Michael has been fascinated by games and puzzles ever since receiving a copy of Masquerade for his seventh birthday. In his early twenties he co-founded the online retailer, Firebox.com. The first product Firebox designed was The Shot Glass Chess Set, an unusual fusion of chess and alcohol. The bizarre game became an instant best-seller and fueled the rapid growth of the company. Michael launched Mind Candy in 2003 and development on Perplex City began soon after.
1. Michael, we appreciate you taking the time to sit down and offer our readers a glimpse into your current project, Perplex City. Can you please explain to our readers, what is Perplex City.
Perplex City is an Alternate Reality Game, but for the uninitiated I would describe it as a worldwide treasure hunt. The story is this: Perplex City is a world very much like our own, but the people who live there are lovers of puzzles. No one is really sure why – but they are obsessed with codes, riddles, cryptography, and the like. Intrigue set into Perplex City when the Receda Cube, a mysterious artifact that is vitally important in this world, was somehow stolen and buried here on Earth. This is where real life players on Earth come in! The Receda Cube is an actual item, and it is hidden somewhere on our planet right now. The first person that finds it wins $200,000 in very real money.
Players begin by buying, then solving puzzle cards, which are fun to figure out in their own right, but they hide different clues to the larger story. The complete game is truly multimedia – it takes place through the internet, text messages, live events, phone calls, emails, radio, and billboards. There are people at this moment trying their darndest to find the final clues, which vary from the simple and easy to the maddeningly difficult. This summer we will release a final wave of puzzle cards that we hope will be enough info for someone to figure it out.
But it’s tough to say when the winner will emerge. Perplex City is heavily influenced by a book called Masquerade, it was released in the UK in 1979. In it, the author Kit Wilson, laid out a series of clues that lead to a golden hare†hidden somewhere in the UK. It became a national obsession among kids and adults alike, and it took 3 years before someone found the hare. Masquerade was way ahead of its time, in that it only had literature available to generate the universe¦ nothing like the community of 30,000 Perplex City players who regularly work together to figure out clues and speculate on hidden messages. Interesting fact, that hare in Masquerade sold in 1982 for £35K at Sotheby’s!
2. What are Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)? What are some of the popular ones that readers may have heard of or participated in?
One good description is “An alternate reality game is a cross media game that deliberately blurs the line between the in-game and out-of-game experiences.†I think the key in describing an ARG is that it “reaches out†to the player via things like phone text messages, and makes the player feel like he or she is interacting with real people from an alternate world. The popular ARGs so far have all been part of marketing campaigns, the most famous being Halo 2’s ILoveBees game. Other notable ones include The Art of the Heist, a marketing vehicle for Audi and The Beast, part of the ad campaign for the Spielberg movie A.I. The only non-commercial ARG was done by Electronic Arts a few years ago called Majestic, but it was pretty primitive. Of course, the current hysteria around The Da Vinci Code and the TV show Lost are using a lot of ARG elements as well, but Perplex City is the first large scale, completely self supporting alternate reality game so far, and while it is by far the most deep and complex one so far, it is also the most accessible.
3. Is it too late for our readers to begin playing now? Can they really win and catch up to the top?
It is not too late, in fact, the puzzle cards are just now beginning to become widely available in North America. On PerplexCity.com, we have a “Story So Far†page to get people up to speed on the story, as well as a podcast, and also a detailed walk through which will introduce them to the concept of ARGs. As for getting up the leader-board that’s only dictated by how quickly they can solve the puzzles – or get the answers off the internet! The easiest place to get the cards right now in the States or Canada is at www.amazon.com, www.toysrus.com, www.thinkgeek.com or www.insound.com.
4. What is the most outrageous place you have hidden a clue thus far?
At one live event players were directed up the London Eye where they received signals from a Third Power agent in Morse code! Another clue was given out by a plane trailing a banner which led to a new website.
5. Is the city and the characters in Perplex City based on your life or totally fictional?
Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental!
6. How did you come up with the idea for this game? It seems to have taken a ton of work (hundreds of hours) to coordinate everything that has been done; between codes on records, blogs for characters, hotlines to call, etc. How did you do it all?
I’ve always loved puzzles and games, and when I was younger remember the buzz that surrounded Masquerade. I wanted to recreate that excitement, but bring it into the digital age and take advantage of the wide range of media available to us. It is indeed a massive amount of work and coordination, but I am lucky to have a crew of people working on Perplex City that are as thrilled as I am with creating something this groundbreaking and flat out fun.
7. Do you think Da Vinci Code has helped the game? Or Angles and Demons (I saw tons of people running around Rome when I was there… oh wait that was me searching for the obliques)?
It definitely helps. The whole profile of ARGs is rising, and I think there will be a lot people interested in treasure hunts and puzzles who want to go beyond the ideas in the book, as well as the marketing campaign for it. There is also a new TV show on NBC in the US called Treasure Hunters, which has some interesting elements to do with clues, illusions etc. The more people who get familiar with this kind of thing, the better it is for Perplex City. We definitely feel like we are in the right place at the right time.
8. How many people know the location of the Cube (which comes with a $200k reward or yen or euros or pounds depending where you are from)? Can we have their names and phone numbers?
Not many!
9. If our readers don’t know you co-founded Firebox, the company that has lead to many Saturday morning hangovers, with the introduction of the Shot Glass Chess set. Now how did you go from ‘Jim Bean’ to Mind Candy.
To be honest I am not completely sure where the complete idea of Perplex City came from, but there were certainly products on Firebox that influenced me beyond the Masquerade book, such as The Eternity Puzzle – a 207 piece puzzle with a million dollar reward. Mind Candy was organized to create Perplex City, but as a company our overall goal is to keep taking entertainment to a new place.
10. What other projects is mind candy involved with? What do you think you will do next?
At the moment, ensuring the safe return of the Receda Cube occupies all of our time. Mind Candy will not be launching any new products until someone finds it and life in Perplex City can return to normal. We have no shortage of ideas for new projects, but we are a small staff managing a very, very big undertaking.
11. Do you see ARG getting more popular in the future? Will they only be for the hard core gamers or for everyone like Nintendo’s Wii strategy?
Absolutely. We have no intention of limiting ARGs to only the hardcore videogamers or the collectible card community. Look on Perplex City’s leaderboard now – you will see plenty of people over 50 years old, and we know that about half of the people who play the game are women. So, Perplex City’s fanbase is something completely unique, and quite difficult to label. I think this comes from the accessibility of the game – there are few technological barriers, since pretty much everyone these days is computer savvy and has internet access. Puzzles and cryptic clues are loved by almost everyone, I think this has been proven by the Da Vinci Code.
12. What is your favorite video game of all time?
Lemmings!
13. Pick one: PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii?
The Wii is the most intriguing right now. I admire Nintendo’s philosophy
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