Gamers, flash mobs, and London -- the Perplex City Academy Games

Gamers in London enjoying an afternoon at the Trocadero may have seen a strange sight yesterday: every fifteen minutes, groups of people wearing stickers were escorted by wardens in matching t-shirts towards a DDR, Daytona or Guitar Freaks machine. While some members of the stickered teams competed at these games, others huddled around maps mumbling about Trafalgar Square or the National Gallery, pulling out beeping phones every few minutes and hurriedly composing messages.

This wasn't some strange terrorist activity--instead, it was the live counterpart to a long-running alternate reality game, a day of challenges which saw over two hundred people navigating around London armed with little more than a question sheet and a mobile phone. Alternate reality gaming exists in the overlap between video games, traditional puzzles and live-action roleplay; it reached the attention of gamers in 2004 with the I Love Bees promotional ARG for Halo 2, followed by another for GUN, Last Call Poker.

Yesterday's competition was part of a commercial ARG called Perplex City, a creation of London-based Mind Candy Design which has been gaining in popularity thanks to its use of puzzle cards. Available in packs of six from retailers, each card is a standalone challenge, providing an easy entry point into the game; colour-coded by difficulty, they range from classics such as the Monty Hall Problem to complicated riddles and cryptography. As with most ARGs, Perplex City maintains a second reality, spread out across websites and blogs; the fictional residents of Perplex City have been robbed of a valuable item, the Receda Cube, which carries a real-world reward of $200,000.

Surprisingly, the live event--styled in-game as the Perplex City Academy Games--was free to play, although teams scrambled frantically to be the first to register in advance. Many players had travelled some distance to get to the event, with teams coming from Ireland and Spain, as well as one volunteer flying in from Texas. The atmosphere before the Games began was one of nervous anticipation, growing to excitement as a Mind Candy representative outlined the day's tasks.

Armed with a sheet of challenges, teams dispersed across London. While none of the tasks were in-game, regular SMS trivia questions probed teams' knowledge of Perplex City and awarded points to the speediest reply. The three hours of the Games saw teams wandering around Chinatown counting lanterns; tracking down phone booths; investigating London laws; squeezing into phone boxes; spelling out words using people; singing in Leicester Square; forming a conga line in Trafalgar Square and trying to avoid a protest going on at the same time; spelling sixteen-letter words backwards; facing off at the aforementioned video game tasks.

ARGs and video games aren't necessarily exclusive; Last Call Poker featured an online poker site with similar qualities to 'normal' poker games. Stepping up to the DDR podium to challenge a complete stranger, knowing that somehow the fate of a distant city could be altered by one high score, was gloriously nerve-wracking.

For an afternoon, we were adventurers in a strange playground--London was our canvas, and we were brave explorers on important quests. Passers-by looked bemused, amused, confused; we assumed everyone was in on the game, our pronoia leading us to believe that National Gallery staff knew the correct answers but had been silenced by other powers. This was flash-mobbing as applied to the world of gaming; over two hundred strangers crossing paths at arbitrary locations, connected by nothing stronger than a sticker.

The technological side of the Games was flawless; a form of mobile gaming was created, with each team maintaining a sense of inclusion and otherworldliness thanks to the regular SMS questions, challenges and updates. Anyone monitoring the flow of data around London yesterday would have seen strange patterns indeed, information passing from the teams to base camp and back again, mapping out a second reality.

After the conclusion of the Games, teams staggered back to base camp, exhausted but pleased with their successes--for the majority of teams, completing the event was a victory in itself, a large number of small triumphs providing enough positive feedback to almost obliterate the overall competition. Mind Candy had one last trick up their sleeve, however--the top eight teams were taken on the London Eye to witness a mysterious Morse message blinking out of the darkness. Thus the world of Perplex City continues to evolve and enthrall; an online game seeping into the real world in the way that only ARGs can manage.

A live event like this would be difficult to pull off in any other game genre, although the shared gaming experiences of LANs and professional gaming competitions carry much of the same atmosphere. Mobile gaming, especially online, location-aware gaming, is merging with alternate reality gaming and virtual worlds to carve out a new take on virtual reality--definitely something to watch out for.

(Third photo by Alice; last photo by sotonrich)