Cloudmakers was the name of the Yahoo group created to tackle the online mystery alternate reality game designed around and to promote the film A.I. By the end of the game, it had more than 3,000 members, and was generating more than 100 messages a day in email traffic.
The game was being developed as it was played, and while most of the players came to the plotlines after they had been solidified, the Cloudmakers group was constantly on the bleeding edge of the game, pushing the game's developers, influencing the plot (warnings, and messages sent by Cloudmakers members to characters in the story regularly turned up in the plot, and designs/blueprints and databases produced by the group were referenced by and even featured on in-game websites and magazines), and, in some instances, determining (through their investigations) which parts of the game world became part of the story.
External links
The Cloudmakers Yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cloudmakers)
The Cloudmakers group was founded on April 11, 2001 by a 24-year-old, Oregon-based computer programmer named Cabel Sasser1, one of thousands of movie fans who had started to notice a series of digitally distributed clues and narratives that seemed to be some kind of game, but one without clear rules, objectives or rewards.
Although many Cloudmakers were incredibly tech-savvy before beginning the game, as evident by their ability to navigate the massive digital systems of the game and to create a wide variety of digital documents and applications in support of the game, the Beast changed their subjective experience of that technology.
The urgency of the Cloudmakers regarding their future and their desire to play as if there are serious and real consequences will provide, I believe, a great opportunity in the near future for ambitious and successful social and political action.
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