazing how things never change, eh?

        • Strangely enough, a lot of people like that wind up really good at games, because it's just something they find themselves in front of long enough to excel at. I think that's kind of the point of the parent poster. If instead of saying, "fuck it, I'll go play EQ" they said, "I'll spend an hour on my guitar tonight, and an hour writing, and an hour beating off" they are quite likely to eventually find themselves very good at guitar and writing. You can't help but improve if you do something enough.

          I defin

        • "The bar has been raised so far it's effectively beyond the reach of your average person, unless they dedicate their lives to it."

          whose novel would you like to read, the everage guys you see every day, or someone who life is dedicated to writing?
    • You go from saying that a player is mearly 'solving someone else's computer-aided puzzle' to saying that 'It's just people seeking an outlet for otherwise desperate life-empty frustrations' and some how that is anti-individualism. What makes a person an individual is the way in which the face a problem or a situation not what problem or situation they face. Saying this is as much saying that a computer Scientest is less of an individual than a farmer because a computer scientest doesn't deal with 'real' w

    • Read [gutenberg.net]... [textz.com] Write [everything2.com]. Scram [go.outside].

      I kid you not, knowing about gutenberg.net and textz.com and being a (somewhat) productive member of everything2, and considering the nice weather in the big room, I just clicked on the 'go.outside' link.

      But I'm still here. Is it broken or just slashdotted?

  • failed? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by pummer ( 637413 )
    Didn't Electronic Arts try this a couple years back, only to have it flop? I can't remember the name of the game...

  • Majestic (Score:2, Informative)

    by darkitecture ( 627408 )

    As far as real world 'immersion', Electronic Art's "Majestic" game from a while back was a pretty damn good first attempt IMHO. Sure, the clues that were left predominantly lacked personalization (obvious pre-recorded messages being left on your voice-mail, generic fill-in-the-customer's-name emails etc), it still seemed good enough to be considered an admirable first attempt.

    Sure, we'll probably never see anything to the extent of The Game (at least not until someone builds a Holodek - my favorite fict
    • I still think that if it were not for the 9/11 terrorism and such, Majestic would have become a much more influential game in our time.

      Can you imagine heading up such an enterprise during a time when the FBI and the CIA are investigating nearly any random 'peculiar' message or voicemail?

      I sincerely believe that EA seriously pulled the plug on all of their planned activities and simply provided the minimum support possible, to avoid lawsuits, to avoid federal investigation. Really, can you imagine terroris
      • that IS NOT BLAMING 9/11 for its' poor performance ?? Majestic was static and very boring. It is bad enough having to spend 30 minutes trying to QUIT EQ in a'safe' place. I'd just as soon NOT have the damn game calling me.
        EQ already does that via my admitedly abnormal phyche :)
        • Sure EA 'blamed' 9/11 and used it as a scapegoat for their problems.. that's not my point, my point is that if not for 9/11 EA would have had to expend the energy to make their game worthwhile and justify the expense.... ...thereby pushing the envelope... a 'good thing'... they would have been able and expected to provide a much more complete experience, ...whereas with 9/11 they really had no choice about what to do with the system, they had to tank it, and bite the losses.. instead of exploring what story

  • EA already tried this... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Toasty16 ( 586358 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:12PM (#5526254) Homepage
    ...with a game called Majestic [gamerankings.com]. Ron Dulin at Gamespot [gamespot.com] gave it a 6.7 and said "Majestic is a very passive experience, and as the novelty fades, so will your interest". The game faded after a couple of months because it just wasn't immersive enough, since you had to wait for phone calls or emails or faxes for the game to progress. It was also pretty linear and didn't take advantage of collaborative gaming. Maybe these new games can improve on that. I can imagine ARGs in which you join a government agency or revolutionary faction and work with other players on your side on different tasks set up by the game server, like collecting counterintelligence information on the internet and saboting the other team's networks and...umm, I think I let my imagination run wild there. Sorry.
    • It was also pretty linear and didn't take advantage of collaborative gaming. Maybe these new games can improve on that.

      I have high hopes for these community-based projects -- Majestic had a really particular set of problems as a subscription-based service. This won't be an issue with these new games ("experiences"?) As long as the love is there (and it usually is with such grassroots/community-based endeavors) they're set.

