communication breakdown

ARG Fever

I guess it's true when they say things come in three's. A while back I discussed two new Alternate Reality Games that had started or were getting ready to start. Well, a third one has started, again somewhat quietly and subtlely, and to me it appears to be the best yet. I could be biased, because so far I've already been able to be an integral part of this one...

Note: If you're possibly interested in this game and don't want to know a lot of details (and some spoilers) that I'm going to reveal, you should stop reading and instead check out the Wiki page to get you starrted...

How it all began: news of an upcoming reality TV show called "Urban Hunt" began popping up on reality TV websites. The idea is that contestants will scour the countryside looking for things and completing missions - one of the twists is that there will be "online advisors", regular people at home who will aid the contestants. You can visit the site and sign up to be an online advisor - when you do, you get a confirmation email telling you more about the program.

So far everything was normal, which is why the reality TV fans were all over this. However, a very clever ARG player was reading over the confirmation email and noticed a puzzle in the email text! If you take the first word of each sentence and combine it, you get urbanmythology.net. A visit there reveals a website dedicated to exposing urban legends. One of the legends was about a show called "Dread House", which was supposedly produced by the same company which is making "Urban Hunt". The idea was that they would gather 13 contestants and make them stay for several weeks in an abandoned insane asylum, eating weird crap and doing weird stuff, while eliminating one each episode. Typical reality show scenario - except one problem. According to the legend, everyone involved with the show mysteriously died in the house. The producers of the show panicked and covered up all evidence and now denies anything ever happened. But is this an urban legend, or did it really occur?

And so the new ARG was born! So far it's been great, albeit a little slow, but it has all the elements - a great story, very professional and realistic-looking websites, and some cool character interaction. Here's how my part in this whole story came into being. As most of you know, I live in the Twin Cities area - well, it just so happens that the insane asylum where this "Dread House" reality show took place was in Cambridge, MN - about 30 minutes away from where I live. We even found a website, which is part of the game, which is dedicated to the history of the Cambridge Mental Hospital, including pictures and old records. Well, me and the other players were discussing it one day and we decided that someone should probably go visit the abandoned hospital to see if there were any clues there. Clearly, I was the obvious choice, so after work one day I took my digital camera and some old maps of the asylum and headed up to Cambridge...

Honestly, it was a pretty wild experience. It wasn't as freaky as I thought - most of the pictures of the hospital found on the game websites were pretty spooky, but they were all pictures of parts of the hospital which have since been torn down (only several of the original buildings remain). However, I spent two hours up there, roaming the ground and taking pictures. The strangest thing was that I just felt like I was being watched a lot of the time, and it's possible I was - the hospital campus has since been converted to a pseudo-community where (I believe) some former patients live or are being cared for. Once or twice I saw people around, and they disappeared very quickly when I wasn't looking. It was all very strange...

I was taking some photos of one of the buildings when I found a document laying on the ground near a dumpster. Further investigation revealed that it was an 80-year-old specification document which detailed some piping/sewer work which was to be done for the hospital. I was so thrilled that I found something that may be a clue so I just kind of stored it away and hoped nobody saw me picking around and taking things. Outside of that document, I didn't find anything that looked like it might have been a clue, though I admit, this was pretty freaky:

We have since analyzed the document and still can't tell if it's a clue or not - it certainly appears legit, but what was it doing there? Anyways, I've received several emails from "characters" in the game who were wondering just how close I lived to the hospital and if I was planning on making a return trip. My thoughts are that I caught the game creators (usually called PuppetMasters) off-guard with my sudden trip. It's extremely possible that what I found was not a clue, but that they do want to leave a clue and want to know when I can return to get it.

This is exactly the kind of thing that make ARGs so cool - how many times do you have the chance to visit an old mental hospital, looking for clues, and possibly finding one? The suspension of disbelief is one of the coolest things about these games. I'm sure I'll be going back again to explore. There is supposedly a vast tunnel system under the hospital, and there's still that graveyard to check out. I've got to screw up some courage and go to work!

Anyways, I doubt you'd be interested in more details (unless you plan to join the game yourself), but if you want to read my report on my exploration, you can find it here, and the gallery with my pictures is here.

That's all for now - if you folks have some free time and any of this sounds exciting, you should really check it out. It's so addictive!