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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: Questions/Meta
Press: Perplex City
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Tufty
Boot

Joined: 12 Aug 2005
Posts: 27
Location: UK

 		There has also been a small article (from GuyP) posted on Boing Boing.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:10 am
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jamesi
Sentient Being


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 2195
Location: Canadia

 		Nice big article at IGN, but you need to be an IGN Insider subscriber. Or, you need to know one. Smile
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 11:14 pm
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poozle
Entrenched

Joined: 15 Aug 2005
Posts: 1090

 		Hmmmmm, I can't decide whether to sign up to the insider bit ontop of my fileplanet subsciption now, this almost makes it worth it, LOL, and its only £12 more, hmmm, decisions decisions.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 1:23 pm
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GuyP
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Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 584
Location: London, UK

 		Stop press: Self-proclaimed Alternate Reality Megastar GuyP in this fortnight's issue of The List. The handsome rogue talks about ARGs, Perplex City, and his romantic links to that bird off Celebrity Big Brother.*

*Probably.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 2:52 pm
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jamesi
Sentient Being


Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 2195
Location: Canadia
GuyP wrote:
Stop press: Self-proclaimed Alternate Reality Megastar GuyP in this fortnight's issue of The List. The handsome rogue talks about ARGs, Perplex City, and his romantic links to that bird off Celebrity Big Brother.*

*Probably.


/me cheers loudly from the sidelines, waving his "Guy P for Prime Minister" banner to and fro.
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 4:18 pm
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GuyP
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Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 584
Location: London, UK

 		Yes, that reminds me - thanks to jamesi for setting up the interview. He's fun, he's cool, he teaches at a school - he's J-A-M to the E-S-I!

PostPosted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 4:31 pm
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Kirjava
Boot


Joined: 19 Apr 2005
Posts: 41
Location: Oxford, UK

 		Perplex City has been double Boing Boinged!
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/02/more_on_perplex_city.html

It has a really nice endorsement from Mark Frauenfelder:
Quote:
I don't play games, because I don't have time for them, but I'm making an exception with this one. I think it's going to be a genre-busting bestseller that will break open the floodgates to a new form of popular entertainment.

Cool. Cool
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 9:03 am
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GuyP
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Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 584
Location: London, UK

 		And a review on the Mercury News website. "I rated this game 2 of 4 stars on graphics" - WTF?

PostPosted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:27 am
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European Chris
Unfictologist


Joined: 19 Jul 2005
Posts: 1264
Location: London's trendy Whitechapel

 		He rated it 2/4 on graphic the claiming it had nothing to do with the game. This man is a 'UUURRRRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHead'. The graphics (use this word interchangeably with design) are just lovely around these parts.
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 4:39 am
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kirstenhill
Boot

Joined: 24 Oct 2004
Posts: 31
Location: Ames, Iowa

 		Des Moines Register and Business Week
I was interviewed a week or so by the Des Moines Register(major regional newspaper for Iowa, where I live -- scroll down below the main WIBS article to see the interview with me), by a reporter who st arted out interested in "Who is Benjamin Stove?" but decided to check out ARGs in general -- so I talked some about my involvement in Perplex City. I wasn't 100% satisfied with how it came out, but it was reasonably accurate to what I was trying to say. Smile

Oh, and just so that I am not completely self-promotional, here is an article I just read on Business Week's website that interviews Michael Smith.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:03 am
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Juxta
Unfettered

Joined: 28 Aug 2005
Posts: 675

 		If you take a look inside the Sunday Telegraph today (available in the UK, erm, not sure about overseas) there is a rather spiffing double page centre spread.

There are lots of puzzles, some adapted from existing cards, and some new ones. There is also a full size scan of a Wave 3 card - #069 "Algebragraffiti" - yellow, worth 18 Perplex Points and part of the "Flame" edge series. The first 250 people to solve the card will get a free pack of cards too!

A number of players who have been at the top of the leaderboard are name-checked too - Donstobbart, Oliverkeers13, Lillyplop, Alisdairpark, Solitair, Langley Moor, TeamMfM, Wokerbee, Dusty, Grizy.

It can be found in the centre pages of the magazine in the Telegraph today, the one which has the TV listings in it.

I believe Buzman is working on getting a scan which can be put up.

Fantastic advertising, major national Sunday paper with a very large circulation - another Mind Candy coup!


J
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2006 6:25 pm
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Juxta
Unfettered

Joined: 28 Aug 2005
Posts: 675

 		New today - good spot by Gibbet the Financial Times no less...


J
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 7:28 pm
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brat-sampson
Decorated


Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 289
Location: Stark

 		PPC in the FT? It's true.

Quote:
If you are in London this Saturday, do not be alarmed if you see some strange things going on. Young people will squeeze into phone boxes en masse; others may ask you for directions to specific buildings and monuments; all will be leafing anxiously through big, colourful playing cards and scratching their heads.

These are the players of Perplex City, an "alternate reality game" (ARG) in which the real world collides with a fictional one via the internet, mobile phone messages and other media.

