FROM URU TO OUR VIEW (GAMING THE SYSTEM, PART IV)

In the game project known as The Mysterious Journey, the game really begins with the, well, journey you first have to take, to play it. Buried deep inside a mountain is a series of challenges that you and your team must conquer, to win. But to even reach those, you have to teleport yourself to the pleateau above you, and from there, ride an elevator down into the tranquil caverns that house the first game, a ring-moving challenge that demands furious eye-hand skills, and not a little spacial logic.

As it turns out, the richly-detailed world that you have to travel through to even play The Mysterious Journey has something to do with the development teams' unique background.

"Many of the people working on the project were refugees from Uru Live, an online game which folded shortly before I joined Second Life," team leader Caliandris Pendragon tells me. "We hoped to find a place to rediscover the community we enjoyed in Uru."

So while the Mysterious Journey team counted only three official members, other exiles from Uru Live stepped in, to contribute. "Strife [Onizuka] built the amazing mountain for less than two hundred [building block] prims," Pendragon begins, "Astary suprvised the garden design through several incarnations; Cierrah Blair and Namssor Daguerre built the meeting place together." The list continues: "Moleculor Satyr was responsible for the scripting of the game hub and marbles which are used as in-game rewards and in the final endgame... the lion's share of the [design] work was done by Ratt Foo, who worked tirelessly to get many of the games online. Kami Kim tested and provided uploads and the beautiful music playing in the garden is hers. Jim Wheeling provided endless support and worked on games and lifts. Homey Khan and Dave Ramos worked on the game rooms."

And if the journey to the games is just as important as the games themselves, so, too, is the cohesion that came with having a group project to work on. "Part of the purpose in producing a game was to provide a focus for the people who had arrived from Another Place," Pendragon says. So the Mysterious Journey team came together in this new world, to build a kind of tribute to the old world they left behind.