I recently interviewed the founder/creator of a fascinating website/community for urban ‘online’ gamers. The person in question is Ivan Malyukov and his site is called Encounter. Briefly, the premise of the site is to set up local domains in a city, allowing people to participate in what is, essentially, “Challenge Annika” but with more cammo and less Health & Safety.
Basically, “Combat” missions are dreamed up by game authors and participants then play them out in real life, through the night. The text that follows the picture below is the longer feature-type version of an interview for B EAST magazine and, given the type of places the gamers tend to get sent to to solve their clues, codes and tasks, it follows my last post nicely:
Encounter: the game where no building is too rickety
The car has stopped. Time has stopped. For a split second there is total silence. Suddenly a twenty-something girl hunched over the blue-glow of her laptop shouts out the next clue from the passenger seat as it appears in pixellated iridescence. The other bodies in the car twitch into life. As night had closed-in the city, where their mission began, had receded. Now, all around them, loamy brown fields stretched out to touch clear powder-purple skies. A building that resembled a set of broken teeth is then caught in the beams of their jerky torchlight. With WAP-enabled mobiles, handheld GPS systems and some rope, all five press on towards it, in search of their final code and their prize – if they aren’t already too late. It’s 4.12am, Sunday morning, somewhere on the outskirts of Minsk. The endgame.
And similar missions are being carried out all across Belarus by groups of young friends, every weekend. In fact, there are as many as 69,371 players in 6,841 registered teams throughout 159 European cities, from Riga to Kiev, Prague to Tashkent. Although Encounter’s (EN for short) missions tend to be enjoyed mostly in the old Eastern Bloc, there have been domains set up in London, Tel-Aviv, Basel, Berlin, Lyon and Paris too.
EN: Like "Challenge Annika" but with more cammo
But just eight years ago, none of it was happening. Eight years ago Ivan Valentinovich Maslyukov had finished school and had just completed his military service. Eight years ago Ivan entered the rat race as a web-designer. Eight years ago there was a girl Ivan loved, “but I didn’t know how to seduce her,” he explains. “I decided then to create something great, to impress her imagination.” Eight years ago, Ivan created Encounter.
Encounter (EN for short) is an online-driven community of “active urban games” and gamers, a world that blurs the boundaries between the real and the imagined. And, for most, it’s all about the high-octane thrills of the nocturnal “Combat” missions, which has become the runaway favourite among EN gamers. “It’s for sure,” confirms Ivan. “The other types are just for taking a break from combat.”
The “other types” include Photo-Hunt and Photo Extreme, where participants must set-up scenes or interpret tasks (usually comic, always unusual) and record them on their digital cameras, usually during the day. Geocaching amounts to a 21st century treasure hunt using GPS systems while Wet Wars sees players become prey and predator, each hunting the other with water-guns, the last man left unsoaked declared the winner. Games have been known to last days, weeks even.
An hilarious "PhotoExtreme" set-up. I hope.
Whatever the format, the common theme shared by all is that the parameters, instructions and objectives are always set out by the game’s authors and then relayed to participants in real-time, online, from the relevant domain-pages of the EN site (en.cx). And this, Ivan believes, is what makes EN distinct.
“It’s not simply an online game,” explains Ivan. “Online means ‘communicating via the Internet’ but EN happens right on the streets of your city. It’s not only the best online game; it’s something different too. It’s real.”
Combat games, which by the way, don’t actually involve any actual combat – think reconnaissance, involve a team of friends split into a “coordination centre” and “field players”. The coordination centres (they don’t have to be stuck behind a laptop, they can be part of the field team as each page of the site has a WAP-friendly mobile phone version) of each team involved in the game receives instructions from the website and relays it to the field team. The clues are then deciphered to reveal the tasks/location they must solve/drive to next (cars are crucial to EN combat games) in order to find the next code.
EN "Combat" games attract both sexes, even if they might involve wading through industrial silage.
In turn, that code is then entered back into the website by the coordination team who, if the code was correct, receives the next task for the next level/location and the routine is repeated. The winning team is the first to complete all the tasks, find all the codes and enter them into the game site first. With game authors and domain owners able to personalize each campaign, and tending taking their inspiration from various action movies from Indiana Jones to Fast and the Furious, it makes for engrossing and unpredictable experiences.
