What is The Game?

It’s 4am. In the past twenty hours you’ve done everything you could ever have imagined - assassinated terrorists, climbed mountains, broken the land-speed record for a mini-van, been scared out of your wits, agonized over the inadequate size of your cranium, rescued hostages, jumped for joy, and told your best friend off. Everything but sleep. You won’t get to do that for at least another 8 hours.

How did you get here? To this abandoned house on the side of a road it seems no one has driven down in years. To the back of the house where you find a long dried-up well containing a pair of fuzzy dice and three packs of matches. To the point where you decide this is just a cruel trick with no solution. (You haven’t yet discovered that the dice are rigged to roll only sevens and the match tips are colored in a pattern suspiciously similar to the carpet at the Bellagio Resort.)

How did you get here? It’s all part of The Game.

The Game - first and foremost - is a race. Players compete in teams of any size confined to a single automobile - usually a mini-van. Within that vehicle, you assemble the best team of people you can find, as much high-tech gear as you can fit, reference materials for subjects from history to ornithology, and equipment to do everything from climb mountains to scuba dive.

Best Game News Article:
Rolling Stone Magazine

Best Game Site: www.isetv.com

Best Team Site: Silver team

A day ago, your team assembled with the other teams at the starting location. (You were feeling smug that you deciphered the starting location from the pre-clues, or "bonus clues".) After a few minutes of suspicious patter with the other teams, the presentation began. You were brought up-to-date with the story of this year’s contest, introduced to the key actors, and - in dramatic fashion - given the first clue.

That seems like such a long time ago. What was it about? Baseball or Chess or the Solution to 7 Simultaneous Equations. You can’t remember now. There have been so many clues since then and each clue tested a different facet of your team’s abilities. And each one, when solved, led you to a new location.

The locations have been stunning. You’ve seen sights you’ve never seen before and some you never want to see again. You’ve been amazed, afraid, and impressed. At some, you’ve made a mental note to come back and explore when you aren’t in the middle of the most frantic experience of your life.

At most of the locations, you’ve had to do something to get the clue. These activities range from the amusing (singing karaoke to a bunch of redneck strangers) to the scary (crossing a rope suspended across two transformer stations) to the thrilling (racing powerboats across the British Columbia Sound).

But there’s no time for reminiscing now. Now, all you care about is winning. And to win, you’ve got to understand the meaning behind these dice and matches.

Most of our days roll out as anonymously as another Honda Accord at the front of the metered “one car per green” entrance to the highway. Not this one. For about as long as you can stand it, The Game forces you to be an active participant. Think, do, run, feel - the devastation of failure, the ecstasy of success, the incredible click of working together as a team. For these twenty-four hours, you are fully alive.

Welcome to the Game.