Lost Experience

The Lost Experience was an alternate reality game that was part of the American television drama Lost. The game was developed by ABC in the United States, Channel 4 in the UK, and Channel 7 in Australia. It was written by Jordan Rosenberg and created by the agency Hi-ReS!. The experience played out during Lost's second season in the United Kingdom and during the summer break in the United States until the launch of season 3. The Lost Experience, which was announced by the United Kingdom's Channel 4, Australia's Seven Network and the United States' ABC on April 24, 2006Damon Lindelof has verified the canonical status of The Lost Experience and the information provided therein.

ABC Entertainment's senior vice president of marketing, Mike Benson, described the game as a hybrid between content and marketing. This type of marketing was previously used by ABC for Lost's premiere in 2004. ABC created a website for the fictional Oceanic Airlines, the airline of the plane that crashed in the show's pilot episode.

The game is divided into five phases.

The first began on May 2, 2006 in the United Kingdom, May 3, 2006 in the United States and Australia, with a television commercial that aired during an episode of Lost for the fictional Hanso Foundation, a corporation mentioned on the television show. The advertisement listed a telephone number which brought up fictional voice mail lines for employees at the Hanso Foundation. Some of these messages provided clues to be used in the Hanso Foundation's website. Commercials for the Hanso Foundation in subsequent weeks directed players to other in-game websites, some of which are tied to specific sponsors, as detailed below.

Several different websites for fictional organizations or individuals mentioned on the show or in part of the Lost Experience were introduced. The websites, particularly the Hanso Foundation website, contain background information into the mythology of Lost. The character Rachel Blake (Jamie Silberhartz), also known as Persephone, is introduced to guide players through the game. Most clues on the Hanso Foundation website are revealed by clicking on faintly marked anomalies in the web page design or by entering specific codes into webpages. Some require passwords found elsewhere, such as in the voicemail service. The clue revelations are designed as minigames, though with little challenge as they are completely linear. A notable exception are the coded messages on persephone.thehansofoundation.org, involving simple encryption schemes such as ROT13 and base64.

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