Real-Life Massive Multi-Player Spy Game | Hacker News Reader

Real-Life Massive Multi-Player Spy Game

labs.blue74.com

115 pointscaptaincrunch99 comments

Promoting a game like this would be an interesting way for China, Russia, NastyCorp, etc. (insert bad guy) to cultivate a network of HUMINT sources within the U.S. for low priority work. Create and run it as a game until you've got someone who lives near that scientist you want to keep tabs on:

"Welcome operative. Your neighbor at 2201 Main is also playing, and is your next target. To earn points, select from the missions below:

(500 points) For each day of the week of 2/24, call your handler at 212-555-1212 [twilio number] and report the time that the target returns home from work.

(1000 points) Your target has left an important clue in his trash. Rifle through his trash midday to find the clue. You will have to determine what it is. When you've found it, mail it to 2222 Anystreet."

This is a major plot point in Charles Stross's Halting State.

(I'm also obligated to mention he also posts on HN as cstross. Bonus points)

Thats what I thought of when I read this title, and even more so when I read the actual link. I liked that book. We were just discussing it in #startups a few days ago.

It can be arbitrarily more subtle than that.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Not-Game-Walter-Williams/dp/03160...

Nice! Crowdsourcing national intelligence, now there's a way to reduce the deficit. ;)

Plus, you are _charging_ them to collect the intelligence for you!

Probably get better intel too.

I guess my concern might be the potential for actual crime being unknowingly committed by game partakers.

As a simple example, I could imagine a simple "courier mission" which uses a player to pickup and to deliver a package. If the mission is to covertly deliver the package without disturbing the contents, who knows what those contents might be (ie drugs, illegal content).

Another example might be a reconnaissance mission where you have to follow and observe (presumably) another player. Of course such a mission could be abused as well, perhaps by making the subject someone that isn't actually a player. Suddenly you've gone from playing a game to stalking an unwitting individual.

I'm actually quite intrigued by the game idea--personally I'd like to submit my $5 and play but I'm having trouble ignoring my (perhaps overactive) imagination.

This is quite similar to the setup in Daniel Suarez's novel, but with updated tech.

Hah, yes, the first thing I thought of was the Daemon was asking me to join in.

No offense to captaincrunch, but I think the Daemon would have a better graphics design team.

Then again, maybe that's mission #2.

I don't think real spies have very good graphic design either. Maybe European spies at least use Helvetica instead of Courier.

Agreed. Awesomeness.

Everyone gets the same directions to show up somewhere at the same time => flash mob under one man's control?

One way to avoid the stalking issue is to require active players to wear something very easily identifiable and unambiguous.

And then hope the police don't think it's a gang symbol.

That would kind of defeat the fun of it, wouldn't it?

Probably needs to be mentioned here. The guy running this game, HN user captaincrunch, isn't the "John Draper" captaincrunch most of us are familiar with.

It's an interesting idea, though. I hope HN captaincrunch keeps us updated on his successes and challenges.

I played in a game like this back in high school (late 80s). It involved at least a couple hundred students and had everyone from chess nerds to football players involved. It was an insane fun time. Couldn't get away with what we did, these days, though (think paintball "assassination" during social studies).

I remember this "assassination tag" game from the late 80s also. It was played with squirt guns in my hometown. Everyone drew names. The name you drew was your target. When you made a "kill", the person who was eliminated gave you the name they'd drawn and that person was your next target. The game proceeded until only one person remained.

It turned out to be considerably more dangerous than expected. Entertech motorized squirt guns were popular at the time. They were made of all black plastic and looked very much like real automatic submachine pistols from a distance. Players in the game liked them because they could fire a nearly continuous stream of water and they had good range. Unfortunately, because they looked so realistic, misunderstandings occasionally happened and a player of the game could find themselves staring down the barrel of real policeman's very real loaded weapon.

This is the game. Though all kinds of implements were used, up to and including paintball guns. Luckily, we never had an run-ins with the police. It was very, very fun because you didn't know who to suspect. Everyone was involved, and walking/biking to work was an interesting journey of paranoia.

Heh good ol John..when i was part of the melbourne HP community in the bbs days he stayed with me in melbourne, not a pretty sight, for the idol that he was to us, he sure didnt live up to it. he proceeded to arrive at my house and demand access to the net, had a tantrum and actually cried when he was told he couldnt have it immediately (as i was running something at the time, modem days heh) and proceeded to freak us all out with rotten teeth and a fried brain from way to much acid. heh, we were so dissapointed. :)

Intriguing, but with no way to gauge what's minimally required to participate I'm finding it difficult to commit...even if it is cheap. Bear in mind that I'd say the same thing even if it were free. I don't know what to expect, or to what I'm potentially exposing my family.

