Debra Goldman's Consumer Republic

If the miserable state of the Nasdaq isn't enough to convince us that the glory days of the Web-and browser-based Internet are past, a new "computer" game from Electronic Arts—Majestic—might do it.Named for (what else?) the alleged government ring that covered up UFOs at Roswell, N.M., Majestic is an online PC mystery game that promises to jump off the PC and into the telecosm, the full range of digital connectivity. In eight real-time episodes lasting about two weeks each, players will be drawn into a vast conspiracy through e-mail, instant messaging, phone calls, faxes and any other communication channels the player brings to the table.Receive an instant message promising a vital phone call tomorrow—and the phone will ring. Tell Majestic about your wife and, thanks to the game's "experience server," a fax will come over the wire threatening her by name. The more players the game interacts with, the more real it feels. EA promotes it as "the game that plays you."Needless to say, EA's lawyers made sure Majestic is strictly an "opt-in" game. As they go along, players can make "reality adjustments," limiting the ways they are contacted or receiving alerts that a life-threatening phone call is just part of the game. Clearly, for those who want their $9.99-a-month's worth of paranoia, full anonymous access, combined with full disclosure, is the only way to go. After all, the player's life provides the environment, and as in any virtual world, the richer the environment, the better the game. One can only marvel at the depth and abundance of the personal info Majestic might gather. Of course, Electronic Arts swears the information gathered is for the game alone and will never be sold.Who buys it? It's not the kind of line you'd expect a conspiracy devotee to swallow. But judging from the message board at EA.com, which has been signing up Majestic customers since early in the year, conspiracy theorists are a pretty gullible bunch. No sooner had some wannabe paranoids e-mailed their registrations to Majestic than they began combing their spam for clues and scrutinizing telephone solicitations for evidence of being followed. And the game doesn't begin until May.Of course, anyone who is really paranoid would never play Majestic. To a true conspiracy theorist, this game is a plot, but it has nothing to do with aliens or Roswell. Rather, it is a Trojan horse bearing legions of marketers that dream of a world that works like this life-invading game. For them, Majestic provides an up-to-the-second model for marketing communications. Its customers give it permission to intrude on their lives—indeed, they pay for the privilege. They are accessible at every point they connect with the digital network. And they willingly cough up lots of information about themselves, which gets poured back into a communication that becomes ever more personal. This is a customer relationship which many a marketer aspires to manage; just substitute coupons for death threats and personalized sales promotions for clues.Should Majestic become a hit, it will be seized upon as evidence that people will overcome their resentment of intrusion, their dread of surveillance and their fear of losing control—if the benefit is sufficiently appealing. That, of course, is the rub. Let us into your lives, marketers tell consumers, and we'll provide you with information, products and services so timely, useful, empowering and personalized, you'll gladly give up your privacy to get them. (And, by the way, if you don't, we'll just barge in on you anyway.) But in order for the brave new world of telecosm marketing to come to fruition, they have to deliver.Majestic, too, will have to live up to its pledge of paranoia-inducing thrills. But at least it doesn't deny that being digitally stalked by strangers is creepy. It capitalizes on it. And isn't that what fantasy games and fairy tales are for—to neutralize our deepest fears by turning them into entertainment? Speaking of conspiracies, a strange thing happened to me while I was writing this column. My fax machine rang, only to spit out a sales promotion. Talk about being weirded out. Was someone peering into my hard drive?Then I took a closer look. It was just another inept intrusion: an offer of a free cell phone with the purchase of a telephone system. Here was the true reality of multiplatform marketing. I immediately called the number to remove myself from the fax list. Game over.

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Debra Goldman's Consumer Republic

Debra Goldman

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Debra Goldman