The Directorate: Spy on Spy, ARG Action

Lets be honest - the younger, cooler Sean Connery Bond would have Walther PPK'ed you in the face - twice - to get his hands on that device you modestly refer to as a "smart phone." It has so much brilliantly awesome spy potential that even Timothy Dalton with his absurd chin would have killed for it.

But alas, without a mission to accept, most of us are left tweeting about how lame Burning Man was or taking another go at those snarky green pigs...
Until now.



The Directorate is an espionage game that takes place in real life. Combining geo-location tools and RPG style leveling and questing, The Directorate allows you to become a field agent in a real life game of espionage and intrigue. We’re bringing back all the fun of the Cold War and offering it to you at your doorstep. Your neighborhood, city – the entire world, really – becomes your gameboard as you set dead drops, proximity bombs and take out your enemies with poisoned umbrella guns.


Game Features Everybody cares about:

1. Free to play with in-app purchases.
2. Real-World GPS-enabled Gameplay
3. Real-Time Multiplayer ARG
4. Multiplatform and each form factor (phone, tablet & browser) is a different game experience.
5. Leveling, quests, guilds (called cells) and all the cool parts of a classic RPG.

Game Features to Geek Out On:

• Adaptive narrative that responds to and incorporates real-world and in-game events. Your actions actually change the story.
• Artificial Intelligence simulates enemy agents when meat shields are scarce.
• High level agents given permanent characters woven into the story fabric.

The Directorate is starting off with a Kickstarter campaign to get the ball rolling but rest assured, this concept is just too much fun to let something like "funding" get in the way. This game has a life of it's own...it WANTS to be made.

Learn more on our Website and please join us at
The Directorate Kickstarter

 

Update on The Directorate

(from today's Kickstarter update)
...
A few folks have asked some specific questions about our funding goal on this project and specifically what they’d be buying with their hard-earned cash.

Good questions – and we’re glad you asked. At first glance, The Directorate is a deceptively simple concept - a few buttons, a couple of maps, and Bob’s your uncle...but that game would stink. The Directorate is more like an open world RPG that's played IRL. To do this game right, and to make it fun for everybody there are two important concepts that are easily missed:

1. Content, Content, Content
2. Artificial Intelligence

Lets talk about content first.
Any alternate reality game (ARG) lives and dies on its ability to tell an immersive story that can earn your willing suspension of disbelief. For The Directorate setting a stage is only part of the challenge. We also need a wide variety of scenarios, quests, NPCs and plot twists that keep your attention for weeks or months on end. These details need to be meaningful, compelling, and fun of course – but they also need to be adaptive. If every player experienced the same plotline regardless of their real-world location, their time of entry, or their actions – then all we’ve done is port Zork to a GPS. That would be fun, but we’re aiming higher...MUCH higher.

AI is also a big contributor. A few people have asked what they can expect if they live outside an urban area or in a place only sparsely populated with players. Without a proper AI the answer would be “Not much – sorry.” But with an AI that can watch your moves, understand your environment, and hand you missions that are still fun and engaging no matter where you are or who's online – now that's a different matter. We’re planning a system that is smart enough to create missions and counter-missions whether there are real people in the area or not, and if we do this right you wont be able to tell the difference.

So in short – don't let the optimized UI fool you. What we have in mind is a clean, elegant game that is easy to pick up and play at any level of commitment and with a LOT of back-end horsepower making the experience immersive, compelling and adaptive to real world events...including yours.

Of course we could just make one more thin experience game where location service are nothing more than a gimmick, but that wouldn't be any fun for anybody.

And for the content folks, here’s a bit of additional background information on the game world:


From the Handbook:

Centralized Intelligence and Operations Network (CION):

As the world partitions its self in the midst of economic and political upheaval, CION strives to unite the governments and people of Western Nations against the growing threat from the Eastern Bloc. CION operates as a clandestine organization intended to combine the forces of the Western intelligence community. Your task as a CION operative is to integrate into your community as a clandestine agent and protect our way of life. To combat the new union of Eastern States, we must use every tool available to us to ensure SECTOR agents, traitors to their people, do not overcome our communities, spreading their agenda and inflammatory propaganda.

CION Agents will have the power to influence the West’s combined intelligence communities to combat SECTOR. As an agent for CION you will be tasked with ensuring information can be captured, interpreted and delivered in time for us to counter the effects of the SECTOR agents that only seek to spread discord, chaos and anarchy. Western governments were once the most powerful in the World. Now, we are in danger from the plague of chaos that has already begun to spread within our borders. The very future of our people rest in the hands of this clandestine organization, our cause must not fail; you must be prepared to stop SECTOR at all costs. C.I.O.N. Basic Information:

Headquarters: (Undisclosed, Eastern United States)

Allies: Western Intelligence Agencies, Governments of the United States, Western Europe, Western Economic and Corporate Interests

MO: Classically professional Advantages: Access to advanced technology, robust networks and systems, strong organizational infrastructure

 

Message is spreading

Hi TA,
Looks like the Direcotrate is getting a real shot fo good press in the last few days.

Mobile Geeks featured us.
Revision3 tagged it
Reddit got a post that's popular.
GameTrailers picked up the story.
And today Kickstarter also has us on their 'what's popular' list.

We've seen a big bump in traffic in the last 48 hours and stats say that a nice chunk is coming from here...so thanks much!