Around 240 people will be tearing through the Holborn area, performing challenges in return for clues, as part of a global treasure hunt. Their ultimate goal is to locate an object called the Receda Cube. The first person to find the burial site of this lump of precious metal (reportedly the size and weight of a bowling ball) will win £100,000 ($174,000).

This may sound like a niche interest but the company behind the game, Mind Candy, is backed by a consortium of business angels and venture capitalists to the tune of £2m. The backers believe they have invested in the pioneer of a lucrative new marketing channel.

ARGs are heavily influenced by the role-playing games of the 1970s and 1980s such as Dungeons & Dragons, and by today's "massively multiplayer" online role-playing games. However, they typically interact with players on many more levels, from e-mails at work to phone calls in the middle of the night.

More significantly, they require players to co-operate in order to make breakthroughs, since vital clues can appear at any time, anywhere in the world.

The creators of Perplex City say its strong community spirit – fostered by a network of official and un­official websites – has been crucial in attracting about 17,000 registered players with virtually no marketing.

Only a handful of ARGs have achieved this kind of prominence, and most were designed to market specific brands. For example, Nokia­game, which has run periodically since 1999, is a promotional vehicle for the eponymous mobile phone manufacturer. Similarly, The Beast was developed in 2001 by a small team at Microsoft to promote the Steven Spielberg film AI.

Today, Perplex City is leading a new breed of ARGs with multiple-price entry-points and revenue streams. It has generated most of its sales so far from collectable trading cards, each con­taining a clue-yielding ­puzzle, sold across Europe and the US. Packs of six cards retail for £2.50 or $5, and Mind Candy says it has sold around 200,000 packs over the past six months alone.

"Traditionally, ARGs have been very time intensive and only attracted a niche, hardcore audience that is internet-savvy," says Michael Smith, managing director. "We felt it was crucial to tap into a casual audience."

Although the cards command big margins (with rare ones trading for high prices on Ebay), Mr Smith has bigger ambitions. "The puzzle space has got a major amount of growth to come," he says. "Just look at Sudoku – it spread quickly because it started conversations. We think we can use the same principle to build the world's first global puzzle brand."

Mr Smith is the co-founder of Firebox.com, the online gadget and games retailer, whose sales have leapt to about £7m in the past few years. While running that business, he conceived Perplex City as a modern version of Masquerade, the 1979 book by Kit Williams whose illustrations contained clues leading to a gold, bejewelled hare, buried somewhere in the English countryside.

In 2003, Mr Smith stepped back from Firebox (while remaining a non-executive director) to found Mind Candy, and spent the next year raising £500,000 from business angels.

Among the first to invest was John Hegarty, co-founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, the advertising agency. He describes what Mr Smith is doing as cutting-edge "seed branding". "If you develop a brand from the ground up like this then you encourage the customers to be evangelists," he says. "Any such game is going to succeed first among the real enthusiasts, but as you move into other media you can draw in many more people."

Ultimately, ARGs will become product-placement vehicles for consumer goods and even commercial venues. For now, Mind Candy is focusing on plans to launch magazines, merchandise and feature films based on Perplex City and its characters. It currently has 14 staff based in London and two abroad, and is recruiting fast following an additional investment of £1.5m, provided by Index Ventures, a venture capital firm, in October 2005.

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writer of http://zoltor.freakash.net

PostPosted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 7:29 pm
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poozle
Entrenched

Joined: 15 Aug 2005
Posts: 1090
Quote:
Ultimately, ARGs will become product-placement vehicles for consumer goods and even commercial venues. For now, Mind Candy is focusing on plans to launch magazines, merchandise and feature films based on Perplex City and its characters. It currently has 14 staff based in London and two abroad, and is recruiting fast following an additional investment of £1.5m, provided by Index Ventures, a venture capital firm, in October 2005.


Films!!! Cooooooool

PostPosted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:24 pm
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Mima
Decorated


Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 260

 		I am reposting this, as some posts went awol (relates to yesterdays Guardian).

News of this came over the phone from MikeyJ who is at the London Event, so not sure of original source, but there is an article in the Guardian's "The Guide" today about the event.

Quote:

PERPLEX CITY NEWS
THE UNREAL DEAL
Alternative reality games (or ARSs if you like onomatopoetic acronyms) are enjoying uprecendented popluarity, with Microsoft having deployed them heavily in promoting both Xbox 360 and Halo 2. Neither offered material rewards for participants, unlike Perplex City; a vast agglomeration of online and real world clues to the location of the lost Cube, the discovery of which will earn you £100,000. As part of the ongoing Perplex City experience, hundreds of players will be descending on London today for a series of team-based challenges, inlcuding a competition to build the highest tower out of straws and a "dance off" in Trafalger Square. Spectators are welcome, with specially allocated bystander areas. Festivities begin at the City Temple Church in Holborn at 12 noon. NG.
[/quote]

PostPosted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 5:12 am
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