A new article sketches out what might be a developing genre: multi-player, multi-media, interactive, collaborative mystery fiction.
There's a history to this. The awful film A.I. was supported (and exceeded) by "The Beast," an ambitious marketing scheme that carefully knitted an entire world into our own, Borges-style. Numerous and referential Web sites, telephone numbers, and clues seeded in AI's trailers formed this subcreated world. A group of players, the Cloudmakers, formed to collaboratively explore and solve the game. Some of the Beast's designers, the Puppetmasters - perhaps - got involved. At the same time, Electronic Arts released Majestic. This game "pushed" content at players through communication media in their personal lives - cell phones, pagers, email, fax, URLs. This X-Files-themed game's slogan was "it plays you," and might have done a boom business but for 9-11.
Herold updates us on the field, pointing out resources like the Alternate Reality Gaming Group, Dead Drop, and Unfiction. Some games are live as of this blogging, like NoahBoddy and Search4E.
:: posted by Bryan, 4:10 PM |
There's a history to this. The awful film A.I. was supported (and exceeded) by "The Beast," an ambitious marketing scheme that carefully knitted an entire world into our own, Borges-style. Numerous and referential Web sites, telephone numbers, and clues seeded in AI's trailers formed this subcreated world. A group of players, the Cloudmakers, formed to collaboratively explore and solve the game. Some of the Beast's designers, the Puppetmasters - perhaps - got involved. At the same time, Electronic Arts released Majestic. This game "pushed" content at players through communication media in their personal lives - cell phones, pagers, email, fax, URLs. This X-Files-themed game's slogan was "it plays you," and might have done a boom business but for 9-11.
Herold updates us on the field, pointing out resources like the Alternate Reality Gaming Group, Dead Drop, and Unfiction. Some games are live as of this blogging, like NoahBoddy and Search4E.
:: posted by Bryan, 4:10 PM |
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