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Perplex City Second Season Put On Indefinite Hold

Posted by Zonk on from the fickle-industry dept.

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."

2 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Punctuation by brucmack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  2. Aiming High by Unfallen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.