A bit of Perplexity...

Now we've got Naomi Alderman talking about her project Perplex City. She's showing us the websites from this "world". The people of Perplex city have lost their "cube".

It lasted 2 and a half years - and there was a major prize at the end of the porject.
http://www.perplexcity.com/

It was a massive project, with lots of characters, scenarios, puzzles, and sub-sites. The puzzles in the site were part of the story's narrative.

She's going to tell a few stories about the vast Perplex City project. Like a soap opera, all of the characters had many things happen to them.

Players in the game had many games and activities to do. Players in the game went as far as writing a book together that can be bought on Lulu! Its a way that people can feel connected to the game.

She's tellling us about the character Anna Heath - an academic who begins very sceptically, and helped out alot of players, but ended up being murdered by the conspiracy. People were genuinely upset by the character's death and wanted to show this and did so by bringing paper planes to the game maker's office.

The stories in the game had to change as the responses of people to the stories took place and it wasn't always as expected. One character she created a final blog post for, implying she was going to commit suicide - and the players of the game actually "sent" another character to save the character. As a writer, she found that her story was being impacted by the audience - so that their response meant alot to her.

At the end of Perplex city it had become very real for alot of people - both those developing it and the players of the game. Naomi got a letter at the end of the story saying how the forums had been really important to players of the game - and a boy who'd changed school used it to become friends with others at his new school. Its this kind of example which counteracts the view that games and the internet stop us communicating - that the internet can allow us to be "part of our best selves."

As a reader she'd always wanted to go into imaginary worlds - was always walking into the back of wardrobes - the internet now allows that!