      I see a bright road ahead for public fiction [publicfiction.org]! :)

  • The NSA (Score:5, Funny)

    by srn_test ( 27835 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:13PM (#5526258) Homepage
    Imagine how pissed off the NSA is going to be if this sort of thing takes off. All those intercepts of evil people planning which turn out to be a couple of bored 23-year-old guys somewhere...

    • Reminds me of a story (Score:5, Interesting)

      by forkboy ( 8644 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @11:18PM (#5526476) Homepage
      Funny story related to this:

      They held the Timothy McVeigh trial here in Denver in 1996. My friends and I all played Cyberpunk at a Denny's during the wee hours of the night just about every night of the week. One night we started kinda early, during the tail end of the dinner rush. In the game, we were planning this big bank heist complete with neurotoxins, automatic weapons, remote cameras, cars packed with explosives, distracting police attention by blowing up a wing of a hospital, and all sorts of other shenanigans. We were all so into it, even the waitress was tossing ideas back and forth with us.

      Well, apparently, some concerned citizen heard us plotting these things and called the police. The next night, a bunch of goons in FBI jackets stormed into the place and started interrogating us about what we were planning.

      I was like "Dude, come on...it's a game. Here are the books, here are the dice...wanna see my stats?" No legal trouble ended up coming of it, luckily, but I wouldn't be surprised if I am on some FBI database somewhere as a potential terrorist. Last year, I applied for an intership with the feds and was denied based on the background check. Considering I have no significant criminal history, I can only imagine that is what caused it. (They don't tell you why you fail, just that you fail)

      Think about my experiences, and those of Steve Jackson games, and tell me that there won't be many many misunderstandings as these things become more mainstream.

      • They don't tell you why you fail, just that you fail

        <offtopic>
        This is one of the arguments against having government (or private) databases of personal information. You don't know why you failed. Could it be because according to the FBI's records, you've been arrested 32 times? An illegal alien? A murderer? It may be that you're none of those, but since they didn't tell you what their records say about you, you have no idea if its even right.
        </offtopic>

      • Re:Reminds me of a story (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jeff67 ( 318942 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @01:03AM (#5526944)
        Use the Freedom Of Information Act to request your file from the FBI.
      • I recall checking out in line at a supermarket, buying red beverages for a Vampire: The Masquerade game I was hosting at my house that night, discussing with my cohorts our plan to "kill Armstrong" that night, in full detail. I don't really think going into detail on what the results are are necessary, but it is safe to say that after our conference with the local police who were waiting outside, the government very likely has a file on me, and that I would have trouble getting a job in law enforcement wer

  • In my alternate reality… (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...you never need the flash player.

    You are already playing the game, you just don't know it.

  • Leisure suit Larry? (Score:4, Funny)

    by s4ltyd0g ( 452701 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:25PM (#5526300)
    But I don't know if If I'd like to have all those sleazy chicks calling me at work. (-;
  • I didn't kill that fish
  • All these reality games are extremely, utterly pointless. Don't get me wrong, I love playing them, but games like The Sims (which I loved playing) is such a waste of time its so crazy that they are a blast to play. When you think about it your spending your time making someone shower, eat, work, and socialize. Games like this and other online games are of course fun, and playing them is fun for a while. I am writing this not to bash these games, but to make people think twice before they commit all their ti

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The sims had made me relize one thing, humkan beings need status bars.
      seriously, once you put a status bar, it immediatly becomes competive, and sef actual.

      so you say, naw It's sunday I'm not going to shower, look up and you see you hygene bar take a dip... on second thought, maybe I will shower.

  • "The Game" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HeelToe ( 615905 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:40PM (#5526343) Homepage

    This reminds me of The Game [imdb.com] with Michael Douglas.

    It would be unnerving to have an experience as completely in the real world as his character did in that movie.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It would be unnerving to have an experience as completely in the real world as his character did in that movie.

      Unnerving, and expensive. The character in "The Game" was a multimillionaire, remember. That's probably part of why "Majestic" sucked - for what the average joe was willing to pay, it couldn't be more than some well-timed e-mails and phone calls from a machine. It's once you start to jack up the price that the user can get such personalized service as sinister vans parked outside their house,

  • I already play an Alternate Reality Game (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16, 2003 @10:45PM (#5526364)
    It's called "real life".
  • Kinda off topic, but I just ordered Uplink published by Strategy First. This has a RL slant since you play a "hacker" manipulating remote systems from your home PC through a gateway. It has fairly addictive gameplay. Played through the demo and wanted more. Cannot wait for the full game to get here.
  • Americans say the darndest things.

