Through the Looking Glass: The Story Behind
The Looking Glass Laboratories' Alternate Reality Game
Puzzle #4: The Four Books
Halfway through the solving of the Rubik's puzzle, this puzzle didn't exist. Originally it was to be rolled in to the email, but when we needed an external image for one of the questions ("Identity"), we figured "why not make images of ALL of them?".
Identity: We thought that this one was the hardest; we didn't think they were that readily identifiable. But, sure enough, it was the first one answered. We were just hoping somebody would try to solve for them; it's a Millenium Prize problem (hence the quote from Frank Black). If you manage to solve it, you too can win a million dollars.
Clarity: The circle of cards being laid out in the same manner as the dogs in the photo was completely unintentional; we didn't even notice that until it was mentioned on the forum. And the players are an odd bunch... Several you can identify a Navier-Stokes equations for fluid dynamics almost instantly, but can't identify the Tanqueray Gin emblem?!?
Simplicity: We see that there were multiple interpretations of the dimensions, but we were going the Wikipedia route (since Joshua created these puzzles, he would take it from his best known source). Sure enough, you eventually came through.
Complexity: How many times we received "hands and feet" was amazing, and we didn't know how to get the players to understand "Yes, OK, you got that... now count them!" We went through quotes from Picasso to Napoleon, from Freud to Nietzche... and it took a Bob Dylan song to make you all realize it. Go figure.
Puzzles #3 and #4 had the added benefit of amusing us to no end. You can't imagine how many face palms we performed when some of you would submit the most oddball of answers. We exercised a level of self-control you cannot possibly imagine; while searching for quotes to serve as hints, we we're dying to just yell out "No... IDENTIFY, stupid!"
Endgame
Primarily for personal reasons, we couldn't keep this up. This was our own beast, a behemoth we did not expect that grew out of control. And, quite frankly, we were out of material, and no longer had the resources to come up with new stuff. Perhaps, some day, Joshua will return, but we could not continue it at this time.
As far as this goes, we actually cried when writing up the endgame...
To be honest, we had absolutely no idea what to do after the four books. We had planned to have the "Free Joshua" group, in their overzealous, mindless drive, take Joshua offline by force, blissfully unaware of the "life" they have extinguished.
But we actually cared for Joshua, and when we started writing that up we felt even worse than we did with the final ending. We just couldn't do that to ourselves or to the fans.
We had thought of creating a "corporate security" subsite... but to do what? We didn't want to throw up some half-assed site with no real purpose; "FreeJoshua.org" was planned to be something more, but was largely ignored due to the activity on the main site, so we didn't want to have that happened again. So we didn't bother, and performed the CorpSec actions through storytelling and basic communications, all through the watchful eye of Joshua's webcam.
But the players began scheming, starting up dialogs with the characters, so we decided to extend the storyline a little more and try to get some more fun in. If we ran across another puzzle concept, maybe we can squeeze it in somewhere.
On a side note, we gotta know... Who's "Mr. Leak"?
The original DoD letter, before it was filtered to look like a fax
- Joshua is taken over by the Defense Department, with no resistance
- Joshua resists the Department of Defense, and does something really bad for self-preservation.
- An insider - Benjamin, Ivan or the like - takes Joshua out before the DoD can have him.
- Joshua "self-terminates".
- Deacon and his lieutenants assault the data center, and Joshua ends up being collateral damage (after all, they're looking for a child, and they'll find them if they have to up end every rack in the complex).
- Joshua does something so blatantly wrong that the DoD is no longer interested.
And, come on let's face it, you know Catherine just *HAD* to die, right? Strangely enough, we didn't shed a tear for her.
We didn't want to "kill" Joshua, but let's face it: there isn't a whole lot of options. We did try to make every effort to leave the sequel possibility open, 'cause isn't that what *every* movie does?
Screw-ups
Oh lord, did we screw up bad sometimes.
First off, there was the issue of keeping track of TWELVE different mailboxes and communications with over thirty active Beta Testers. Then there was the issue of trying to keep up days where the players would generate ten to fifteen pages of forum posts. Not to mention that this turned in to way the hell more than we originally anticipated.
Some of the more obvious errors:
- The whole "Green Eggs and Ham" fiasco. Yes, we misread Wikipedia. At least it worked out to be a decent plot point.
- Dwayne's email address was the default address in our MSOutlook and we didn't see it (hey, we're not fans of Outlook either, but there were TWELVE email addresses, dude!). So when we sent a message that was supposed to be by Joshua saying "find Dwayne", it appears that it actually DID come from Dwayne. We were hoping someone would do a simple search on MySpace, but it was inadvertently made easier by providing you his email address.
- When the player-turned-turncoat was trying to weasel his way in to Catherine's heart, we sent a response that was bounced. When we re-sent it, we inadvertently sent it from Joshua's mailbox.
- Numerous typos on Joshua's posts. Normal for humans, not for a super-sentient artificial intelligence.
- We crashed the website several times because of updates that we couldn't test locally.
- At least twice on the webcam emails we had the name not match the email address, such as putting "Catherine Belmont <izeloff@lglabs>".
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