Playing The Game
The game involves both web content and interaction via text messaging, phone calls (accessible within the United Kingdom only), electronic mail, and with a chatbot on a proprietary Macromedia Flash interface designed to resemble an instant messaging system. Rob Cooper, producer with the BBC's interactive drama and entertainment department, stated, "You play for around 20 minutes a day and it makes use of AI chats to feed you info. Typically, it will take around 15 days to solve, a clue at a time."
Player reaction to the game has varied. Players have described the Flash animation instant messaging system as "odd" and unlike actual instant messaging systems in nature.
During the beta testing, Christy Dena, in a lengthy and detailed analysis on the gameplay, complimented the immediacy of reaction of the chat robots, and the "smooth" integration between the various interactions with the game (specifically between electronic mail and chat). Dena also pointed out that, unlike many alternate reality games, players can join game play at any time, and the game is not played in real time.
Read more about this topic: Jamie Kane
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or game:
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child’s play is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)
“The savage soul of game is up at once—
The pack full-opening various, the shrill horn
Resounded from the hills, the neighing steed
Wild for the chase, and the loud hunter’s shout—
O’er a weak, harmless, flying creature, all
Mixed in mad tumult and discordant joy.”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)