Don't take this as so much a criticism. The lack of specifics certainly adds to the intrigue, but I think it limits your audience exclusively to young singles as a result. It would certainly benefit me if you provided a few more breadcrumbs.

Do you have a hobby or a skill set that would benefit an organization like this? Do you have 30 minutes to spare in a week?

Does this organization serve the interests of mankind, art, science and enlightenment generally? Does it serve the interests of some elite power group? Does it directly or indirectly serve the interests of death and war? I won't work for anybody; I have to sleep at night. I wouldn't serve communist China, a known entity, for a million dollars a day. And for damn sure I won't serve an unknown entity for free.

Is the game hackable? I figure it'll be worth $5 to see if I can have someone execute a mission to "remove nanobot surveillance drones from the surface of my transport using a mild detergent and slightly pressurized water."

Deploying agents in your area now, I wasn't sure your transport was a threat until now.

Inspired by 'SPOOKS' from Charlie Stross' 'Halting State'?

The location for the underground office of the game company in "Halting State":

http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/BarntonQu...

[Edit: This bunker is unlikely to be used as office space any time soon as it is rather badly contaminated with asbestos]

I keep meaning to go and have a look (I'm local, although trapped in Fife lately). Not that there'd be much to see, really.

The place has a grim fascination for me as somewhere that was obviously a planned ground-zero for a Soviet nuke - probably a ground burst.

(NB I live between central Edinburgh and Corstorphine Hill).

No, however, I'm going to have to read that as it sounds pretty interesting! The idea came out of a "What would be fun, get people exercise, and allow us to interact with others, make use of our hobbies - and add excitement to our lives?"

Sounds like "The Game" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119174/ from 1997. Quite a good film, hopefully this game is not that sinister. :)

Also "This is not a Game" by Walter Jon Williams. The main character designs games like this. Then since it's fiction winds up involved in the real thing, of course. I liked it, and there's a sequel coming out soon too.

What other movies have your favorite NPR personalities... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Schorr

This is what I thought as soon as i read about this! :) that book was awesome :)

If this was posted anywhere else I'd assume it was a pyramid scheme chain letter.

Just because it is posted here, how do you know it's not? The poster might have been duped himself.

The only assurance I can give to you, that this is my creation, and like all things, you will be risking your $5.00. This may not be for everyone, but if it does sound interesting, try it.

Alright, based on your previous karma, I am willing to try this out. My $5 is yours :)

It sounds familiar. I'm sure there was an attempt at a subscription based "Real Life Spy Game" several years ago (>10 ?) already. You would receive phone calls from strangers, mysterious emails, have to check website links, and such.

It wasn't a success as far as I remember, but it was definitely ahead of the times, and also "single player" only . A massively multiplayer game based on the same concept has definitely more potential...

As mentioned above, there was Majestic, which came out about 10 years ago. It was sort of an X-Files conspiracy type thing. I played for a while because I was interested in the tech. You would get calls on any phone you registered, faxes of documents, emails, etc... there was even an alternate web universe where you would search for information and they would inject results for their sites via a plugin in the browser (if I remember the tech correctly). I stopped playing right around 9/11. For me, it just seemed awfully silly to be getting emails about fake "threats" when it seemed like there were some real ones out there.

I'm pretty certain that this was inspired by Neurocam. For a thoroughly entertaining read -- which raises more questions than it answers -- I recommend an article from 2004: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/17/1102787276356.h...

(neurocam is not a psychology experiment.)

Agree. I thought the exact same thing when I read the article. And then proceeded to be voted down in the comments for posting about it. It's a conspiracy! :)

Depending on the missions this may get you on the real "watch list". Right now taking pictures of rail, buildings, monuments, etc can get you flagged by the DHS. I'm going to keep my spy activities in the virtual world.

All activities are optional, and at the discretion of the agent.

I had a lot of fun playing "Stop The International" - an ARG developed for the movie The International. We were sent through a bunch of missions in Central Park and had to find leads, solve puzzles and then obtain a hidden stash (which had a CD with content, a bunch of foreign cash and a bunch of papers). The three of us that attended split the cash, and I still have the two-dollar bill with a big red sticker saying "This is blood money", as well as the CD of "classified" documents. I think I might have to join in on this game...

Here is a recap video of our NY mission (with pictures of me included that were taken by their "spy") : http://www.stoptheinternational.com/recapvid.aspx?id=3

And here is a recap I posted right after our little outing: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27014&...

And the files from the CD:

http://www.trendinteractive.com/stoptheinternational/NYCX-0....

http://www.trendinteractive.com/stoptheinternational/NYCX-1....

http://www.trendinteractive.com/stoptheinternational/NYCX-2....

http://www.trendinteractive.com/stoptheinternational/NYCX-3....

http://www.trendinteractive.com/stoptheinternational/NYCX-4....