But for who? What kind of young person wants to spend their Saturday nights/Sunday mornings wedged up a disused industrial air-duct instead of the dancefloor, or other online games even – one’s that are less demanding? “We all have something in common,” ventures Ivan, “the desire to live.”
“We pretend all kinds of living organism on our planet have this desire,” Ivan continues, “but there’s a difference between, ‘I want to survive,’ and ‘I want to live a full life!’ Most people are happy with survival but there are some for whom it’s not enough. They want to make their lives active, bright, beautiful, audacious, rich and full – EN souls are longing for the sensation of being alive.”
Given the current economic climate, alternatives to nights spent shelling out on fancy clubs and overpriced drinks clearly appeals in Eastern Europe, to guys and girls. Especially as game fees are only a few dollars of web-money and the prize for winning– in addition to any domain community-kudos – includes a percentage of the subs. But does EN itself turn any profit? Well, apparently so and all of it goes to the numerous programmers “who constantly improve the engine of the project,” says Ivan.
East Europe has a plethora of derelict potential locations, all dangerous all irresistable.
So far, so successful. But for something that deals in the currency of fun, what has been the impact of the recession, a time when optimism is so strongly tested? Amazingly, according to Ivan, “President Lukashenko says that there is no crisis in our country, we don’t catch any crisis effects.”
It should be noted that Alexander Lukashenko is often referred to as Europe’s last dictator, presiding over a nation where 80 per cent of the people are still employed by the state. “So, the recession playing a role in project Encounter? It’s out of question,” Ivan continues but with more than a hint of playfulness. “Thanks to the crisis,” offers Ivan, “I’ve managed to recruit the best programmers from the top software development services companies in central and Eastern Europe. Now they work all for Encounter.”
In fact, Belarus is currently attempting a change of image and has already recruited British PR company Bell Pottinger for rebranding purposes. According to a recent article in Monocle magazine, Belarus already combines a Soviet-post-Soviet blend of political and social systems, where young students have access to wi-fi, roads are full of mid-range European cars and technology companies enjoy zero per cent tax.
But, like the rest of the former Eastern Bloc, Belarus still retains many abandoned man-made landscapes, full of derelict industrial plants and former factories. They, of course, play a huge role in EN as the dramatic stages where the final scenes of missions are often played out.
A gamer emerges to find a code
However, in a country where the secret police are still called the KGB and bureaucracy can reach giddying levels of complexity, is there not a risk of running into trouble when entering one of the many weird locations that EN can takes its gamers? “We’re well known in Belarus,” dismisses Ivan casually, “so when players run into the authorities they just say that they’re playing Encounter. Often, though, there’s no one around abandoned buildings at night.”
A glance through the photo gallery on EN’s website brings to mind scenes from (legendary Soviet film director) Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. It’s a dense, nightmarish science-fiction film that sees a group of men, on a quest to find answers, navigate their way through a hazardous and overgrown industrial landscape where dreams and reality merge. It’s a parallel Ivan likes: “You are quite right. Both the film and EN are enigmatic experience. Every game is like a little film, with its own scenarios and actions. But in EN you are not simply a viewer; you are a very active part of the live in-game plot. And, of course, it’s not fiction,” he says.
No ropes, no ladders, no sweat.
Clearly, it is this very real sense of danger, adventure and excitement, created by the game authors who have in the past instructed participants to wade through brackish waters, scale crumbling towers and abseil off industrial precipices – with only a rope lashed around a girder and a sturdy mate for safety – that makes EN so compelling for so many.
Ivan concedes that EN gamers are often grouped with those fond of extreme sports but maintains that, for him, it’s not a wholly accurate comparison: “Our intellect is also important! Simply being strong and brave is not enough; you should be clever and creative to win,” he says.
And so, did the inventor of this real-world online game, where the victors are a magic blend of action hero and brilliant tech-nerd, get the girl after all? “Yes,” confirms Ivan, “but many years later!” A suitably cinematic ending that any EN gamer would be pleased with, don’t you think?
Game Over
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