During the first week of the game, students in Indiana University’s Foundations of Fitness and Wellness class were greeted by Steven Cartwright, a public relations representative from the Source Corporation, a fictional company researching health and nutrition. The students would participate in a series of fitness challenges, and were handed a worksheet and free bottles of vitamin water. Through the worksheet, students discovered the Source Corporation’s “Internal Site” using clues from the presentation to access the site. Through the Internal Site, students discovered IU Security reports relating to Sarah Chase, a missing student. Her former associate instructor Sam Clemens was also missing.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the students engaged in a series of physical challenges from the Source Corporation while digging deeper into the disappearance of Sam and Sarah. According to Lee Sheldon, students

searched Sarah’s office (staged with planted assets including Sarah’s diplomas and research notebook); hacked into the IU Security internal website where they could access security camera footage from the night Sarah vanished; found Sam’s hiding place (but not Sam); and were able to uncover a wide-ranging conspiracy tied to a formula that may or may not retard aging. In the process they learned of a third person’s disappearance; were alerted to flying saucers sited near IU’s Cyclotron facility; and investigated appearances of a creature dubbed the “Blomington Bigfoot” in some campus woods.

As the game continued, students learned of a purple dandelion known as a “skeleton plant” that had remarkable healing properties. It was rumored that the plant possessed properties that could be harnessed to aid in predicting the future. On Halloween, the students finally tracked a considerably unhinged Sam Clemens to the university greenhouse. Lee Sheldon notes this stage of the game was a student favorite, as the “entwined fleshy plants (including several carnivorous species) created a wonderfully Lovecraftian atmosphere.” The game concluded with the students discovering the Source Corporation’s on-campus office. They learned that they were intimately involved with the Source Corporation’s diabolical experiments due to some of the additives in the bottle of vitamin water from the beginning of the game.

The development team faced some challenges during the course of the game. For one event, a room high up in a tower of the student union was converted into Sam’s impromptu hideaway, trashed with a sleeping bag, junk food wrappers, toiletries, and a number of empty liquor bottles. Although the team received permission from the student union to use the room, the janitorial staff “cleaned up” the room. One of the puppetmasters approached the janitor on duty to recover the props. The janitor, initially misinterpreting the situation, expressed his disgust at “such a sweet young woman partying in the room while downing vast quantities of booze.” Additionally, the difficulty of some of the puzzles had to be reduced in response to the first semester freshmen participating in the game.

The goal of the alternate reality game was to examine the game’s impact on daily and structured activity for college students, in addition to developing a psychological attractiveness metric to “gain insight into the role individual and game characteristics play in adoption and game play.” After taking a baseline measure of physical activity using FitLinxx Actipeds, students were instructed to accumulate 50,000 steps per week. If they reached that threshold, they were rewarded with points impacting their standing in the game. Some team members were more engaged than others, accumulating over 100,000 steps for some weeks. One week, a team had every member accumulate 100,000 steps. The table below summarizes the data recorded over the seven week run of the game.

	Mean	Std. Deviation
Baseline (pre-game)	34192.0	16232.9
Week 1	49668.8	26139.2
Week 2	56723.0	26048.1
Week 3	56428.1	21651.2
Week 4	54214.7	25528.0
Week 5	50901.1	22960.0
Week 6	49166.4	22330.2
Week 7	48687.2	22873.1
Avg. Steps (7 weeks)	50206.4	22480.0

Students reporting the highest weekly step counts were the teams that bonded well, forming a cohesive unit that worked together towards a common goal. Students were also motivated by the competitive aspect and the engrossing storyline. Students also learned the benefits of walking as a way to remain active when their schedules were too busy for structured activity.

Over the next semester, the development team will collaborate with the Indiana University Division of Recreational Sports to expand gameplay to the general student body. Starting in mid-February, students from all majors will have the opportunity to participate in Skeleton Chase’s sequel, Skeleton Chase 2: The Psychic. The sequel will introduce time-limited “sprint” events, new puzzles, and the incorporation of structured activities into gameplay. WTIU, Bloomingdale’s PBS station, has expressed interest in filming a documentary following the sequel.

If you’re interested in learning more about Skeleton Chase, you can read about it in the forthcoming book, Serious Game Design and Development: Technologies for Training and Learning, edited by Dr. Janis Cannon-Bowers & Dr. Clint Bowers of the University of Central Florida. Lee Sheldon is also speaking about the game at the GDC Serious Game Summit in March.

Special thanks to Professors Sheldon, Johnston, and Massey for their help with this article.

Sheldon was understandably reticent regarding details of the upcoming game’s plot. However, he did note that it is a “story of mystery, suspense, conspiracies, corporate greed, demented professors, unnatural creatures… You know: the usual.” The story will play out over fictional and real web pages, videos, email, phone calls, text messages, and live events involving actors and lots of physical props. Sheldon promises that by the end of the game, the students “will know just about every corner of this sprawling campus from familiar landmarks to little-known nooks and crannies.”

The research team will collect data on players using FitLinxx ActiPeds, small pedometers that automatically transmit data to a receiver located at the entrance of the students’ shared dorm. Jennifer Boen at the News-Sentinel notes in her article on the project that the high tech monitors will allow the design team to decipher which components are the most motivating and enjoyable, so the results of this study will be of particular interest to game designers looking to increase engagement among players.

Lee Sheldon is no stranger to web mysteries and alternate reality games. In 1983, Warner Books hired Sheldon to write two books in the style of Dennis Wheatley’s Crime Dossiers from the 1930s. Wheatley’s dossiers were fictional police dossiers to crimes presented in sequence, including physical evidence. The project fell through, but Sheldon bought back the rights and released The Light Files: Death in Broad Daylight as a “web mystery” in 1996. Veteran ARG players might also recognize him as the lead writer behind URU: Ages Beyond Myst, which captured the attention of many ARG enthusiasts before the multiplayer’s cancellation in 2004. He is currently a Creative Consultant for the SciFi Channel’s upcoming series Danger Game, about the secretive organization Modern Reality Adventures, which produces alternate reality experiences for the unwitting client. The students at Indiana University are undoubtedly in for a treat over the next few weeks as Sheldon works with the project team at Indiana University to deliver an unforgettable and healthy experience.

Recently, Jane McGonigal and AKQA had participants in The Lost Ring traversing major cities with the Trackstick II and competing in labyrinth runs. Hopefully, the results of Indiana University’s innovative project will help explain what makes us go out and play.

The game is set to run until November 12th.