I have had about a dozen peo­ple approach me through chat, email, and Unfic­tion pri­vate mes­sage.  All of these con­tacts have started out with “I have a cou­ple of really good ideas for puz­zle cards, how did you sub­mit your ideas to Mind Candy?”

In an effort to not repeat myself so much, here is a sum­mary that I can point peo­ple toward.  Back in the day when Per­plex City was not even called Per­plex City, but Project Syzygy (more info) and was more of an adver­tise­ment for an unnamed upcom­ing ARG rather than an ARG itself, they put out a call for puz­zle design­ers.  I was not one of them.  Nope, I didn’t apply.  That was in 2004.

In 2005, ARGfest rolled around.  Because of prior com­mit­ments and finan­cial rea­sons, I was not able to attend.  Rose did an excel­lent job of not only arrang­ing activ­i­ties, but also arrang­ing dec­o­ra­tions in the stark con­fer­ence room in which talks were hosted.  Some of those dec­o­ra­tions were posters pay­ing homage to ARGs of the past and present.  Because I could not attend, I thought I would try to be there in spirit by vol­un­teer­ing to craft a poster for Per­plex City.  The one I made looked sus­pi­ciously like a puz­zle card.

After ARGfest, both Michael and Adrian con­tacted me through email to thank me for the poster.  Fur­ther con­ver­sa­tion hap­pened and I even­tu­ally found myself as a free­lancer, design­ing a cou­ple of cards.  The rest, I guess, is his­tory.  I am told that Rose pack­aged up the poster and shipped it to Mind Candy and it is hang­ing on the walls there.  (Good thing they didn’t notice the hid­den micro­phone spy­ing on all of their top secret con­ver­sa­tions!  Muha­ha­ha­haha!)

So that is how it worked out for me.  Obvi­ously, if you have a puz­zle card idea you won’t be able to use this as a how-to.  At the time of writ­ing, they have a job open­ing for what appears to be a full-time puz­zle designer.  As for a sin­gle card or two in a free­lance capac­ity, you might be able to con­tact Mind Candy and/or Adrian to inquire about that sort of thing.  I won’t be pass­ing along the email addresses of Mind Candy peo­ple with­out prior con­sent, but if you’re a good ARGer, you can prob­a­bly locate all sorts of email addresses with­out my help.

Also: Port­land Per­plex City Play­ers:
It looks like Rainy Day Games will be hold­ing card swaps on May 13 and June 3.  Be there or be… square… cubi­cal… err… something.

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Tagged as: cards, perplexcity, puzzlecards, puzzles