  • Using web sites, email, voice mail, and mysterious in-person communications to piece together a puzzle in order to figure out what the hell is going on...

    This isn't a game, it's my real life!! Why would I want to play a game that made me feel like I was at work?
    • LOL!

      Moderators, put the crack away eh? That's not what I would call "insightful" - but it's gotta be the funniest thing I've read all evening! Thanks for the laugh dude :-)
    • That is exactly why I'm not playing TSO [thesimsonline.com].

      I see lots of comparisons between MMORPGs and ARG and fail to see how spending hours mindlessly leveling up is compelling.

      One of the biggest attractions for me to the ARG genre is the group effort and community involvement. The community is certainly small, but don't equate size with the entertainment value.

      A well written ARG is like a good novel. You identify with the characters and can a little bit closer to the story than any passive medium offers. A great ARG t

  • creepy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16, 2003 @11:19PM (#5526479)
    I dunno, I wonder how this would effect weak-minded people who would be unable to tell where the game ended and their life and responsibilities began. I guess that's true for any game, right? But having to mentally divide your day into reality/fantasy could be difficult for some folks.

    Would would worry me is just how much leeway these companies will have with your life. And you'll agree to it all in the terms of service! Can they scare you? Send people out to beat you up? Have a woman seduce you for the purposes of the game? The mind boggles.

    (putting on my tinfoil hat and thinking into the future) I wonder if someday, people will lead entire lives (earning a living and working, getting married, etc) under the auspices of these games. Imagine having a child according to the rules of the game, raising it for the purposes of improving your "score", etc.

    It would be exactly like real life! Except .. it would be under the control of a private company! Scary, isn't it? No more constitution, no more human rights. Just whatever the company decides to put in it's EULA.

    Man, that would make an awesome movie, wouldn't it .. about a society that was actually two societies intertwined, one that was "normal" and one that was under control of a game company... has it been done?? What would the difference between this game company, and a government be?

    Interesting ideas...........
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I dunno, I wonder how this would effect weak-minded people who would be unable to tell where the game ended and their life and responsibilities began. I guess that's true for any game, right? But having to mentally divide your day into reality/fantasy could be difficult for some folks.

      Sounds like religion.

    • On immersion and teddybears.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ndr_Amigo ( 533266 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @05:18AM (#5527729)
      One of the first proper ARGs was The Beast, an AI marketing kinda game run out of Microsoft (although we had no idea until the very end, it was all very secretive).

      I remember getting a really disturbing phonecall at 2am in the morning (the dialling software didn't take timezones into account :) near the end of the game, from an insane Teddy Bear. It was supposed to be a prompt to recognise the sound and revisit one of the earlier game sites as new information was posted there, but it just creeped the hell out of me.

      But then again, that's one of the biggest lures of this genre - getting faxs, phonecalls, e-mails... without breaking 'the illusion of the reality'. Eg, a game which - like The Beast - is set in the future has a hard time of keeping the players immersed without accidently breaking the 'immersion' by slipping up regarding methods of communication. That's why the Internet is great for this, as it can be considered a medium that will exist for quite some time - thus providing a base for all kinds of fanciful immersion storylines.

      Majestic ran into two problems - one was that is failed miserably at keeping the player immersed. Contact from the game was simply too obvious, there -was- no chance to get spooked. Also it was badly paced.

      I'm on the team that build and runs Collective Detective, mentioned in the BBC article (I havn't read the nytimes article). We beat TerraQuest for one of the same reasons Majestic sucked - nobody took into account the Collective factor, that people will play together for fun as opposed to playing alone to win a set goal or prize.

      This particually threw Majestic off because they were not adapting to the play of the users. The Beast adapted it's pace, and threw in new elements just to keep players busy and distracted. Majestic just kind of idled, and TerraQuest threw in the towel. It's a new Genre so the main problem is, I think, the lack of previous work to help base something on.

      Of course, it also shows that commercialised games are going to run into problems in this regard. The Beast was a small "black ops" group kept under tight secrery at Microsoft. People ran into it just on word of mouth, and because the team was small (two to four people most of the time) there was a lot of freedom to quickly adapt. Majestic, and to an extent TerraQuest, did not have the ability to adapt quickly enough to stay alive. Because, I believe, partly of "Developer Bloat" and partly because the strict commercial structures governed by marketing stiffle this kind of behavior in a conventional environment.

