ABSTRACT
The game belongs to a relatively new but immensely successful genre of interactive entertainment called an alternate reality game. ARGS have a strong and complex narrative, but the story is broken into tiny fragments and embedded in a great variety of media assets and other forms of communication. The newbies complained about having to download the tools needed to play the game, and had trouble following the clues and solving the puzzles. Many players poured every free moment of their spare time into the game, and one has to ask what made it so compelling. Sean Stewart had been a game master of live role-playing games, and he recognized that an interactive game like The Beast had to be a two-way process. Perplex City is one of the rare big-time ARGs that was not designed as a promotional vehicle but instead functioned as independent game. ARGs are all about: they contain strong narratives; they offer robust interactivity and genuine agency.
