Jaded Viewer Rewind: EA's Majestic plays YOU!!!

I'm going all nostalgic here but I hope that a few of you remember a game back in 2001 called Majestic from Electronic Arts. Maybe even some of you played the game. Well I did. It was the first mass marketed ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that took full advantage of the Internet. But the Internet back in 2001 was quite different from what it is today. High speed Internet was a luxury and streaming video was well in its infancy (the predominant video player of choice was called REAL player) but we did have AOL Instant Messenger which was at the time the social networking communication tool of choice.

So what's Majestic?

It was a sci fi conspiracy game that utilized different forms of real life communication. The game was played with:

• Majestic Navigation System (on your PC) (either bought through EA or downloaded)
• Secret web pages
  
• AOL Instant Messenger
• Phone
• Fax
• E-mail
• PDA (do you younglings even know what that is?)
  

You could option how you wanted to be communicated but to get the magnitude of the game I turned on everything.....at work! I worked for a dot com back then and figured it'd be fun to get weird IMs, mysterious phone calls and crazy e-mails from strangers who were involved in a government conspiracy that needed my help.

And that's how the game was played. You had to help these characters (played by various actors including Joe Pantoliano) who would direct you to different puzzles and clues. For instance you'd have to view a video and then "hack" into a government encrypted file.

The game took place in real time. If a character told you they would contact you the next day at a particular time, they would. To me that was the fun part. I would get random calls at work with a woman screaming "They're after me! I don't know how they found me! I need your help!"

You'd get e-mails with FBI letter heads and links to webpages that had something revolving UFO's and many links to radio talk show host Art Bell. The beauty of the game was at the beginning, a message from EA told you the game was suspended (check this link out).

Slowly, people would contact you over a few days leading you to the next clue.

I remember some of the clues were fuckin hard. Part of the community that grew from Majestic players was that people who were on the same level as you could be contacted via forums, message boards and AIM to help. Some of the puzzles were easy, others you had to look really closely at to figure out what to do next. Remember that Lost ARG? It was in the same vain. I remember you had to enter a combination of passwords with the password clues hidden in various messages.

Sadly Majestic was discontinued after 9/11 (I guess the paranoia hit close to home) and ended because the audience diminished after the first episode.

In some ways it was ahead of its time.

Imagine if Majestic was done today. You could be contacted 24/7 with phones, apps within phones, Twitter, Facebook, AIM, YouTube, etc.

Alas this real life X-Files never caught on. And oddly enough I never got to finish the game I started. I actually got to about Episode 3 (out of 4). Hmm anybody know how it ended?

Well for now, my inner Mulder will have to wait until they come up with a reboot of this game or some sort of variation.

Check out these videos of what was.

First up, the marketing campaign circa Summer 2001.

EA Majestic from Mercury Multimedia on Vimeo.

The Majestic trailer



A preview of Majestic Episode 2.



Here's a making of video featurette.



Here is some LINKAGE:

• Wikipedia
  
• Wired.com Article

Categories: ARG, leftover thoughts, majestic, rewind, video game movies

Anthony Zuiker's Level 26: Dark Origins (The First Ever DigiNovel)

I got an e-mail about Level 26 and semi dismissed it has more web serial nonsense. But ironically, after reading an article in a business magazine about Anthony Zuiker and his innovative "digi-novel" concept, I became uber intrigued by it all. It encompasses everything I like in my entertainment.

I like to read.
I like interactive social networking sites.
I like web serial videos with a twist.

Level 26 combines all these elements into a cohesive experiment of fun-ness. If this is the first time you are hearing of Level 26, let's get into the basics.

Created and written by Anthony Zuiker (he is the mastermind behind the CSI Franchises on CBS), Level 26 is the first ever digi-novel. Zuiker has partnered with EQAL (they were the brains behind LonelyGirl 15). Theoretically, the concept goes like this:

1.) You buy the book and start reading (it gets released on September 8th)
2.) The book has "Cyberbridges", calls to action to go to the website: http://www.level26.com/
where you enter codes to watch videos and interact with content.
3.) Rinse and Repeat
4.) Interact with the "26-ers", the online community

[For more info, go to the official site]

I am super psyched about this and though it's similar to the kids digi-book experience "The 39 Clues", this has a bloody, gory, splatterific horror shade to it.

So what's the book about? Check out the plot summary below for Level 26: Dark Origins
[from the official site]

It is well known among law enforcement personnel that murderers can be categorized on a scale of twenty-five levels of evil, from the naive opportunists starting out at Level 1 to the organized, premeditated torture-murderers who inhabit Level 25.

What almost no one knows - except for the elite unnamed investigations group assigned to hunt down the world's most dangerous killers, a group of men and women accounted for in no official ledger, headed by the brilliant but reluctant operative Steve Dark - is that a new category of killer is in the process of being defined.

Only one man belongs to this group. His targets: Anyone. His methods: Unlimited. His alias: Sqweegel. His classification: Level 26

Sqweegel looks like a white latex condom doesn't he?

From what I've gathered, porn actresses play victims of Sqweegel and he's a total masturbating lunatic of the highest serial killer degree. And he's a snuff addict!

What's more horror than that?

With the pending release, Level 26 has a contest up for anybody who preorders the book on Amazon.com. and other online booksellers. The prize? An Anthony Zuiker-signed book jacket.

The entry is simple: pre-order the book online, email the proof of purchase to promotion@level26.com and readers will receive a limited-edition, hand-signed book jacket from Anthony. Check out the link above for more info about the contest.

Finally, below is the trailer for this digi-novel multi platform experience.





What do you guys think? Is this the future of books? Or is this a failed experiment in Web 3.0 technology?

I'm kinda digging this experience. It's like an ARG literary explosion of intellect and hardcore horror. The first of its kind. There will be haters and there will be supporters.

But hell, I'll try anything once.

Categories: anthony zuiker, ARG, CSI, digi-novel, level 26, level 26 dark origins, level26