Perplex City: How The Cube Was Found
My favorite Alternate Reality Game site, ARGN.com, has updated with an absolutely fascinating article on how the Perplex City cube was found, written by... the guy who found it.
We covered the story over at Gamasutra, noting: "The ARG asked participants to follow numerous clues in the search for the "Receda Cube" and win the prize of $200,000, and according to Mind Candy, over the last two years, Perplex City had been played by more than 50,000 registered individuals from 92 countries."
And honestly, the first-person narrative from winner Andy Darley is incredibly readable, and it starts like this: "I'd like to say the reason I found the Cube was because I solved all the meta puzzles, cracked the number strings, and have all the answers. Alas, no. None of us did. As far as I'm aware, the reason all of us who were involved in the endgame found ourselves in Rockingham Forest is because cjr22 and Chippy nailed the amorphous blobs as being the Jurassic strata, which led by a series of inevitable steps to the Jurassic Way and the red kite centre on Forestry Commission land at Fineshade Wood." And yeah, Mr. Amrich, it's a little bit Masquerade.
Comments
The thing that keeps me from getting into ARGs is the feeling that I'm dancing to a piper's song: that the game is just an elaborate series of hoops for people to jump through for little reason other than to do so, with a slim chance of being the one, out a zillion other people playing, to win some prize at the end.
Yeah, it's admittedly a pretty cynical outlook on it all, but I do have to wonder what all those cards are going to be worth now that the puzzle's been solved.
Posted by: John H. | February 18, 2007 11:27 PM
The cards won't be worth anything, but the point is to enjoy the story along the way. It's the journey, not the outcome, that are important.
Think of it like a book, to which you're unlikely to sneer, "Bah, these chapters are just an elaborate fabrication, a series of red herrings, twists, dramatic events and dialogue designed purely for the purpose of persuading me to continue reading. How terribly pointless."
Posted by: Graham | February 19, 2007 5:07 AM
Gotta agree with Graham there. Years ago, in early high school, I had the pleasure of exploring the intricacies of an ARG with the Cloudmakers community on Yahoo and IRC (with which several of the Mind Candy team are intimately acquainted). There was no big prize to think about -- only the sensation of adventure, of camaraderie, of trying to figure out what the deuce a particular puzzle or character was trying to tell you and how that fit into an amazing bigger picture. It *is* the journey, not the destination. (When I try to explain the experience to my friends, what I say invariably has the same literary appeal as Cliff's Notes or a 250-word movie review -- it's just not the same.)
I wish that I'd gotten into PXC early on, but there will be other adventures to take. I'm especially curious to see how ARG creators will find new ways to spread awareness of their games, distribute puzzles, build communities, and stay solvent.
Posted by: Cyranix | February 19, 2007 10:00 AM