Playing the Game - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 256

indicate he was camping out in the room: a sleeping bag, fast food wrappers, and
five empty liquor bottles that figured in another puzzle, as well as echoing what
they were learning in class that week about addiction.

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A few hours after the puzzle went live, our hotline, manned

during the set times every day that the game was running, received a phone call
from the first team to find the boardroom. Unfortunately, there was no indication
of the lair they had expected to find there. The Game Master on duty, Elizabeth,
confirmed the props were indeed missing (the team of players had wandered off
by then), and contacted the Student Union office to learn that they had neglected
to notify the janitorial staff of our game. Elizabeth hurried to the union and,
guided by the office, tracked down the janitor responsible for cleaning the room.
Luckily, he still had all our carefully collected props in a bag on his cart.

Game Central

But the janitor thought the young woman who wanted them returned was, in
fact, the drunken squatter living there. Elizabeth finally managed to convince
him that it was all for a game, and that it had been cleared by the Student Union
in advance. He finally handed over the bagful of props, still somewhat suspi-
cious. She restaged the boardroom, returned to the office we were using as Game
Central, and called the players to let them know that the bug was fixed, and the
game was rebooted. They were now free to visit the lair.

Elan Lee is one of the founders of 42 Entertainment, creators of some of the
most famous alternate reality games such as The Beast (a promotion for the
Steven Spielberg film A.I. ) and i love bees (a promotion for the video game Halo
2 ). He has dozens of stories to tell about designing and redesigning on the fly.
One of my favorites involves a device that players were required to build. The
plan was that a number of pieces of this device would be scattered around the
world, and one would even be buried in Antarctica during the winter. Since that
piece, necessary to complete the device, could not be recovered for several
months, designers felt they would have plenty of time to refine their design for
the rest of the game and get way ahead of their players.

Unfortunately, the players contacted a scientist based near the coordinates where
the object was buried. She was able to find it, happened to have a 3D imaging
copier, and sent a perfect electronic plan of the piece to the players so that they
could construct a mock-up and complete the device s construction months too

soon. Imagine the flexibility and frantic scrambling that induced in the designers.

'