Infinity vs Bancroft Industries
This project is a web-based alternate reality game (ARG) of a speculative future in which digital time has become the new currency. Working as a team of investigators hired by Bancroft Industries, a powerful telecommunications corporation, the audience is invited to discover what the impacts of such a future could be.
Project Goals & Team
We wanted to create an immersive world using a non-VR platform that combined the feeling of an escape room with a deep conceptual exploration of the digital divide and the growing power of telecommunication companies, all in the context of the early days of COVID-19. To that effort, we developed Infinity vs Bancroft Industries, an alternate reality game.
This project was developed for a Royal College of Art MA Digital Direction unit with fellow students Atlanta Guzman, Smriti Anund, Luis Baez, and Zijie “Noah” Qu. We have to continue to develop the project outside of school.
Project Tools
The project uses a variety of media platforms, including Wix powered websites, Zapworks AR interactions, and Google Voice supported phone calls. These interactions work together to create a transmedia experience that sits in the Uncanny Valley.
Wix website developed for Infinity vs Bancroft Industries
Preview of Web AR display
Wix website with interactive popup developed for Infinity vs Bancroft Industries
Internal login accessible by players. Actors were hired to play the roles of Amory Bancroft and Ernest Bancroft to emphasize the boarder of reality and fiction central to the game
Project Discovery
As a team, we are escape room and scavenger hunt enthusiasts. Having had to cancel some of our planned activities because of COVID, we challenged ourselves to create a fully web-based version of what an escape room might look like. After playing some web-based escape rooms designed by other companies, we decided to have a non-moderated, fully virtual experience. We combined that with some of our observations at the start of the pandemic, namely the digital divide which was shutting people out of had become vital communication – the internet. In conjunction, we saw the surge of economic power that telecommunication companies were experiencing while other industries and individuals were loosing everything.
We decided to create a future fiction, of taking the power of telecommunication companies as far as we could go. We speculated a future where digital time – time spent online- became the new currency, and used our alternate reality game as a mechanism to invite our audience to explore this world.
Using a transmedia approach, we conceptually developed and then created the first chapter of the game, and released it for feedback purposes.
Overview of Miro Board
We used research, user journeys, and wireframes on Miro to co-create this game, with individuals in charge of managing specific components to bring the game to life.
The game is deeply referential, with every component carefully considered with symbolism, aesthetics, and easter eggs speaking to our contemporary lives to further emphasize that the roots of the future world are very much visible in the world we live in today.
Design guides developed for the game, leveraging modern art deco and vaporwave
Project Outcome
The final game is something that we remain proud of, as we work to publicize it to gain more players. We are also developing the second chapter of the game, which will examine blockchain and cryptocurrency in the context of the new world. It will also employ a “choose-your-own-adventure” component, where a choice made by the players at the end of Chapter 1 will influence the story they experience in Chapter 2.
While the game is behind a paywall, you can explore the Bancroft Industries corporate site.