Blurring the line between games and life

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been found randomly in Bologna, Italy, and North Carolina. They have a painting of a city scene on them and a series of coded messages on the back.

Players quickly realized that the lit windows of the building translated into "Hello World" in binary code. The "stamp" was an electronically readable barcode translating into "www.PerplexCity.com."

The significance of several series of numbers on the cards remains unknown, however--and that's where the paranoia is running high. One number was an anagram of 2012, the year that London is hoping to host the Olympics. Players visited the London Olympics Web page and found quickly that it had been created by a Web design company called "Syzygy."

A coincidence? Probably. But the players aren't sure.

The collective mind has come up with sometimes astonishing information, however. One series of digits featured in an early teaser advertisement was deciphered as the ISBN number of science fiction author William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition," with specific words on certain pages spelling out a message.

The community has even found the exact street in Japan where a video associated with the game was filmed. What that means, if anything, remains to be seen.

Bees, Beasts and the grassroots
The alternate-reality games have their roots in role-playing, in old text video games like "Zork," and in real-life geocaching, treasure hunts played with GPS, or Global Positioning System, devices. But their modern incarnation really began as a promotion for "A.I." and an associated marketing promotion led by employees at Microsoft.

Spielberg's studio contracted with Microsoft employees Jordan Weisman and Elan Lee to create "The Beast," a game that expanded on "A.I.'s" themes and story. For weeks a convoluted story unfolded that ultimately led back to the movie, but not before prompting thousands of people to collaborate on often fiendishly difficult puzzles with themes ranging from microbiology to the Japanese game "Go."

Lee and writer Sean Stewart set the pace for later games, creating hundreds of fake Web sites with thousands of pages, which--even if hacked and studied--all held coded clues to the story.

Their second big project, called "ILoveBees," was done as a promotion for Microsoft's "Halo 2" video game, with the story starting from an artificial intelligence inhabiting an otherwise innocuous Web site about bees. Relying less on puzzles, that game required players to work together to be at specific phone booths at certain times in order to get

Dawn of the Enigma

I just want to take a moment to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge those who have dedicated the last decade to the birth of this concept. The first "enigma" to grab noteable attention over the internet began in 1994 just after the most recent Pink Floyd album release titled "The Division Bell".

While the true origins of what we refer to as the "Publius Enigma" have yet to be formally acknowledged by anyone including the members of the band themselves, our efforts continue to this very day - 11 years later.

Another notable "enigma" known as "The Stone" was
taken from "The Division Bell" concept and the same person responsible for it's creation produced
the movie "Stoners" using Pink Floyd's album for it's the soundtrack.

I look forward to seeing you inside.

-DS




Listen . Read . Think . Communicate

[bhlang]

I Love Bees

Does anyone know the significance of the fact that ilovebees.com is counting down AGAIN?