[Moosferatu]

I like your new article Marek. I was really glad that you included the AI game. I remember when that was going on. I was never invovled with it myself but I followed it. Man it was so cool! Here is the site to visit to find out about this awesome game. I hope they do another sometime.

[BacardiJim]

This, my friends, is the future of adventure gaming... and it doesn't require glitzy 3D graphics or ten billion dollars' investment in an AI engine or combining a thousand different possible plot branches into a single twelve-hour game.

It just requires really, really creative designers.

I only hope that In Memoriam (the only one of the four games mentioned that I have played) is released in the USA before the fluid nature of the Internet renders it unplayable. One player has already complained on the AG forum about an inherent problem with the game that should have been forseeable, though I admit that it didn't occur to me when I wrote my review. As walkthroughs and hint forums like our own pop up, they appear as search results when a player is attempting the web research required by the game.

However, I am sure there are ways around this. The in-game version of the Google search engine already filters most of these out. It is only when a player uses his own external browser (which is commonplace in the game) that this becomes an issue. Considering the incredible innovation that was required to produce In Memoriam, getting around this little problem should be a piece of cake. And the engine that Lexis Numerique uses to provide the real-time in-game e-mail is truly phenomenal. In retrospect, I believe that some of the e-mails I received likely were triggered by my sending e-mails to some of the fictional characters in the game. And I was still getting follow-up emails for a week after I finished playing.

Over and over on this forum I see people crying that adventure games need to be more like real life. Pervasive gaming (and, in particular location-based gaming) is about as close to that as you can get.

As an aside, there was a club in my home town that consisted of about 20 members. 3-4 times a year, this group would have a "treasure hunt." One person was assigned the task of making clues which would lead the other members on a merry chase around the city. These clues were very much of the adventure game type, involving translations, weird math problems, fragments of poetry, etc. The participants all started in the same spot, and teams were given their starting clues there. Then each team would race off to the location hinted at in their clue to find another clue waiting for them. The winning team would be the first to reach their final destination, and would claim the pooled entry fees of all the teams.

This was back in the mid-late 60's. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the folks behind Uncle Roy have played some variation on this in their own past.

[Marek]

Yes! Well, you already know I agree

One interesting thing about In Memoriam vs. the A.I. game is that In Memoriam has a built-in problem with walkthroughs that needs to be solved, whereas it's actually impossible to write a walkthrough for the A.I. game, because it's played only once in real-time so to speak. It's a really interesting game characteristic that I hadn't thought of before. Because A.I. was collaborative and took place in the 'here and now', when puzzles were solved once they didn't have to be solved again by anyone. There was not a problem with this because the designers fed new puzzles into the system every week, and could in fact adapt their next puzzles to the results of the players' work in previous weeks.

I think of all the four games mentioned in my article, I like the concept of A.I. the most, because it's entirely web-based whereas the web/email stuff in In Memoriam is a sort of 'extra'. Uncle Roy is interesting as experiment, but won't have any commercial significance any time soon. Still, if anyone hears of any pervasive adventure games or any sort, make sure you alert Adventure Gamers.

[carlitoxxi]

Hi! I've read the pervasive adventure article and i can say that the nature of this games was well interpreted. In the community we call this games "Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG)".
I'm agree with who say this game are the future of adventure games!
The games listed by the article are only a little percentual of the ARG games.
Some is finished years ago, some is finished some months ago, but others are active at this time.
I'm the admin of the italian ARG site: www.multiplayer.it/argplanet
However, i can suggest you, in your local english language, two major site for reference:
the ARGN Network: www.argn.com
and the Unfiction forum: forums.unfiction.com/forums
Here you can find all you want and all games!
These are the start-point to the world of alternate reality gaming or pervasive games!
If you are interested... you're welcome!