I apologize if there’s information you already know here.
THe Lost Experieince is an alternate reality game (“ARG”). (THe Wikipedia article isn’t perfect, but it’s useful as a primer.)
An ARG is a type of game in which the player uses the tools with which he interracts with the real world to interact with the game. That is, he looks up websites, sends email, talks to people on the phone, etc. This blurs the line b/w the game and real life, because you’re using the same modalities to play the game as you use to keep in touch with your cousin who lives in Arizona.
The first “true” ARG was The Beast. (This isn’t strictly relevant to your question, but I wrote about half of this Wikipedia article, so I’m showing off.) This was a promotion for the Kubrick/Spielberg film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Players went from website to website from the world of 2142 A.D. investigating a murder. The experience was immersive because game websites were often perfectly normal stuff – a teenage girl’s blog, a hat shop, the coroner’s office, so it was easy to fool yourself into believing these were actual things out there. (Plus, once they started calling you in the middle of the night and threatening your life, it got real spooky real fast.)
One of the most important parts of The Beast was the collaborative nature of the puzzles – people wern’t solving everything on thier own, because the people behind the game threw everything at you (cryptography, photomanipulation, lute tablature – no, that’s not a joke). Insteas, it was worked collectively by groups, the biggest of which was Cloudmakers.
So anyways, the LOST Experience is of a similar nature. Here are some places to check out:
Here (if the link worked) is the Lost Experience forum on Unfiction.com. Unfiction is the destination for people playing ARG’s, and the forums there have same collective puzzle-solving nature as Cloudmakers used to.
This forum topic is a quick reference guide for the game. And here is a thread created to help newbies get up to speed.
Although I’ve only posted once on Unfiction, I’ve lurked there on and off for some time. IMHO, the place can be pretty hard on newbies, esp. since they’re often completely new to the idea of ARGs as well as the particular one they’re playing. But nonetheless, that’s the place where they get played, and that’s where you’ll want to be if you want to follow toe game progress and be a part of the solutions.
A to the LOST Experience itself, I fiddled around with it somewhat last week and it’s enjoyable enough, but so far there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of there there. I have not found it as easy to get caught up in the game as I did with The Beast, which was so well crafter that I at least found myself really giving a shit about what was going on there. As to the question of what playing the ARG will reveal about LOST, I’m sure there’ll be interesing color information (indeed, I’ve already seen stuff that made me smile), but as to real secrets being revealed, it seems unlikely. First, because why wouldn’t they save that for the show?, and second, because hte ARG his being played worldwide (and is officially launched in two or three foreign markets), but nobody but the U.S. is geting first -run episodes – the other places where the game is on are still watching stuff from the first season.
There are currently two other ARGs going that from my humble perspective seem more promising. One is Perplex City, run by some of the most active players of The Beast. The game is pretty huge because it’s been active for a year already (with periods of activity before that too), but I’ve just gotten into it over the last week and already I feel like I know the characters as people.
Another game that just seems to be starting up is EDOC Laundry, which WIRED reports is by the same team that did The Beast (as well as two very successful ARGs since that I didn’t get the chance to play, ilovebees and Last Call Poker). Since it’s new, it doesn’t have its own forum on Unfiction yet, but there are several threads on the game in “ARGs With Potential” on that site. I don’t know much about it yet; I’m spending most of my time in Perplex City these days, but I plan to try and catch up with it soon. One thing that has people worried about EDOC is that the puzzles exist not on websites (although some story websites do exist), but that they’re on t-shirts that can be purchased throught he EDOC site. People worry that they can’t play the game without buying a shirt. So far from what I’ve seen on the sites maintained by players, this isn’t proving to be much of a problem, but like I said, i haven’t gotten up to speed on EDOC, so I ain’t sure. Anyway, if you’re interested, this seems a good place to get started.
Anyway, I’ll check back on this thread if you have other questions.
–Cliffy