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Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » GAME: Save My Husband

[TRAILHEAD] Part 2

Page 12 of 116 [1737 Posts]

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The Grinder
Veteran

Joined: 05 Jun 2007
Posts: 73

STATUS OF GAME

In light of this, I am starting to think DEEP FOCUS (www.deep-focus.net), the company running the game, has some technical amateurs working on this. This means they're getting some press BUT it's bad press for being technically inept, and that's not a good thing. All of their clients (and future clients) are watching and I can't believe at this point that they would PURPOSELY want to look this bad, having to even take down all the sites! It is impossible to come back and say it was planned that way. You cannot save face when you do that.

Any thoughts?

The Grinder

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 10:27 am

Sharon_in_NC
Guest

Re: STATUS OF GAME
I have to agree with you

The Grinder wrote:

It doesn't make sense for them to shut down the entire game, that would be a huge waste of money, manpower, advertising etc.
It would also make them look really inept.
I'll just bide my time, eventually there will be something.
And has anyone thought of 'the big reveal' theory?
They have something BIG planned but wanted to wait until EVERYONE is waiting for it...so no one really has an advantage.
That makes sense to me.
SinNC

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 10:40 am

.MindFreak.
Boot

Joined: 07 Jun 2007
Posts: 16

andrews blog

just wondering if anyone else noticed that earlier someone had posted that Andrew has a blog to but if you look at the time and date of when it was started it was June 8th at 8:55 .... doesn't seem logical that he started that so many days after being kidnapped unless he has something to do with his own kidnapping.

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 10:41 am

dixiedooh
Boot

Joined: 06 Jun 2007
Posts: 58
Location: northest region

andrews blog
game freeze

So far I've noticed that all the other websites can't be logged onto either.

The exception I noticed id that sonias blog is still up.

Also, It was me that mentioned the existence of another blog site for andrew. It was dismissed by the main thread folks as being nothing important and is now missing. I guess it WAS important and was not even considered because of the logic "why would Andrew have a blog.

We need to start checking blogs for everyone, and the gamers are using the one blog site for all the players.

And if you've read up to this part I need to add..Elizabeth daniels also has a blog started around the same time as this game...and has no entries yet. I would go on about my theory on that perspective, but the gamers are no doubt reading this too and I don't think we should take away all their options to continue the game.

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 10:47 am

giggles
Boot

Joined: 06 Jun 2007
Posts: 55
Location: California

Re: andrews blog
game freeze

dixiedooh wrote:

That blog was not important I don't think.

Every website that has been invoved with this game has a link to court tv at the bottom, including sonia's blog. Andrew's blog did not have those links.

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:01 am

The Grinder
Veteran

Joined: 05 Jun 2007
Posts: 73

TECHNICAL MISTAKES

Here's how I see it (listen up Deep Focus)...

1.) You NEVER "go live" and put things on the internet until they should be discovered. It's a simple principle. Putting all of the videos online, before the game even started was stupid. But they also had an admin page for this project "M8" (Mystery 8-day...) and it was available to everyone, including Google which cached a copy of the pages. I assumed they did it on purpose (they could always change the messages). I'm thinking now I was wrong. We now have access to the cached "users" page (Thanks JonB).

2.) When you have a series of clues, you NEVER put the URL's in order, especially by day! They put the videos in order by day.video number (i.e. 8.3 meant day 8, 3rd video). It was therefore quick and easy to discover this trend as soon as we saw the first video and view all the videos. And in fact, the URL was so simple (player#.#) that we found it even before the first video!

3.) Don't use simple passwords. When they changed the passwords, they weren't that different or difficult to figure out (i.e. they changed xtina6 to x!tina903). An "!" is often substituted for an "i" and we knew the "903" from Andrew's user name (max903).

4.) You don't let the actors list this work on their resume. For example, we know who played Grant because he listed working on "M8," the name for this project, for CourtTV and playing Grant Tenbrook. The next step is to go after the actor for info.

5.) Don't reply with your work email if someone contacts you regardling a game your running. If you are running a game like this, you don't want people to find out. Why the people at Deep Focus would email players with their work email (@deep-focus.net) is beyond me. We have also found a "users" page which identifies Deep Focus as the creators and lists a lot of info like emails and phone numbers (Thanks JonB). Even if this is ingame, it's not smart. These are real email addresses and phone numbers.

6.) Do NOT give certain people (i.e. technical people or people with Internet savvy) an unfair advantage. Make it based on solving puzzles like originally intended. They ruined it for regular people and a lot of people quit as soon as they heard the game was compromised.

7.) Don't piss off your players. They did a good job at that and a lot of poeple will probably boycott the sponsors now, just on principle. In light of the way this contest is being handled, I am NEVER going to support the sponsors or their affiliates. I never liked Applebees or Suzuki anyway.

8.) If you screw up, address it IMMEDIATELY! They waited until now and haven't admitted their mistake or contacted us, the disgruntled players.

9.) Always have a backup! That's common sense. You need to have alternate endings in case things get found out or leaked. They apparently had no backup.

10.) Give people a chance to win something! Everyone is sharing the daily solutions and with only so many locations and people behind the kidnapping, one can easily guess and win. You could easily get some friends or family to sign up and guess the other options to ensure winning. This idea was just dumb. Too many people would win and they didn't even have to do anything. The answers are shared and the final questions only have a few possibilities.

11.) Never put all of the answers in one place. I'll leave it at that.

