Perplex City - "Alternate Reality" Game
When I came back from GDC this year, I was rather swamped with all the new contacts I had made and some of them fell through the cracks. One of the very interesting games/companies/concepts that I was stoked about at the time, but had since lost track of, is the "alternate reality" game Perplex City by Mind Candy. I just got a note dropped in my mailbox by one of the folks over there, Guy, and he had this to say about the game (which I think does a fantastic job introducing the game and its overall concept):
Called Perplex City (www.perplexcity.com), it's a massively-multiplayer, long-running, alternate reality game, based around the theft of a priceless artifact - with a real-life $200,000 reward for whoever can find it. The basis of the game is a series of puzzle cards, which are available to buy from places like InSound and ThinkGeek. You can solve them to earn points on our website's leaderboard, but the cards themselves also provide clues into a maze of websites that lead yet deeper into the sinister machinations of the theft conspiracy. Right now we're using a huge range of media to expand the game: blogs, podcasts, CDs, live events, SMS messages and even huge grid-computing challenges are all part of the huge world we've created - and we have even bigger plans for the future. Here's some relevant links:
- http://www.thepathofleasttime.com/ (one of our many character blogs)
- http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/ (our newspaper)
- http://www.heshrecords.com/ (record label that publishes our "The Silver City" CD containing clues)
- http://story.perplexcity.com/podcast/ (our weekly podcast)
- http://www.perplexcity.com/liveevents/index.build (live event report)
- http://www.13thlabour.tk/ (player-created distributed computing project to solve an RC5 code from the game)
- http://www.lulu.com/content/225745 (a book written by players so an in-game character could become a registered author and access an information archive)
Now I haven't tried this puppy out yet but I can tell you it looks mighty interesting to me. A quick shake through the Getting Started introduction should set you on your way to seeing some intrigue here. I know games along these lines (alternate reality stuff, I mean) have poked their heads into the world, and they don't always work as intended... well, I'll just say it: Majestic flopped. At the time, I shook my head at the concept right along with most at the idea of getting phone calls from my game during the middle of my work day. That idea just didn't sound "right", eh? Well, that's a side point, and apparently unrelated to the discussion of Perplex City. I'm no Majestic expert -- nor did I play the game -- so I'll drop that subject now.
At any rate, I am going to look further into Perplex City now, so maybe you will want to, too. I'll post more comments on the subject once I get further along with it.
... YAY! Something new!!! Wheeee! :)