“The Beast”

By Nitin Patel
EMAC 4326
ORIGINS
A Dreamworks/Microsoft
collaboration to promote the
movie.
• AI – Artificial Intelligence
is a mechanical modern
day Pinocchio tale,
where an android little
boy seeks to become a
“real boy” and his quest
for “the blue fairy.”
 The Game - Beginnings
• The Beast was set in the year 2142, fifty years after the events
chronicled in A.I.
• 3 overlapping entry points or "rabbit holes.”
• 1. Some trailers and posters for A.I. had a credit for Jeanine Salla as
Sentient Machine Therapist hidden among the credits for Spielberg
and the actors.
• 2. One of the trailers encoded a telephone number in markings on
the promotional text; if a player called this number and followed
the given instructions he/she eventually received an email stating in
part that "Jeanine is the key" and that "you've seen her name
before."
• 3. An A.I. promotional poster sent to some technology and
entertainment media outlets had a very simple code stating "Evan
Chan was murdered. Jeanine is the key."
The First Clues
 Following the Thread
• Each rabbit hole led to questions about Jeanine Salla, especially
since one would not expect a film made in 2001 to require the
services of a robotherapist. Googling Jeanine brought up several
web pages set in the fictional world of the game such as the
homepage of Salla's employer, Bangalore World University. Reading
Salla's bio page, the player encountered a link to the personal page
of Salla's granddaughter, Laia Salla, as well as Jeanine's phone
number. Following these clues leads the player to the homepage of
Evan and Nancy Chan, family friends of the Sallas. Jeanine's phone
message revealed that Evan recently died in an alleged boating
accident on his A.I.-enhanced boat, the Cloudmaker. From the
beginning some question the official story of Evan's death. For
instance, on Laia's web page memorial to Evan she writes "He was a
superb swimmer. He was a wonderful sailor. He died on the boat
who loved him within sight of land."
First Clues and Puzzles
 The Game
• At this point the player joins the investigation into Evan's
death. Over the course of the three months the Beast went
on, it incorporated thirty diverse in-game websites, from
the Anti-Robot Militia to the Coalition for Robot Freedom;
from an architectural magazine to a sleep clinic, and from
the coroner's office to a hat store. As the game progressed,
the players came across additional mysteries, such as who
is killing A.I.-enhanced houses, the location of the sexbot
with whom Evan had an affair, and malfunctions in the
weather-control system. By the end of the twelve weeks,
players had also had live phone conversations with a game
character and participated in Anti-Robot Militia rallies in
New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
 Game Elements
• Compelling Storyline – characters, non-interactive
• Multimedia content – high quality video, audio files, emails
• Offline Interaction – community gatherings, phone calls, newspaper ads (chess)
• 36 separate websites that probably hold well over a thousand individual pages of
information and images
• Vast range of writing styles employed within the game: the diary entries, the
cyberpunk ministory of Martin and Diane's first encounter, the magazines that
differed wildly in tone
• Continuity – Updates were done every Tuesday
– 1. Reinforces the Community
– 2. Reduces the Strain on Players
– 3. Reduces the Strain on Programmers

• The Hook - "Evan Chan was murdered, and we want to find out why,"
The Puzzles
 Puzzles
.
Meditations
 The Cloudmakers
• Cloudmakers was the name of a Yahoo group created to tackle the game,
named after Evan's boat. The group had thousands of members at its peak
and generated over forty thousand messages amongst players. The game
was being developed as it was played. While most players came to the
plotlines after they had been solidified, the Cloudmakers group was
constantly on the cutting edge of the game, pushing the game's
developers and influencing the plot. Warnings and messages sent by
Cloudmakers members to characters in the story regularly turned up in
the plot, and designs/blueprints and databases produced by the group
were referenced by and even featured on in-game websites and
magazines (as were the efforts of a smaller group, SphereWatch). After the
game, the Puppetmasters admitted that they relied on the vast
storehouse of knowledge amongst the Cloudmakers and other player
groups to be able to meet any puzzle the designers created. For instance, a
puzzle near the end of The Beast required that the players understand lute
tablature, and sure enough there were Cloudmakers who could solve it.
 Conclusion
• Ground breaking first ever “real” ARG
• Largest participation ever – began with 150 –
grew to over 40000
• Casual, lurkers and hard core players
• Evolving and interactive game play
• Communal satisfaction
• Sense of Accomplishment
 SOURCES
• “Beyond Reality – Aguide to Alternate Reality
Gaming – by John W. Gosney
• Wikipedia
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(game)
• Cloudmakers Forum
• http://www.cloudmakers.org/guide/