Majestic

About the game:

Majestic was one of the first Alternate Reality Games, with the plot revolved around UFO conspiracy theory. The game was inspired by by David Fincher's film "The Game" (1997), Area 51 and Roswell incident, 1947. The story of the game was that the player is one of workers of Anim-X — a small company that investigates the activity of "Majestic 12" group. "Majestic 12" is the government program that was created by US President Harry S. Truman shortly after the events of Roswell incident in 1947, to research the aliens activity. By the time of the game's beginning, "Majestic 12" become a powerful organization that operates as a shadow government of United States.

To play the game, the players should use the telephone, fax and e-mails, and visit the different websites over the Internet. As soon as players started the game, they would receive a message that Anim-X company company's headquarters has been taken down in an attack. From then on the players would be drawn into helping the Anim-X employees, who were apparently in hiding after realizing that their game had come too close to the truth about a government conspiracy involving mind control technology. Soon players would find themselves cooperatively solving puzzles online to help the fugitive developers, while receiving threatening phone messages from shadowy forces.

Of course there was no Anim-X company in real life, the game was created and hosted by Electronic Arts. The game required special websites and a number of services that EA froze after the 9/11 attacks because of the game's storyline, and finally canceled it on April 30, 2002, citing a lack of subscribers, just before a second season of another five episodes was set to begin.

You can learn more about the game by watching this video, or read the full story of the project on The Obscuritory