Joe’s Amazing Technicolor Weblog

I’ve spent a few hours this weekend poking at Superstruct, an ARG set 11 years in the future. The game posits that 5 interrelated challenges are on track to wipe out the human race in another 20 years, and it falls to the players to assemble existing social structures in new ways (hence the name) to overcome those problems and extend humanity’s existence.

Observations:

• I have a habit of thinking about medium-to-long term societal challenges, so the premise works for me.
• The first task, developing a profile of what your life will be like 2019, is pretty interesting. Although I’m used to thinking in these directions, having such a specific task is a different kind of exercise. Developing your own narrative before spending time exploring other people’s content is an interesting sequence, too — as I’ve been getting more into the game, I’m starting to appreciate the narrative challenge of 5000 users all telling their own stories that disagree with each other & with the official narrative in various ways.
• The main site is not very well done. It’s always logging you out, has a crude UI, and an absence of content navigating tools. However, people are working around those limitations on 3rd party resources, such as their own blogs, wikia, and on custom-built services like search and a player directory.
• The official story is largely set by a handful of video briefings. In trying to get up to speed on the story, I didn’t find that to be very effective. I think I’m really looking for the wikipedia of 2019 (or, of 2029 looking back, to mitigate POV issues).
• The game’s supposed to run for 6 weeks, and it’s close to being halfway through. Check it out now if you’re interested.

Will I spend more time with Superstruct? Maybe, maybe not. On the plus side, it’s a bold idea, and I’m curious what kind of projections and plans people can come up with in a game setting. On the minus side, I’ve got a whole bunch of real-world contributions I’d rather be making in my spare time.