I just might have to hop into this. The last ARG I played was a decade ago, and few premises since then have excited me as much as this one.

Unlike a few other commenters, I'm not particularly worried about being a party to real-life crime. It's in keeping with both common sense and the watch-your-back nature of the spy game to perform a little due diligence on each mission. Plus there's a reasonable paper trail in the event of something going wrong (PayPal, HN account, captaincrunch's internal security measures?).

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing some interesting outcomes revolving around factions and the command chain. Whether trust is intentionally broken (i.e. by design of the mission coordinator) or whether mistrust arises spontaneously, there's great potential for each mission to be merely a pretense for gathering intel on your teammates or superiors... then using that knowledge to manipulate others to your ends. This may end up testing the game's operators more than the players in the end!

> Plus there's a reasonable paper trail in the event of something going wrong

How would that help you if you're transporting a suitcase of heroin across the city?

"No, look, I paid to transport this heroin! I mean, I didn't know it was heroin! It was all anonymous, to, uh... well... can I have a lawyer?"

You're suggesting that a criminal would put valuable illegal merchandise in the hands of a stranger and trust that he'll carry out nefarious schemes for a reward valued less than a Foursquare badge? Interesting.

The paper trail doesn't help after the fact, naturally -- it's merely a passable indicator that I'm not secretly signing my life to the Mafia up front.

Well, I guess it depends on what you're transporting. Criminals would probably not use this to transport anything of value - the risk of loss is too great. But if instead of heroin, the box contained explosives wired to an alarm clock - the value of the container is now much cheaper.

lol, perhaps we can downgrade to Cuban Class Cigars?

I had this idea several years ago. What stopped me going forward was a feeling I couldn't make the game spy-like enough to be as fun as I'd like. There are practical limitations to the real world vs. virtual world as some comments already point out -- potential legality/abuse issues etc. Although I thought I could push some of those bounds as much as possible I still couldn't envision how to keep gameplay new and interesting.

I'm glad to see this concept going forward! I would be in, except I don't know how interesting it could be considering the practical limitations as I saw them. From your description I imagine something like: Agent A hides Object along a Mountain Trail where Agent B must find and recover it. That does sound like it could be a fun activity to get fresh air and exercise, but would get old pretty quick in terms of fun factor for a real spy-like experience. I'm pretty sure there would be more in store for the game than that, but how much more is the question...

How much of the fun of this game is dependent on geographical location? Would it be worth playing at all in small towns/cities? Similarly, how would having friends you see every day playing affect it?

I've had several groups of people sign-up that wanted to be grouped, on the same token, I've had just as many sign-up to play against each other.

The game has several aspects to it, some which incorporate short distance interactions, and some interactions that happen over several weeks, exchanging hands several times (due to longer distances).

Interesting, for $5 I'm in. Why not? Even if this is dare I say malicious, I'm not worried too much. Is this going to be coordinated through email, snail mail, or what? I just realized that the shipping address on my PayPal information was not updated to my current address, as I had just moved recently. That old address no longer holds my being. :)

First contact is through mail, send your updated address to mikecurry74@gmail.com, I'll update it.

This reminds me of Electronic Arts Majestic game -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game) -- an alternate reality game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

Sadly Majestic just wasn't run well and in the end was a complete failure. If you want to see tons of Alternate Reality Games currently in action or just starting check out http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/

The big problem with ARGs are that most of them die out, sometimes without a good resolution - you always hope the next one will be better than the last.

The season 2 finale of Castle used an idea similar to this, only with an excursion-style agency where people were given elaborate missions, equipment, etc., for a hefty fee.

Will 1000 players be enough? I feel like you'll hit the limit by this time next week -- if not tomorrow (I signed up).

I understand that 1000 players will be a lot for you to handle, but that being said, if this thing seriously catches on, you'd be completely justified in charging $1 per month recurring, and I would definitely pay it for the increased density of spies in my area.

Removed the limit, as you're right - it will be more fun, with increased density of spies. I'll come up with a way to handle the load :D

Seriously consider making a recurring charge, asap, before it's too late. I made a reasonably successful game where the income was based entirely on new users paying in. It was very difficult and discouraging to me to see my game taking off with unexpected success, while my income stream was totally flat. Server load and personal workload for me increasing each month, while my income was totally the same each month. When the income is based totally on growth, that's what success looks like. Active user count double what it was last month, income same this month as last month. And it doesn't feel entirely good. You need recurring revenue. If you figure out how to provide value, the customers will pay.

Godspeed and good luck!

