Apr 19, 2006 09:33 AM
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We got this email yesterday from a tipster who mysteriously insisted on anonymity (cough, cough):
I work with ABC and wanted to give you a heads up on an unprecedented interactive project ABC is working on, a project that has never been done that combines the internet and a international hit television show. They aren't releasing the information wide until next week.
ABC, Channel 4 Television in the U.K, and Australia Channel 7 will launch the "Lost Experience," a revolutionary interactive experience based on the international hit television series, "Lost". Working together, more than 30 broadcasters from Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific and the Middle East will release clues with new information regarding the mystery and mythology of the island featured in the series. Fans looking to solve the puzzle will find audio, video, and text clues in locations around the world, along with an online community in which to connect and collaborate with others. Just like any other good mystery, clues can and will happen anywhere at anytime across multiple platforms.
This type of experience is more commonly known (at least to nerds) as an alternate reality game, or ARG. The first one of these to go supernova was The Beast, developed by a team at Microsoft in 2001 to promote the movie A.I. We didn't play it ourselves but became totally obsessed with it anyway—it turned out to be far more absorbing than the movie it was meant to drum up interest for—and followed the daily progress of the players who banded together to solve it over at Cloudmakers.
The team behind The Beast went on to do ilovebees (a.k.a. Haunted Apiary) to promote the game Halo 2, and eventually ended up leaving Microsoft to form a company dedicated to ARG development. We don't know if they're involved in Lost Experience, but we're looking forward to seeing how this thing develops nonetheless.
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