No Speculat1on

For the alternate reality game or “reality game”, speculat1on.net, I was surprised with how confusing it was to me. Besides the interactive narratives we’ve looked at in class or video games, I have never participated in an alternate reality game. Upon reading the text on the homepage, I had a feeling I would not be able to get too far in this game. In the brief description of the game, there is a part that states that knowledge of basic “internet protocols….hypertext markup language”, etc. is required to progress further in this game. Because I have very little knowledge on computers I did not have much faith that I would get too far, but I did continue on because I was curious as to how far I could get. I registered for the site and waited to receive an email with my password so that I could log-in and open up different aspects of the site.  I did not receive an email so I assumed that in order to get the password I had to unlock the 8 passwords on the homepage. I got through the first 3, which were very easy. They all had clues as to what the site would entail later on. Once I got to the fourth password which stated that “sometimes I would have to hunt and highlight” I had no idea what to do. I highlighted a couple of things and tried to paste them into the field, but it was not working. I skipped the fourth password and went to the fifth one which stated that sometimes you would have to repeat past actions. Again I was stuck. As I went on to the eighth password, I just got more and more lost. I then explored the site as much as I could. I clicked on the “YOU” and “WE”. I listened to the audio for “YOU”, which I thought was interesting and also read some of the posts from the “WE” section. Overall, the idea of the interactive game seemed interesting to me, however I do wish I was more knowledgeable of computers so that I could get further.