WINNERS 2003 – SUCCESS STORIES »Winning at the WSA was a fantastic honour«
TimeHunt A product from Slovakia, TimeHunt is a challenging and educating game, a »mind-expanding tool«, as the producers say – an online treasure hunt related to the topics of time, science and Renaissance thought. The website contains an extensive collection of articles, interactive games, puzzles, riddles, brain teasers, time travels, space explorations and other features to inform, entertain and share ideas on and insights into scientific, historical, computing, mathematical and literary studies. TimeHunt was completed in 2002, after two years of development and a year and a half of pre-production and fundraising. The project was developed with the assistance of the MEDIA programme of the European Commission, as a co-production between Wellspring Interactive Ltd in the UK and Studio 727 SRO in the Slovak Republic. »Winning at the WSA was a fantastic honour«, say the producers of the hunt that no player so far has managed to complete, »and naturally it made an enormous difference to the success of the project. This was especially true for the Studio 727 team, whose commercial success is going from strength to strength now, having had a publicity boost and industry recognition.« Unfortunately, the people behind TimeHunt add, all this success has not helped TimeHunt itself to gain more funding. They would like to further
work on the game, adding more articles and features, but this is currently not possible due to a lack of funding. The project is however still being used and enjoyed by players online, and as it is a puzzle, the main excitement for players is to make progress. There are still fan websites where they discuss and share their experiences of the game. As the hunt is presented in English, »most of our players are from English-speaking countries – mainly the US. But a brief glance at Google will reveal TimeHunt-related websites and blogs in many other languages, too.« TimeHunt is a great example of how a whole community of people has evolved around a website: »What struck us most regarding our players was their spirit of co-operation, both in the solving of the hunt and in the general support they gave to each other, day in day out, for months, indeed for years. One story in particular comes to mind. A player posted a distress message, as she wasn’t able to get her computer to work properly. She got many players online to respond with suggestions as to how to solve her problem. But she still couldn’t get it to work. One player suggested she comes to his northern US city, so they can try to sort out the problem together. She replied that she can’t, as she is severely disabled and lives in the south of the US. The player who offered help then got in his own car, travelled south and the problem was fixed!«
e-Entertainment | WSA 05 | 43