Automation can help with routine things, and in areas where you have high density you can effectively have spies create missions for other spies: one person's mission is to take a picture and deliver it with a note for the next person, the note tells them their next mission, and so on.

For added fun, check things like Twilio and their telephony APIs. Phone calls and text messages can add a layer of realism.

I have an asterisk system up, with several numbers via Vitelity. It could get interesting... ;)

The holy grail, as seen in Halting State, is to procedurally generate all the missions, so you get something like:

SMS text to player 1: Go to place X at midday, write code 12345 on the ground in chalk.

SMS text to player 2: Go to place X at midday + 10 minutes, reply by SMS with the code you find.

If you have sufficient density of spies, arranging that kind of interaction should be fairly easy. On the other hand, everyone that doesn't live in a large city with an active population in the game is going to have a more abstract experience - no finding secret messages other people have left!

One way to get around that is to find live online webcams - traffic cams, for instance, with a good enough resolution - and get the spies to leave something visible in front of them. Player 2 then just has to locate the area on the web, and view it through the cam.

PayPal will freeze their account in 5... 4... 3...

mission #1: assess and secure paypal funds.

There are a bunch of things you can do for $5: http://www.fiverr.com/

HN is a good place for finding enthusiasts. I am definitely intrigued, but I'll have to pass unless I can bound some sort of output value. This is especially problematic as it is a spy game, and by nature, secretive so you'll need an even bigger effort to sell. To gauge any sort of confidence, I work with whatever information I have:

1. Service's description

2. captaincrunch's karma, previous posts and his blog

3. Post address (maybe even street view if I want to be presumptuous)

EDIT: I noticed the post address was removed from the description.

Just in terms of opportunity cost, there is too much uncertainty to commit and I'll let my $5 accrue some interest or buy something else.

I am picking up a P/O box today, using my home address doesn't seem appropriate.

'Cause nobody ever sold nothing based on mystery and exclusivity...

No one ever sold anything to me (and maybe others) with mystery and exclusivity alone without any word-of-mouth or any feedback/context. The value in exclusivity comes from associated prestige. The value in mystery comes from curiosity or expectations of the potential of the service. Prestige or exclusivity isn't the point of the service (it is probably done for thematic reasons), so I don't care about that, but I'd like more expectations of what the mystery entails. I do not think this is too unreasonable.

To go even more Hollywood, some friends and I sat around the student dining table many years back and brainstormed ways of doing a laser gallery shooting game (I don't know what they're called internationally - for UK brand names think Quasar or Laserquest) that could be worn discreetly in public so you could play around your local town centre, shopping mall, garage, wherever you happened to be. And probably get hassled by security for running through crowds and making anything like shooting gestures, but it'd be fun :-)

Is it worth the money for non-north-american players? (i.e. Israel)

Yes, this is a global game, and I have had several sign-ups from Israel today.

This looks like fun. Sucks that you have to have a Paypal account. What about international players - do they get mail delivery also?

Paypal is preferred, but not necessary, there is an address where you can send a $5.00 check/money order on the website.

Also: If there is a postal outlet in your area, the game exists.

Converting South African Rand into (5) US dollars and sending it to an American postal account (hoping it doesn't get stolen in the process) is unfortunately not worth the while.

Perhaps you could suggest a payment method, and we could implement it. We've had a good amount of people sign-up from SA today.

Maybe you'd be willing to accept the foreign currency, and exchange it on your end?

Or, hell. $5 isn't that much - you could actually incorporate the physical foreign currency into the game.

You can send a check in your own currency, I can exchange it here.

Just get a paypal account. Or send/transfer me R40 and i'll transfer it via paypal if you are willing to trust me. :)

By the way, it's "involved" not "envolved".

I wonder what the best webpage idea is to get people to send me $5 for nothing or very little in return.

Obligatory XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/842/

I had this idea - rather, an idea for something very similar to this - right after the first iPhone came out a few years ago. Never did anything with it. Should have. Let this be your daily reminder to execute on your good ideas!

Also, I'm totally in.

I'm willing to take the bet for 5 bucks. Signed up, let the gaming begin! :)

I really like this idea, sounds like it could be a lot of fun. $5 is yours.

reminds me of one of the plot points in Charles Stross's "Halting State"

Reminds me of Gotcha!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089222/

IIW (International Intelligence Agency)....? Bad start, BIG turn off.

Have any other australians signed up for this yet??

I am seeing about 50 people in Australia in the DB now.

excellent..I'll get some ppls together and we'll be in, looks hoopsnakin dude :)

Looking forward!

a reasonable margin + font would go a long way towards getting me to actually read the page.

I added the margin, just couldn't change the font.. ;)

5$ for an experiment. Paying up :)

It says IIW at the top, not IIA.

neuro___...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com