Sean Stewart on The Beast, the submersive scavenger hunt real life puzzle game experience creature written and built in secret by Sean and his team at Microsoft to promote the movie A.I. in 2001.

There was no time for careful on the Beast. Good, yes. I still tried really hard for good, I wrote and rewrote and re rewrote until I was happy with what I was doing. But careful went out the window.

As a writer, I have always had an unruly talent for pastiche. Frankly, it hasn't served me all that well in novels. Novels require unity and a consistent narrative voice. My urge to jump around from style to style, and character to character, without paying enough attention to the transitions, was something I tried to fight against.

But the Game! What a gift. I didn't have to put in the connective tissue. It was better if I didn't--because the audience would do the dot-connecting for me.

Sadly, cloudmakers.org and all subdomains—pretty much all of the game's material with analysis built by players and fans—appears to have been taken down by their ISP.