The Alternate Reality Game phenomenon seems to be getting increasingly popular. While some have used the concept to market products, ARGs can also be fun in their own right. It's especially appealing when $200,000 is up for grabs. We speak with Mind Candy CEO Michael Smith about Perplex City, his company's new ARG that feels like a real-life MMO.
GameDaily BIZ: So what exactly is Perplex City?
Michael Smith: Perplex City is a global treasure hunt that is played simultaneously by thousands of people around the world via email, web, mobile, print and a wide range of other media. It's part story, part game and part puzzle. There is a reward of $200,000 for the first person that manages to untangle the mystery and locate the missing treasure.
It offers an incredibly immersive entertainment experience. Rather than simply watching a film or reading a book in the traditional linear fashion, Perplex City swirls all around you and can be experienced through a wide variety of different media, on and offline. As a player you can take an active part in the story, communicating with the characters and even helping influence what happens.
BIZ: How is Perplex City different from other ARGs such as I Love bees or The Beast?
MS: The primary difference is that Perplex City is an ARG that isn't promoting someone else's film, video game or product. The main advantage of this is that it gives us a great deal of freedom to create exactly the game and story experience that we want. A downside of previous ARGs is that they have burned brightly and then the wonderful characters and universes that were created simply disappear when the game ends. We want to avoid that with Perplex City by creating a rich and persistent universe that is constantly evolving and expanding over the space of many years.
BIZ: How was Mind Candy formed and how did it get involved in creatingARGs?
MS: In 1998 I co-founded Firebox.com, which is a online retailer specialising in gadgets, games and gifts. One of best selling products in the early days of the business was a 207 piece Jigsaw puzzle called Eternity, which offered a 拢1m prize for the first person to solve it. I thought it was an amazing concept and began thinking about how to create a similar kind of complex puzzle that would be open to anyone in the world. I was also a big fan of Masquerade and felt that it was high time someone updated that concept and made a modern day version using every conceivable form of media to disseminate clues.
I had the original idea in 1999 but it took another 4 years before I felt ready to launch Mind Candy and begin developing Perplex City (our first game) into a commercial product. Mind Candy was formed by myself in 2003. Adrian Hon (one of the world's leading specialists on ARGs) was the first employee to come on board. We've now grown to a team of 12 and will be expanding rapidly throughout 2006.
BIZ: How does someone get involved with Perplex City?
MS: The best starting point is the website - http://www.perplexcity.com.
This should provide a little back story to what is going on. It is entirely possible to play the game and follow the story without spending any money, but if players want to go deeper they can buy packs of collectible puzzle cards. These contain clues that tie into the deeper story.
The best place to go after this would be one of the many community sites that are following the game. This is the largest and most important one.
The beauty is that players can participate at whatever level of involvement they want.Some want to immerse themselves in every aspect, spending countless hours a day analysing all the tiny details. Conversely, other players are happy to simply work on the puzzle cards without ever visiting an in-game website or chatting to another player.
BIZ: Is it safe to say that Perplex City is like a real-life MMO?
MS: Yes, that wouldn't be too far from the truth. The game is played by thousands of people around the world simultaneously, but the primary difference is that Perplex City spills off the screen and into the real world. Alongside MMOs, we've also drawn inspiration from a wide variety of other sources while developing the concept.Some examples include The Matrix, Masquerade, The Nokia Game, Alice in Wonderland, Magic the Gathering, The Blair Witch Project, War of the Words, Pattern Recognition (William Gibson) and, dare I say, even the Da Vinci Code!
BIZ: Did you always plan to bring it to the U.S.? How/where are you getting distribution?
MS: A global game is far more exciting than one played only within a single country so we've always been keen to involve the U.S. market. We're taking our time to roll the product out since we're intending to build the brand over many years, rather than just create a flash in the pan. We've just appointed our first U.S. distributor and willbe at the New York Toy Fair in February to meet new potential retailers and distributors that are on our wavelength.
BIZ: Being that it has been out in Europe for several months, how will the U.S. catch up?
MS: Actually, one of our design goals has always been to make the story accessible to new players coming in at any point. Clearly the puzzle cards can be enjoyed the same way by a newcomer. We've also got a short story-so-far on Perplexcity.com, a longer quick-start guide, and for those who want to know what's gone before in greater depth, there is a wealth of player-created information out there. There's even a Perplex City wiki.
BIZ: The community seems to be very active, how have you involved them? Has the game evolved because of them?
MS: We've done quite a lot to involve the players in events both in the real world and in Perplex City, physically, emotionally -- a good example of this would be that one of the Perplex City characters needed to be a published author in order to get access to the library so she could research info on the stolen cube (she related this info through the online Perplex City Sentential online paper). So a large group of players got together, each took on a chapter, and they wrote an entire book that we are now getting published. She will soon have access to the library. The players have also saved a suicidal woman's life in Perplex City and participated in a bit of cloak-and-dagger in the real world that ended with a spy for a Perplexian secret society making a daring escape on a black helicopter.
BIZ: Does Perplex City work best when played by individuals, or by people who collaborate?
MS: It's up to the individual to play in any way they wish but I personally think the game works best when played collaboratively. It's fascinating to watch people from all the world working in parallel to piece the story together and solve the puzzles.
BIZ: What kind of growth opportunities do you believe ARGs have going forward?
MS: The genre is still in its infancy but I think it has a hugely exciting future.
Audiences are already starting to demand more "ARGish" elements in their mainstream entertainment -- "Lost" has been a great example of this. Audiences today grow more invested in their entertainment than in years past. For many viewers, it's not enough to just passively watch a TV show, anymore; now you talk about it in an online forum, you listen to the director's podcast, you visit websites for corporations that exist only in the show. Everything ties in together and makes the whole experience far more entertaining and engaging.
Several major entertainment companies, from the Video Game sector to Hollywood, are looking very closely at Alternate Reality Games. As an industry we've barely scratched the surface of what can be achieved using this incredibly exciting new form of storytelling and gameplay. The future for ARGs looks very bright indeed.
Printer-Friendly Version
