Collective Detective is an online community dedicated to solving various puzzle games by pooling the expertise and intuition of many people, rather than having each stand and fall on his or her own. Their first press release makes a pretty stunning claim about the success of this approach when applied to the online game TerraQuest. The first “phase” of TQ was scheduled to last for a month, with $25,000 awarded to the person who solved it; acting together, CollectiveDetective managed to solve the phase in three days, leading TQ’s publisher, MindQuest Entertainment, to pull down the game until they could rework their approach to its design.
Thanks to Smart Mobs for the pointer.
Posted by Jason Lefkowitz at January 28, 2003Ant's Eye View is edited by Jason Lefkowitz, a consultant and Web developer in Alexandria, Virginia. Got a question, comment, or concern? Let me hear it!
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