Perplex City
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Perplex City is a long-form alternate reality game being run by Mind Candy, a London-based development team. Perplex City is notable within the ARG field for charting new water with a unique business model. Typically, ARGs tend to either be exercises in viral marketing for new products, or grassroots projects developed by amateur groups. (One exception is Majestic, a subscription-based ARG run by EA and axed following a poor commercial reception.) Perplex City aims to become a truly self-supporting venture by selling collectible puzzle cards that tie into the "alternate reality" aspects of the game.
Game mechanics
The story centers on a fictional metropolis known as Perplex City. The Receda Cube, a priceless scientific and spiritual artifact, has been stolen and buried somewhere on Earth, and the game offers a real-life $200,000 reward (approx. £100,000 or €150,000) to whoever can find it.
The puzzle cards share familiar characteristics with other collectible card games (CCGs). They're sold in booster packs, with each pack containing six random cards from the currently available selection—by the end of the game, there will be 256 in total. Furthermore, cards are divided into sets and subsets of varying rarity. The most common cards are red, then orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and the rarest are silver. Unlike CCGs such as or Pokémon, though, the cards are not designed for competitive player-versus-player "combat". Instead, each card depicts a different puzzle, with the rarer cards also featuring more complex riddles. Cards are marked with unique identifiers, which can then be entered onto the Perplex City website, earning points and a place on a leaderboard. Many cards contain hidden features, such as ultraviolet or heat-sensitive inks, and they cover a broad range of themes from pop-culture trivia to cryptography and logic brainteasers. They are also larger and less homogenous than cards from other CCGs, and the back of some cards contains a different piece to a huge map of the city.
Players are currently trying to collectively brute force a particular card[link] featuring an RC5 block cipher.
The game also features a wide range traditional ARG elements that expose the deeper mysteries of the Cube theft. There are websites, blogs, emails and more originating from the city, all featuring puzzles of their own and frequently requiring players to co-operate in reaching their goals. While most ARGs run for around two months, Perplex City has been running (albeit in teaser mode) since late 2004. This format has enabled the game to feature an array of different elements, for example:
- Players wrote a book to enable a character to become a "published author" and gain access to relevant archives;
- A full length CD of cryptic techno music was released by a Perplexian musician;
- Sixty players attended an in-game event in search for clues, only for one of their own to be revealed as a mole and escape in a black helicopter—later, 220 people participated in the first Perplex City Academy Games in London, a high-tech scavenger hunt across the capital;
- A banner plane flew across Manchester with a keyword that enabled access to a new area of the game.
Commercial success?
Having executed a lengthy teaser campaign, the card-based format of the game initially attracted a degree of controversy from players accustomed to playing ARGs for free. However, the cards and the ARG are related loosely enough to enable anyone to follow the game free-of-charge if they so wish, and the concept has since been embraced by many. The cards were first released in select outlets arounds the world, but are increasingly readily available from retailers both on- and offline.
Perplex City is not yet a fully-blown commercial success, but the game is still in its early stages and subsequent "seasons" of the game are planned following the location of the Cube. Further exploitations of the concept, such as books and films, have been rumoured as possible extensions of the game. Mind Candy, the game's developers, received a new round of venture capital from Index Ventures in November 2004, worth $3m USD. As of March 30 2006, some 244,142 cards have been marked as solved on the Perplex City leaderboard, with 19,970 players registered.
Story concept
Perplex City is a massive metropolis that has an unknown connection to Earth. It has a near-future feel to it, with advanced mobile technology, neuro-enhancing pharmaceuticals and kilometer-high skyscrapers. There is also a slightly more utopian element to city life than we commonly find on Earth. The most important characteristic of the city's culture is the importance they place on puzzles and other mental pursuits. Their leading competitive event, the Academy Games, is primarily a competition of intellectual skill rather than physical strength. In fact, nearly every part of their culture touches upon the cryptic and mindbending.
Their religions fall loosely around a mythology of building, construction and technology, none of which are explicitly theistic. The Cube is, in all cases, a sacred and holy object, and rightfully so—it possesses a range of unusual properties which many believe to be of a supernatural origin. With the Cube stolen in late 2004, the race is on to return it to its rightful home.
Key figures in city life include Sente Kiteway, Master of The Academy, an advanced learning institution and former custodian of the Cube. His two daughters, Scarlett and Violet, communicate regularly with the people of Earth through their blogs (see below). Pietro Salk, an investigative reporter for leading newspaper The Sentinel, produced many leads before he was unceremonially killed off for getting too close to the truth. The team at the Academy tasked with returning the Cube (and ostensibly authors of the puzzle cards) are also frequently in touch, and Kurt McAllister is an important ally to players on Earth.
External links/References
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