Walking the Edge of Reality

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Walking the Edge of Reality

A look behind the curtain to my world...

Social Experiment, Sort Of...
Thursday, April 02, 2009 12:10 PM

I don't know how many of you are familiar with my history on April Fools.

I wanted to dig up my old RedeemedSoft server that I have in storage so I can post what I've done in the past, but suffice to say the things I've done have been rather elaborate. For example:

2001: I wrote a complete DOS application that was a small version of Zork, but using elements from John Woo movies. It was a complete, fully function text interpreter complete with multiple rooms, inventory items, scoring system, etc... And it was distributed as the "Opera Pre-Alpha".

You can't imagine the amount of heat we got for that. Here we were, working on one of the most anticipated add-ons to Half-Life ever, and we decide to release what we are labeling a "pre-alpha". What was even worse were the people that have never seen Zork or similar games before, so I had to field questions like "why is this thing only 47K? Did my download get cancelled?" and "why is a text box coming up instead of the game?"

I actually had to post a walk-thru and an explanation of it on our site.

2002: RedeemedSoft was acquired by Microsoft for 1.2 MILLION. I created an entire page identical to a page in Yahoo News, and even obfuscated the URL with an IP address.

This was so believable that my own father called to congratulate me.

2005: The RedeemedSoft website is shut down by the Department of State for violations of international charter. I don't have the entire text (server's in storage, remember?), but here's a snippet:

he Department of State bases its decision on findings by the Federal Communications Commission and the Chinese Ministry of Tourism that the numerous websites (in particular "opera.redeemedsoft.com") as well as the subsequent "mod" that was developed by a group of individuals known only as "the Redeemed Assassins", portrays an image of continuous violence and death in the streets of Hong Kong and surrounding areas, thus damaging the tourism industry originating from the United States. These acts are in violation of the FCC Charter (27 U.S.C. § 4231C(a)(3)(D)).

As soon as I can recover the above from my server, I will post them.

Cut to today...

Now come on, honestly... Are there people out there that are capable of reading past the words "Uwe Boll" and still consider this serious?

I admit I had the idea at 11am today while on the road, and didn't get back to my desk to execute it until 1pm. In the world of April Fools, the key to it is an early release, so I couldn't dally about or else it wouldn't get the audience. I had plans to make it virtually identical to the site it's based on ( http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/ ), even going so far as to have downloaded actual Q*bert sounds, but I realized I myself could not possibly do it that quickly in Flash. So I had to cut back and make what you see now.

This was not in my usual style; this was more of an experiment. The site it's based on has by itself generated 20+ pages on UF. It's what I like to call the "Amygdala School of ARG Execution". Put something out there, however nonsensical and meaningless it may be, and seed it to a few places and people. Then sit back and watch it escalate all on its own. It doesn't even have to be an ARG/ARE - it could just be a grocery bag with a question mark on it - but people will begin to analyze every little piece of information. But I didn't want to be *too* cryptic and mysterious; the point of an April Fools is that it is at least somewhat obviously not real.

As for gaining an audience, all it took was two tweets; one from my "partner in crime" (who shall remain nameless) and one from myself. And it kept growing, and growing, and growing... Pretty soon, I have yet another unFiction trailhead (God, the UF admins must really hate me at this point!).

And it doesn't end there... *SOMEONE* went and posted it on Digg. I honestly don't know who, but they even went as far as to use one of my aliases, "Bjorn Nitbo", as the account that posted it. And then, to top it off, they sent me an email addressed as coming from "sack@heavens.gov"... Touche, whoever you may be... But, thank God, here I was panicking about getting drilled with traffic, but apparently that was not the case.

But I somehow foresee this living well beyond a mere April Fools joke. It's not a bad domain, to be frank (my original plan was "whatsinthebag.info", but that was actually TAKEN). So the page will remain there - I will probably make it even more cryptic, such as removing references to myself, or perhaps make Q*bert a little more transparent - and see how it fares in the vast, unpredictable world of the Internet. For all I know, a few years from now someone might chance across it and think they discovered the next big trailhead, and away we go in to the world of the Internet mainstream.

One can only hope, right?

Posted by David "Nighthawk" Flor on Thursday, April 02, 2009 12:10 PM

2 comments [ View Comments ]

Posted by rsw on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 6:01 PM

Is it still possible to find that "pre-alpha" text adventure? I have been looking for it all over :)

Posted by Nighthawk on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 11:53 PM

I have it on my old web server, which is currently in storage. I've been meaning to dig it up for other reasons (to re-post my pictures from when I went to E3 in 2000 and 2001). Maybe I'll revive that, too.

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