You’ve Got Mail – The Message Center Turns On

On July 20th, UnFiction member tallerbird logged into her Kingdom Of Loathing account, and found a message from someone called The Messenger:

http://www.freewebs.com/themessagecenter/

Please go there as soon as you can! I need your help!

At first she thought it was spam, but after a little exploring, it became clear that the mysterious message was actually a clever grassroots launch. (During popular ARG Last Call Poker, players started games of Tombstone Hold ‘Em in cemeteries in the online realms of World of Warcraft, but to the best of our knowledge, this marks the first time an ARG has launched using virtual spaces; it will be interesting to see if the Message Center sparks a trend.)

The Message Center turned out to be a portal into a twisted plot resembling the unholy offspring of Saw and Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. The Messenger started his site because of an email he received describing some horrifying circumstances. Trapped in the “Room Of Doom” are eight people, each of whom corresponds to a label: the whore, the robot, the doctor, the father, the shy person, the liar, someone who is already dead, and the sender of the email. Through a series of site updates and instant messenger conversations with the characters, players were drawn into the room of doom, in which they and the characters must decide who lives and who dies to appease a sadistic killer who is lurking among them.

Catch up with the discussion on UnFiction here, or visit The Message Center to check for the latest dispatches from the Room Of Doom.

Editor’s Notes: And as quickly as it came, it went — the game wrapped up earlier this evening. For words from the Puppetmaster, check the chat log hosted at UnFiction. Also, we originally unintentionally reported that Tallerbird was a male, when in fact, she is a female — those errors have been fixed in the article.