Perplex City Second Season Put On Indefinite Hold

The wildly successful Alternate Reality Game Perplex city, which ended in February of this year with the discovery of 'the Cube' will not be seeing a second season immediately. GameSetWatch has a bevy of links about the announcement, which was quite a surprise to players. Mind Candy, the company behind the game, made the announcement after the departure of their Director of Play, the COO, and several other top company personalties. "It is Mind Candy's hope that they will bring back the ARG in the future. However, the facts for now are that all of the story team has left Mind Candy, and Perplex City Season 2 is not coming out any time soon. The cards are going to continue being sold and supported; they're all designed and we already have some copies of wave 2 in the office."

Comments

Mindgames

[halcyon1234]

Sure, that's just what they want you to think. Sneaky game devs.

Re:Mindgames

[Anonymous Coward]

No, really, it's over. Otherwise a developer wouldn't have posted this: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t =19306

I had been waiting for this for months! I had really hoped for at least some kind of warnings.

Re:Mindgames

[MorpheousMarty]

I can tell by the comments that the community is in an uproar.

New Cards

[pinkfalcon]

I had notied that the new cards either didn't have all the hidden clues on them that the first set had - or had hidden them way too good for me to find...

Some of the cards have a continuing story on them though - that you need to collect all the cards in that set to read (A choose your own adventure type), as well as some 'horoscope' style, and a few other I haven't made heads or tales of yet. (I only bought them yesterday)

Re:New Cards

[wongn]

As far as I remember though, the first wave of S1 wasn't filled with Meta puzzles. When I heard about this, it was heart-wrenchingly sad. My heart continues to go out to the writers who lost what sounds like the best job in the history of the world.

'wildly successful'

[MBraynard]

Then how come I've never heard of it?

Re:'wildly successful'

[MrSvenSven]

You live under a rock?

Re:'wildly successful'

[walnutmon]

I literally study the game world... And I have never heard of it... Ever.

Re:'wildly successful'

[Anonymous Coward]

If you "literally study the game world", perhaps you should do a better job of it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplex_City

Close to 700,000 game card packs sold. Profitable company with a solid business model.

Hmmmm. Perhaps you need to either:
(A) Deflate your overinflated ego and realize the game world is larger than whatever segment you study.
(B) Do a better job at "studying"
(C) Not mouth off and instead post an intelligent question about what the target game audience is.

Re:'wildly successful'

[Number6.2]

Ah. There you go. The game is Wildly Successful in Merrie Olde England. So the grandfather post is guilty only of being American (Muhammed! Jihad! Durka, Durka!) . And the AC of being a stuck up British twit The link was helpful, though.

Interesting. Looks like it combines geocaching (?), trading cards, and the online element. The originator must certainly be a Scot or an Irishman...

Gives me the inspiration to start my own game: "Mugger's Paradise"...

It takes place in distressed American Northeast urban areas, natch... :D

Re:'wildly successful'

[MBraynard]

Actually, no, I wouldn't say it's wildly successful in terms of being popular. 70 million people in the UK, thereabouts. And how many packs does the average player buy?

Re:'wildly successful'

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it possibly be that *gasp* the phrases "wildly successful" and "wildly popular" have two entirely different meanings?

Re:'wildly successful'

[British]

I never heard of it either. But then again, Zonk's sensationalism from his article writing makes me think he's from another planet. On that planet, "Perplex City second season" must be more popular than World of Warcraft.

Seriously, get someone else to write in the games section from Slashdot. In case you don't know, video game news websites on the Internet are a dime a dozen, and that's where you get all your stories from anyway. You can't even filter in the good ones?

Somtimes I should drink coffee before reading this

[MemoryDragon]

At a first glance I looked like this article was about the old Atari Game Alternate Reality the City...

Punctuation

[brucmack]

Punctuation makes a big difference sometimes...

"The wildly successful Alternate Reality Game Perplex city" describes a place called "Alternate Reality Game Perplex".

"The wildly successful alternate-reality game Perplex City" describes a game called "Perplex City".

I'm normally not so pedantic, but when I have to RTFA just to figure out what the submitter meant, it annoys me.

Aiming High

[Unfallen]

While the reasons behind the indefinite postponement haven't really been clarified ("money... mumble etc mumble..."), it's worth thinking about what exactly Mind Candy were trying to do (or, at least, my impression - as an avid player of season 1 - of what direction they were heading in). Previous posts on the developer blog hint at the difficulties of getting the technology together, and when you consider what Mindcandy are trying to achieve with it, it's hard to blame them about the recent decision.

Season 1 was amazing for its creativity - the cards were great, but their integration with the storyline, along with the use of technology and off-line events to blur the boundaries of the game were something to look back at and marvel at. I don't think that the Perplex City bods wanted to lose any of that, while still being able to run and maintain a game that pretty much anyone could jump into at any point. The community that sprung up in season 1, for instance, was also amazing. But as the story rumbles on and more knowledge is needed to get into the game, there's increasingly more material to put people off catching up, and so the replayable side of things would be, I assume, a way for people to get into it in their own time. The tricky bit is tying that in with the community side of things as well - letting people collaborate and crack puzzles as a group.

I'm hoping they're still developing this technology and perfecting it - not just shelving it because it won't make a huge profit. IIRC, the technical team are still there - it's only the story writers that have been "let go", which makes sense as else they'll be sitting twiddling thumbs. But if the tech side can be pulled off well and in time (I'm thinking at latest before the next lot of cards is released) then there could be some really interesting ideas coming out of it. It's just a shame that much of the momentum built up over the last few years will have been lost.

Oh the irony

[macduffman]

The poster definitely should learn some grammar before posting again; I found the post to be just as confusing as you did. The problem comes when you try to sound intelligent. When you say "punctuation," do you mean "capitalization?"

"Punctuation" refers to the marks made to designate clauses, phrases and sentences (i.e. periods, commas and parentheses). It has very little to do with understanding proper nouns and capitalization.

Don't you just love it when somebody tries to sound all brilliant by cracking on the poster... and they're just as wrong as the poster was? :D

Re:Oh the irony

[brucmack]

So the hyphen wasn't punctuation then?

Who Plays alternative-reality games?

[AdamThor]

Alt-reality games sound cool, but it seems to me that they require a lot of dedication to take part in. Would you say this is true?

Re:Who Plays alternative-reality games?

[Alzheimers]

If you think it takes dedication to play, try running one sometime.

(PM of the ARG StrangeDreams 1 & 2)

Re:Who Plays alternative-reality games?

[realityfighter]

It depends on the game. Some games focus on communications scattered across many web sites or multiple media, which is more realistic but takes time to follow. Others are easier; imagine if Slashdot only updated once a week, but you had to solve puzzles to get into about 1/2 of the stories, and solutions were readily available. That would be the casual ARGers experience of a standard commercial game.

Independent ARGs run the gamut - some are incredibly accesible, others require a lot of dedication. Most fall somewhere in between.

As for Perplex City, it had many levels of participation available. You could go to one of their live events and compete with other players, collect cards en masse and try to solve the big meta-puzzle for a prize, or you could simply buy a pack and waste a little time solving the individual puzzles. The community for PPC1 kept exhaustive records of everything that went on in-game, so you could use their message boards and wikis to keep up on the action. (In fact, most ARG designers will tell you that the player-run forums aren't just tools; they're half of the game.)

Next!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> discovery of 'the Cube'

and

> Perplex City Season 2 is not coming out any time soon.

Actually, I know someone who works there, and they're keeping it a secret. PC Season 2 will involve directing all you braniac nerds into seeing who will be the first, the very first, to successfully discover 'the Hairy Triangle'.