Routes

[Martha Henson]

Hi all,

Routes Game, including the ARG, has now begun (www.routesgame.com).
Though I work for the Wellcome Trust who have part funded this
project, I haven't been directly involved with Routes, though I've
been watching its development with interest as it always sounded like
a really exciting project. Anyone else signed up and had a go yet?

So far, I'm really impressed by the way they are combining fun and
original minigames, nice design, a genuinely competitive element (the
opportunity to score points and win prizes) to make it pretty
addictive and sticky (well at least for me, I've spent hours already
on Breeder) as well as the science, the video story about the
comedian's genetic history and of course the below the line content. I
kind of wonder how many people are picking up on the arg backstory,
but I guess it's early days yet. Also, thinking about one of the
presentations at the conference in december about the successful
tactic of having a public scoreboard/leaderboard, I think routes might
be missing a trick not having that, though maybe I've just not found
it yet. It would definitely appeal to my competitive side.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else was having a play and had any
thoughts about it? Is this the magical pony unicorn land that Dan
described? or not quite there yet? have you been able to find the
backstory and piece it all together?

Martha

[Adam Martin]

I tried to play, but the signup form declared my gmail address as
invalid (incorrectly) and wouldn't let me continue. Its a silly
mistake, but it was frustrating enough that I haven't been back since
(although it's on my todo list to make another email address and try
again :))

Sent from my iPhone

On 31 Jan 2009, at 11:05, Martha Henson <martha...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

[Dan Hon]

you weren't by any chance doing something like this?

{alphanumeric string}+{alphanumeric string}@gmail.com were you?

ie danhon...@gmail.com?

[Adam Martin]

Yep. Works "almost" everywhere. I've googled it, and there are raging
arguments over whether it is legal, but if you read the SMTP and
related RFCs, they seem to say it's fine. But I really don't know

I've not yet met a mailserver that had a problem - it's only ever
javascript and php form handlers written by web developers that fail.
There also seem to be two competing "standard" sets of php for doing
the test, both of which claim to be correct, but one accepts all odd-
but-legal email addresses I've seen, and the other rejects anything
even vaguely unusual.

Personally, I don't know. The standards for email are particularly
obtuse and I wouldn't confidently say I understood them correctly.
But ... rejecting emails that otherwise work seems to me probably not
the best route to go, in general :)

(ps: Dan, iirc it was you who opened my eyes to how funky and freakish
an email could get with your test accounts on pxc :))

Sent from my iPhone

[Martha Henson]

Oh, well, that's not a good start. Have you let them know that your
email address doesn't work? Either way, be interesting to hear your
thoughts if you do manage to get it going...

[Alex Moseley]

Well, rather belated I've been having a good look around Routes, and
can report (like Martha) that yes, it's starting to engage me.

At first it's very confusing to my (older than target audience but
veteran ARG) eyes: I'm not really too sure what to click first (or at
all) on the front page, each time I go in. But, getting over that, the
games are good fun, the community challenge one running at the moment
is particularly good and getting lots of input; and the backstory
youtube/facebook/myspace pages provide a lot of reading and info. The
main story is strong too.

I have a geneticist colleague who is not so convinced at present: the
only bit that got him mildly excited was the 'other info about this
week's story' section, where deeper genetic issues are touched upon,
with a few links out to Wikipedia etc.

But yes, interesting enough to keep following: I'm keen to see where
it goes.

Alex.