      - Ender
      Developer Dude, Collective Detective [collectivedetective.org]
    • It would be exactly like real life! Except .. it would be under the control of a private company! Scary, isn't it? No more constitution, no more human rights. Just whatever the company decides to put in it's EULA.

      You usually can't sign away your Constitutional rights. In fact, there is only one way to do so, and that is to join the military. The worst the game could do to you would be to lower your score. If, however, you freely choose to behave as if your Constitutional rights did not exist, for the purp
      • Obviously, you wouldn't be allowed to kill someone, but also situations like locking someone in a room or tying them up or anything where one player would be intruding on the constitutional rights of another user would have to be taken into consideration. Like in sex role-playing (bondage, BDSM...) there would have to be some kind of "codeword" players could use for emergencies, but to keep it from being overused, they could get some kind of penalty for using it.
  • is this like everquest? i never did like that game, it wasnt that you had to pay to use it (which was a huge turnoff to begin with), but it just seemed like my life started to end, and my video game persona took over.. people even started calling me by my handle (ciro), and when it gets to the point in which u'de rather stay in and play video games than go out and date girls, well thats just sad.

    hey wait a second.... thats the perfect nerds life.. DUDE I CANT BELIEVE I SOLD MY COPY!!!!

  • A.I. (Score:4, Informative)

    by RaboKrabekian ( 461040 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @11:32PM (#5526550) Journal
    Lot's of people have mentioned EA's failed Majestic game, but no one seems to talking about the one ARG that was a huge success: The game based around the movie A.I. It was run by Microsoft, and had a very loyal and fanatical fanbase. The fans were so in to the game that they actually changed the dynamics of the game as it went along, even going so far as to create a distributed.net-style program to sovle a puzzle that was inadvertainly left unsolvable by the team.

    Read more at Cloudmakers.org [cloudmakers.org].
    • The AI game was brilliant. A masterpiece of understated, yet completely original and untested creativity. Nobody had every tried a game on the scale of the AI game before, and just the fact that it was so untested made everybody (including the eventually titled "Puppet Masters") invent every aspect of how the game was supposed to work as they went along.

      It was an amazing experience and I wish everyone could have taken part in it. These new-fangled rip-offs can't compare.

  • A few other argn sites. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperguyA1 ( 90398 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @11:54PM (#5526652) Homepage
    I'm one of the people totally addicted to this. Here are a few other great sites to check out.

    collective detective [collectivedetective.org]
    unfiction [unfiction.com] both of which are great message boards and have IRC groups.

    Some other games include l3 [landau-luckman-lake.com]
    search4e [search4e.org]
    Time Hunt [terraquest1.com]
    Collective detective there are also resources (irc/message) for game books [collectivedetective.org]. Welcome to my addiction:) Check out collective detective for many other games/resources.

  • What I like about these games (Score:5, Interesting)

    by czarneki ( 622927 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @01:52AM (#5527119)
    So far, the only game in this genre that could be called a "success" is "The Beast" -- the original secret promotion campaign for A.I. (I'm not even talking about making money. By "success" I just mean getting a large player base and keeping them interested till the end). I never succeeded in solving a single puzzle in the Beast ahead of other people, but I loved that game. Much more than the movie that it was meant to help. I've tried Majestic and the other games later on, but none of them compared with the Beast. I can't put my finger on why that is. So I'll just throw out some ideas.

    Some of the appeal of this genre is obviously the immersive aspect of gaming this way -- the way it blurs reality and the game work. Ironically, "The Beast" was also the game that had the least bit of "reality" in it -- it was more alternate than "real" I guess. The game's reality was set centuries in the future (even after the events in the movie it was supposed to promote) and so you had to make an effort to participate and put yourself into that world. Every web site in the game gave you warnings about "downgrading" itself to adjust to your primitive 21st century technology -- so there were constant reminders that this wasn't "real." There were some phone calls -- but not many at all.

    Now Majestic and the other games try much harder to be "real" -- they are set in the present, and they try to contact you in all sorts of ways. So if this immersion is the thing people are going for, then the Beast should have failed miserably...

    I think the reason these later games have not been as much a success with casual players like me has to do with how they misunderstood the reasons the AI game was successful. The AI game succeeded because it had good content. It succeeded because the writer for the Beast, Sean Stewart, was a great sci-fi novelist, and he took care to create the characters and the world they inhabited with words that suspended disbelief. Sure the graphics and everything else helped, but the writing was what really made it all work together. I can't really convey how good the writing for that game was -- but you can get a taste for it from his novels. Some of the writing in that game, such as a dialogue in words-and-pictures between a man and his slave-AI who wanted to be free, was done with more care and more evocative than anything I saw in the AI movie itself. It was really art.

