303FC

www.lost.eu/303fc

I was reading the Guardian games blog and came across an interesting sounding computer game called Lost. It’s fiendishly simple and encompasses many of the things I like about the net, community, communication, creativity and self expression.

The premise is simple, to get points get as many people to join the game as possible, each person playing as a result of your invitation is an extra point and points really do mean prizes. After a certain date, the person with the most points wins $5000, and there are $500 prizes for the top 10.



So far people have been writing their invitations in the sky (using balloons and banners) in the sand, over their arms, on money (I’ve never seen a defaced 1000yen note, so was eager to copy this technique myself), all in order to spread the word and play the game in a way that is interesting to them.

I want to do something creative and get from my current position of 509th to the number one spot. I used to make stickers in Derby and put my (terrible) tag on them and then place them about the city. When I was advertising and promoting The Runoff I would make stickers with the logo on it and put it everywhere. However, I never see graffiti in Saito or Miyazaki, I don’t think there is a culture of it over here, for viral advertising or otherwise.


Japan isn’t a public forum for individuality and creative expression and every idea I’ve thought of so far I can only imagine would be frowned upon at best or get me sacked.

So far I’ve taken advantage of the fact that the game has the same name as a popular TV program and uploaded copies of the latest episode of said program with a small text file attached asking people to sign up to the game. It’s worked with about 10% of people who downloaded the file signing up, I will repeat the process this Thursday after enjoying what promises to be an excellent episode. I’ve also appealed to the people of Myspace, the people of Facebook, snuck sneaky links on Last.fm and Flickr and posted a link to Del.icio.us too.

If I was to win I would donate $1000 to a charity, more than likely to M60 considering my previous and ongoing involvement with them.

As soon as I think of the best way to get to the number one spot I will put my plan into action… in the meantime, go sign up here.

I'm in 400th position with 74 participants... whoop!