“The Beast”

By Nitin Patel

EMAC 4326

ORIGINSA Dreamworks/Microsoft collaboration to promote the movie.

• AI – Artificial Intelligence is a mechanical modern day Pinocchio tale, where an android little boy seeks to become a “real boy” and his quest for “the blue fairy.”

The Game - Beginnings

• The Beast was set in the year 2142, fifty years after the events chronicled in A.I.

• 3 overlapping entry points or "rabbit holes.”• 1. Some trailers and posters for A.I. had a credit for Jeanine Salla as

Sentient Machine Therapist hidden among the credits for Spielberg and the actors.

• 2. One of the trailers encoded a telephone number in markings on the promotional text; if a player called this number and followed the given instructions he/she eventually received an email stating in part that "Jeanine is the key" and that "you've seen her name before."

• 3. An A.I. promotional poster sent to some technology and entertainment media outlets had a very simple code stating "Evan Chan was murdered. Jeanine is the key."

The First Clues

Following the Thread

• Each rabbit hole led to questions about Jeanine Salla, especially since one would not expect a film made in 2001 to require the services of a robotherapist. Googling Jeanine brought up several web pages set in the fictional world of the game such as the homepage of Salla's employer, Bangalore World University. Reading Salla's bio page, the player encountered a link to the personal page of Salla's granddaughter, Laia Salla, as well as Jeanine's phone number. Following these clues leads the player to the homepage of Evan and Nancy Chan, family friends of the Sallas. Jeanine's phone message revealed that Evan recently died in an alleged boating accident on his A.I.-enhanced boat, the Cloudmaker. From the beginning some question the official story of Evan's death. For instance, on Laia's web page memorial to Evan she writes "He was a superb swimmer. He was a wonderful sailor. He died on the boat who loved him within sight of land."

First Clues and Puzzles

The Game

• At this point the player joins the investigation into Evan's death. Over the course of the three months the Beast went on, it incorporated thirty diverse in-game websites, from the Anti-Robot Militia to the Coalition for Robot Freedom; from an architectural magazine to a sleep clinic, and from the coroner's office to a hat store. As the game progressed, the players came across additional mysteries, such as who is killing A.I.-enhanced houses, the location of the sexbotwith whom Evan had an affair, and malfunctions in the weather-control system. By the end of the twelve weeks, players had also had live phone conversations with a game character and participated in Anti-Robot Militia rallies in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Game Elements• Compelling Storyline – characters, non-interactive

• Multimedia content – high quality video, audio files, emails

• Offline Interaction – community gatherings, phone calls, newspaper ads (chess)

• 36 separate websites that probably hold well over a thousand individual pages of information and images

• Vast range of writing styles employed within the game: the diary entries, the cyberpunk ministory of Martin and Diane's first encounter, the magazines that differed wildly in tone

• Continuity – Updates were done every Tuesday

– 1. Reinforces the Community

– 2. Reduces the Strain on Players

– 3. Reduces the Strain on Programmers

• The Hook - "Evan Chan was murdered, and we want to find out why,"

The Puzzles

Puzzles

.

Meditations

The Cloudmakers

• Cloudmakers was the name of a Yahoo group created to tackle the game, named after Evan's boat. The group had thousands of members at its peak and generated over forty thousand messages amongst players. The game was being developed as it was played. While most players came to the plotlines after they had been solidified, the Cloudmakers group was constantly on the cutting edge of the game, pushing the game's developers and influencing the plot. Warnings and messages sent by Cloudmakers members to characters in the story regularly turned up in the plot, and designs/blueprints and databases produced by the group were referenced by and even featured on in-game websites and magazines (as were the efforts of a smaller group, SphereWatch). After the game, the Puppetmasters admitted that they relied on the vast storehouse of knowledge amongst the Cloudmakers and other player groups to be able to meet any puzzle the designers created. For instance, a puzzle near the end of The Beast required that the players understand lutetablature, and sure enough there were Cloudmakers who could solve it.

Conclusion

• Ground breaking first ever “real” ARG

• Largest participation ever – began with 150 –grew to over 40000

• Casual, lurkers and hard core players

• Evolving and interactive game play

• Communal satisfaction

• Sense of Accomplishment

SOURCES

• “Beyond Reality – Aguide to Alternate Reality Gaming – by John W. Gosney

• Wikipedia

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(game)

• Cloudmakers Forum

• http://www.cloudmakers.org/guide/