Majestic was hyped by the press as being like the film The Game. It really isn't like that at all. The game in the movie was far more involved and dangerous. Majestic didn't scare me at all. But Majestic does manage to blur the lines between fiction and reality.

Months after hearing about it, the demo was finally released. It began with a tutorial that shows you how to use functions of the game. This was annoying on a dial-up connection because it consisted of a lot of video. It was very basic information that could have just been posted as text and images and should have been optional. After this long tutorial I decided to call it a night. The next morning along with my usual spam and film discussion list messages there was an e-mail from Electronic Arts. It said that there was a fire at the studio that produced the game, Anim-X, and the game was being postponed indefinitely. I was disappointed, I had waited months to play the game and now it was being delayed.

After I received the e-mail I tried going to the Majestic Web site to see if they had any information on when the game would resume. There was a "server down" message and that included a link to the Anim-X server. If the server was really down, why did it display a custom message with the URL of the Anim-X Web site? Furthermore, if the Anim-X offices burned down, why was the Anim-X site still up but the Electronic Arts site down? Not even the whole electronic arts site, just the Majestic part. This unrealistic detail made it obvious that I was playing a game. What was initially a convincing hoax turned out to be lame and distracting.

Sometime after that I received a phone call. It was a pre-recorded message from a not-so sinister sounding man telling me that the Anim-X office was burned down due to arson. Soon after that I started receiving messages from "chat bots" on AOL Instant Messenger. I understand that it would've been very expensive to hire actors to do all the calls and chatting, but the interaction between the player and the characters was very limited. On the bright side, I could interact with other players. The game automatically assigns players into groups that can chat and compare notes. I could also add friends to my list of contacts that weren't assigned to my group. But most online games let you interact with other players, so this wasn't revolutionary.

What Majestic really has going for it is its subject matter. The demo dealt with real conspiracy theories such as the Majestic 12, MK-Ultra (which is actually conspiracy fact), and MEMs mind control. I couldn't help but get caught up in digging for clues and trying to figure out what to do next.