Mssv

I’m Adrian Hon, and mssv.net is my weblog. mssv stands for ‘massive’, as in ‘massively multiplayer online entertainment’ and I’d originally intended to focus on that subject. While I still do make posts on that subject, I realised that there were plenty of other things I wanted to talk about besides what is essentially my work.

I’m currently the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Six to Start. We specialise in creating new forms of cross-media entertainment – you can call them alternate reality games (ARGs) if you like, although I don’t think that term is particularly useful any more.

Previoiusly, I was the Executive Producer and Director of Play at Mind Candy from 2004 to 2007, where I designed and produced Perplex City. My interest in ARGs began with the genre itself in 2001, when I was a moderator for the Cloudmakers community that was following ‘The Beast’, an ARG that promoted Steven Spielberg’s movie A.I. I also wrote a very long and detailed walkthrough for the game, called ‘The Guide‘.

Before, and in parallel to, all of this, I studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, specialising in experimental psychology and neuroscience. In 2003, I began a neuroscience DPhil at Oxford, but obviously left after a year to join Mind Candy. I still retain a healthy interest in neuroscience and a couple of years ago I contributed a chapter to Mind Hacks, a neuroscience book published by O’Reilly.

Contacting me

The best way to contact me is through email. Don’t forget to remove the ‘removethis’ bit.

Projects

Some of the projects that I’ve been involved in or have created, in rough reverse chronological order, include:

Let’s Change the Game (2007)
Competition for teams around to world to design an game that will raise money for Cancer Research UK.

After Our Time (2007)
Weblog, wiki and forum about Radio 4’s In Our Time panel discussion programme.

Perplex City (2005)
First ever self-funding ARG, with a £100,000 prize and hundreds of thousands of players. Also the longest-running ARG.

MetaFilter Wiki (2003)
The unofficial wiki for the MetaFilter community weblog.

Two Weeks on Mars (2002)
Weblog of my time at the Mars Society Desert Research Station.

First Words (2002)
What do you think the First Words on Mars should, or will be?

Mars maps (2001)
First full colour poster-size map of Mars, custom designed, to be sold worldwide. No longer for sale.

New Mars (2001)
Editor and administrator of New Mars, the Mars Society’s official online magazine and forum.

Cloudmakers (2001)
Online community for the Microsoft/Dreamworks SKG AI webgame.

Vavatch Orbital
Collection of my older personal websites including essays, art and photos. Only the photos are up to date.

Astrobiology: The Living Universe (2000)
NASA award-winning educational website about astrobiology.

There’s some more information about me at my main personal website, www.vavatch.co.uk. You can also see the archives for my previous weblog which date back to the beginning of 2000.

Photos

See my Flickr gallery.