TRANSMIT - initate New York signal - RECEIVE - initiate crucible frequency - ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE - initiate the clever fox protocol - WITNESS - The Gateway
The year was 2012, and Funcom's The Secret World was nearing launch. Enamored as I was with the game and its storytelling, I sought to create a 'full immersion' experience capitalizing on the game's modern-day setting and ARG-heavy gameplay.
Hidden within the branding of a conspiracy publications' website was a link to 'The Gateway', a simulation of securing remote access to the Illuminati Faction's servers. Those capable of deciphering the program's three stages of riddles would be redirected to a protected forum, where Illuminati agents would reward their perceptiveness with recruitment into the Secret War.
While the conspiracy blog and secret forums are now defunct, the Gateway remains - preserved - as evidence of one of my passion projects. Those who still seek to crack the code of the Illuminati may find answers in old promotional materials for The Secret World.
Genre: ARG
Platform: Web / Flash
Program Used: Flash
Team Size: 1
Design Process
Whenever I conceptualize a guild for a new MMORPG, I always try to think of new ways to present or interact with that guild's content. In the case of The Secret World, I wanted to experiment with blurring the line between real and fiction, and create an environment where our characters could engage in the Secret War, while simultaneously being able to discuss real-world events and interests, without ever breaching the fourth wall.
To accomplish this, I first created two websites. One, a forward-facing conspiracy blog where "staff" would intersperse news related to Secret World events and locales alongside wild fiction and opinion pieces. The other, a back-end forum belonging to our Illuminati guild - unlisted in search engines - which could only be accessed via a hidden redirect, or someone sharing the link.
The pièce de résistance however was providing prospective members with an experience that made them feel truly accomplished to have found us, and thus was born The Gateway.
Problems & Considerations
From the onset I knew that I wanted the Illuminati's American-Capitalist overtones to set the stage. The portrayal of the Illuminati having control over network information was of particular interest to me, given that I was already operating in a web atmosphere, and so I decided to portray the experience as a social-engineering hack. The more players knew about the Secret World, pop-culture conspiracy or mythology, and the Illuminati, the more barriers they would be able to overcome.
I leaned on Hollywood portrayals of hacking in order to make the experience familiar to players. From the MS-DOS client to the green text on black background and even the fast-drawing boot text, I sought to evoke the feeling of breaking into a back-end and encroaching upon something not intended to be seen.
When it came time to determine what the actual challenges would be, I operated on a guiding principal: no given answer should require more than a single Google search. Although many of The Secret World's investigation missions required substantial research and skill-building, I knew that asking players interested in my guild to do hours of digging just to be able to apply would have been untenable. Still, I wanted them to get used to finding answers on their own instead of relying on guides, and sought to create patterns by which once a player had solved the first challenge in a sequence, they would possess the context and tools needed to solve the others.
This is most clearly evidenced in the second sequence, where the player is presented with a series of numbers. For some the configuration will be instantly recognizable, but those who don't understand what they are looking at will - if they type those numbers into a search bar - quickly learn that they are coordinates which correspond with various locations associated with conspiracy theory and myth, such as Stonehenge and the Atacama Giant. Once a player realizes that answering with the name of the location yields success, they need only apply that same methodology to the remaining coordinates.
This was a particularly challenging project for me. To start, I had never worked in Flash before, and learning to use animation keyframes to manage rendering was a very different workflow compared to more traditional engines. The game itself was also far removed from any other project I had undertaken. Where I might normally portray story through dialogue and action, I now had to meld story and gameplay into the experience of interacting with the client itself.
This project was also critical to my understanding of user experience, as I had to navigate challenges such as multiple failed attempts resulting in an eventual limit to how many lines of text were drawn - for which I added a clear command - or the clear function also clearing out the question to be answered, which I then mapped to being re-generated via the help command.
Solutions
In the intervening years since I created the Gateway, the ease of searching for certain answers has diminished. If you're attempting the Gateway and getting stuck, you can find solutions for each of the challenges below.
(c) Poisoned.
(c) Eleven.