12.) A LOT of people thought this was a REAL kidnapping from the advertising. There is nothing wrong with making it clear that it's only a game and NOT real. A lot of people didn't want to be a part of this just because of the way they handled some of the advertising. That's not exactly "technical" but it's a big mistake.

13.) Don't use IP addresses in the same IP block.
http://74.53.99.115/ - Savemyhusband.com
http://74.53.99.116/ - Voicedailynews.com
http://74.53.99.117/ - Akarm
http://74.53.99.118/ - Andrew's site
http://74.53.99.119/ - Zendorel

14.) NEVER, AND I MEAN NEVER put personal information like names, addresses, emails and phone numbers on the Internet unless you want the world to abuse this information. The cached "users" info has real info. Probably not ingame but we are not sure of that. I'm not calling or emailing anyone but please let us know if you find out either way.

Anything I missed?

The Grinder

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:12 am
Last edited by The Grinder on Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:28 pm; edited 7 times in total

420BLZ
Veteran

Joined: 05 Jun 2007
Posts: 86
Location: South Dakota

The game

I haven't been able to log on since around 4 this morning. I just got back from having coffee and haven't checked it since around 4 but its still down. I would have thought they would send us a email if they terminated it. I did get to see the video for today though. Christina and Max were sitting next to some conveniently placed Applebees talking about who could have done it. Then Christina suggested we email Sonia to maybe get a clue as to whether or not she might have been involved. After we email Sonia she sends us the password for the newly renovated AKARM directory which allowed us to access the fingerprint match and the security video feed. Christina gave no clue as to what todays puzzle would be in the video its self. I speculate it would be to tell her about the backdoor on the AKARM site. I'm not for sure though. Anyway I hope they didn't cancel the game since I have put almost every waking hour into it for the last 5 days. I also noticed that they didn't have the video available at midnight EST like they normally do. It was about three hours late.

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:25 am

dixiedooh
Boot

Joined: 06 Jun 2007
Posts: 58
Location: northest region

work ethics
next time

Dear game PMs,

Next time you might all want to get off your slippers and jammies....stop at dunkin donuts on the way to work like the rest of us...and use a secure in-house network to admin your game. This "work form home" and leaving trails all over the internet to administer the game from too many different locals will doom you...as you may have noticed.

Also....It Sucks having your name, address, and phone # known by thousands of computer savies now..doesn't it.

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:25 am

myprincess7890
Boot

Joined: 05 Jun 2007
Posts: 50

dixiedooh

im confused by your post hun whats going on

dixiedoohs post confuses me is someone bothering her did they get her personal information

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:31 am
Last edited by myprincess7890 on Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:39 am; edited 1 time in total

420BLZ
Veteran

Joined: 05 Jun 2007
Posts: 86
Location: South Dakota

Re: dixiedooh

F@#K YEAH grinder i dont think you missed a thing. Especially about Applebees I have never had a good experience at that sh!^^y restaurant.

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:35 am

dixiedooh
Boot

Joined: 06 Jun 2007
Posts: 58
Location: northest region

Re: dixiedooh

myprincess7890 wrote:

im confused by your post hun whats going on

dixiedoohs post confuses me is someone bothering her did they get her personal information

My post was simply addressing the folks at deep focus. I was trying to say they are being lazy about administering this contest by running everything from too many different locations......hence leaving them to rely on unsecured internet communications.

It was supposed to be light hearted with the "get out of your jammies" approach.

And the later.......the main admin function of the whole game admin has been comprimised to the point of a few of us now having all the names addresses and telephone numbers of all the different people running deep focus, and the game, and who was involved in administering what days of the contest. That's what I meant about 'computer savies' having all that info.

lol..I suppose I can telephone or email the whole 'deep focus staff' and ask them to just tell me the end.

Wink

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:52 am

The Grinder
Veteran

Joined: 05 Jun 2007
Posts: 73

PM INFO

There is a thread (I hate having different threads) pointing out that there is now a cached copy of the "users" page off the M8 admin page. It was discovered by JonB) but on first glance, it looks fishy and may be ingame. I repeat, IT MAY BE INGAME and they really are on top of this. regardless, it's not making them look good and they will have too much bad press and pissed off and frustrated players to make it worth it.

What are your thoughts everyone?

The Grinder

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:57 am
Last edited by The Grinder on Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:59 am; edited 1 time in total

dixiedooh
Boot

Joined: 06 Jun 2007
Posts: 58
Location: northest region

game admin
security

Oh...and you might want to at least hide your web addresses a little better as it would be pretty easy in the future to TELNET all your domain names (again).

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:58 am

Rodolana
Guest

Mow My Lawn

Guess I'll go mow my lawn and see what happens later. What if they come back and say "We found Andrew! Thanks for your help. Bye Bye now."

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:02 pm

The Grinder
Veteran

Joined: 05 Jun 2007
Posts: 73

Re: game admin
security

dixiedooh wrote:

Oh...and you might want to at least hide your web addresses a little better as it would be pretty easy in the future to TELNET all your domain names (again).

Well, they can't hide the IP but they shouldn't put the sites on the same IP block:

http://74.53.99.115/ - Savemyhusband.com
http://74.53.99.116/ - Voicedailynews.com
http://74.53.99.117/ - Akarm
http://74.53.99.118/ - Andrew's site
http://74.53.99.119/ - Zendorel

I updated my list! Smile

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:03 pm

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