The Beast and Its Influence
In 2001, in order to market the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and a planned series of Microsoft computer games based on the film, Microsoft's Creative Director, Jordan Weisman, and another Microsoft game designer, Elan Lee, conceived of an elaborate murder mystery played out across hundreds of websites, email messages, faxes, fake ads, and voicemail messages. They hired Sean Stewart, an award-winning science-fiction/fantasy author, to write the story. The game, dubbed "the Citizen Kane of online entertainment" by Internet Life, was a runaway success that involved over three million active participants from all over the world during its run and would become the seminal example of the nascent ARG genre. An early asset list for the project contained 666 files, prompting the game's puppetmasters to dub it "the Beast", a name which was later adopted by players. A large and extremely active fan community called the Cloudmakers formed to analyze and participate in solving the game, and the combined intellect, tenacity and engagement of the group soon forced the puppetmasters to create new subplots, devise new puzzles, and alter elements of the design to keep ahead of the player base. Somewhat unusually for a computer-based game, the production engaged equal numbers of male and female participants, and drew players from a wide spectrum of age groups and backgrounds.
Read more about this topic: History Of Alternative Reality Games
Famous quotes containing the words beast and/or influence:
“his head
May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.
O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,
Must I endure your amorous cries?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Temperament is the natural, inborn style of behavior of each individual. It’s the how of behavior, not the why.... The question is not, “Why does he behave a certain way if he doesn’t get a cookie?” but rather, “When he doesn’t get a cookie, how does he express his displeasure...?” The environment—and your behavior as a parent—can influence temperament and interplay with it, but it is not the cause of temperamental characteristics.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)