» Attention motorists: Perplex City is closed
Monday, June 11, 2007
Attention motorists: Perplex City is closed
Yeah, I saw the news and didn’t post because it just made me unhappy. (Especially when people started asking, right there on the goodbye posts from the story team, if this was all a setup to the start of season 2. For some reason the jackassery of which the Internet is capable keeps surprising me.) Mind Candy has put the second season of the Perplex City ARG on indefinite hiatus, and everyone on the story team has left the company. Stony silence about the issue on Mind Candy’s corporate site, which is always a wwwwwwonderful sign, but there are various messages and discussions out there, and the PXC-focused sites do all have some in-story bits about the end.
So what’d we learn, kids? That tying your product to a $200K prize is a good way to have to keep doing it over and over, even if the product improves? (Wave 2 of the Season 2 puzzle cards will still be released, BTW.) That even a sucky story is a better purchase motivator than a delayed (and suckier) story?
(Postscript: Mind Candy is allegedly looking into doing an online-hybrid product in the vein of Webkinz and, yes, Bella Sara. I WARNED YOU)
2 Responses to “Attention motorists: Perplex City is closed”
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timopod Says: June 11th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
so was the $200k part of the companies start up money..or was that projected earnings or something. Just seems sorta weird idea for a game in a hobby this small. That car company that did a promotion with pirates of the carabiean (how ever it’s spelled) hid a car.
I guesss what i’m trying to say is…where would they go from here, you gave away 200,000 dollars….what would the next prize be?
Mike Sugarbaker Says: June 11th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. You can’t just treat it as a marketing expense… people respond to it differently. I know Chris felt that the sales of the puzzle cards completely fell through the floor once the prize had been won.