    In contrast, Majestic and the new games so far have terrible content. It really looks as if the creators in these games thought flashy graphics could make up for poor writing. These games always play on a conspiracy/occult storyline that lends itself to cliches and trite tabloid-style writing. Of course, by focusing on these themes, the new games can link to a bunch of existing web sites devoted to conspiracy theories and the occult and save themselves a lot of effort (whereas the people for the AI game had to create everything for this future world of theirs).

    Therein lies the heart of the problem for me. I think the Beast worked because Sean Stewart and the team at Microsoft treated the players with respect. They did not take the lazy way out, and they backed up the flashy presentation with good, publishable, professional quality sci-fi writing, and they designed puzzles that required the knowledge of a diverse group of people with specific talents to solve (there were puzzles that drew on genetics -- and the sort of genetics that only graduate students would be comfortable with -- and puzzles that drew on the artistic ability of players to mold clay). In a word, they thought their players were interesting people with diverse backgrounds, who were very smart and had an appreciation for literary writing. This kind of respect came across in their work, and this is what it takes to keep most players interested.

    In contrast, the writers for Majestic and subsequent games were condescending to the players, and treated them as either socially inept geeks or as conspiracy-obs

    • This is the most intelligent comment on this thread so far. I also played The Beast, I came into it a couple weeks after it started and was obsessed with it for most of it's life.

      The main reason the game was fun was that you wanted to see what happened next, and you wanted to understand who these people were. Without a good plot and interesting characters it becomes a boring pattern of "we found a new puzzle, now solve it so we can find the next one". Solving the puzzles became something we did because

      • There were others as well. My favorite was the puzzle based on lute notation. I think someone in the Cloudmakers ran a lutherie, or something, so even that was solved. And, of course, there is the famous Fuzzymelon incident where about one week into the game, he hypothesized the entire plot. Man, Tuesday's were pretty much no-work days for me then...that's why I came in every Saturday.
  • The website is a showstopper. Confused, overwhelmed I certainly was by the overwhelmingly Scientological typeface. in short they are really afraid to tell me what the rules of this game are, and, here I am seriosly considering secretly regestering my mother-in-law - with the option "Full Contact" checked on. -Just kidding.
  • NokiaGame [nokiagame.com], an annual game run by Nokia [nokia.com] has proven wildly successful in entertaining people across europe. They've combined printed media, phonecalls, email and SMS to give out clues and assignments. Hint-sites have popped up all over, and people are in fact doing as their slogan says, connecting. The previous game sported 1 million players in total.
    • Yes, the last game had 1 million players.
      What's even more is that this was the third time it was organised (once each year).

      What's best is that it's totally free and you can win the newest phone from Nokia!

  • As a player of Majestic for 7 Episodes... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MarvinMouse ( 323641 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:46AM (#5528444) Homepage Journal
    I can tell you my biggest problem, and the reason I stopped playing was the linear gameplay.

    The game was fun and exciting for the first episode, but then after that it was like paying for a really slow television show. Everything was predetermined to fit a very specific timeline, and there wasn't that much you could do to get out of it.

    I just had to stop after playing for a few months because I just got sick and tired of being led by the hand through the episodes, and not really being able to change the direction of the storyline myself.

    Now, if someone were to make a game like Majestic, but with a nonlinear storyline. I would pay big bucks for that. I loved majestic (I am a bit of an x-files fan), I just quit because I got tired of being led by the hand through it. I want a game, not a "reality storybook."
  • Yeah those were awesome.. Alternate Reality the City, Alternate Reality the dungeon. What a badass series of games. Oh.. you didn't mean those?
  • First everyone says "It's just a game, don't let it interfere with your real life" then they start saying "It's a great game that interacts with your real life". Psycologists are going to be filthy rich very soon.
  • Any type of game where you play a role is an "alternate reality," in a way. Some people prefer to play in a game world that is very similar to ours. Others prefer to play in one that is drastically different. The medium the game is presented on alters the level of involvement.

    Many people draw the line at the point where they feel that the game will interfere with the real world. For example, I am fine playing D&D... but I'm not too keen on Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) because some of the games I'
  • its got my mindshare, get it!

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