The Beribboned Door - Part One

Over two decades ago stories of a strange game began circulating on BBS boards and within local gaming communities. The game was called The Beribboned Door. To this day, the mysterious circumstances surrounding its development, play, and disappearance have led to more speculation than almost any other pop culture phenomenon. Some believe it to be the first ARG, some claim it was a social experiment, some believe it was an elaborate act of counter-cultural terrorism. There are even those who believe it was simply an attempt at alternative marketing for a game that never saw widespread release. Despite the stir it created at the time, The Beribboned Door was quickly swallowed by the deluge of gaming information brought about by widespread internet access. However, there is still one place where people talk about The Beribboned Door.

In the dusty recesses of ghost town IRC channels and withered forums in forgotten corners of the hobby, early gamers still gather to talk about the game. One can imagine them, once young and enthusiastic, now dinosaurs of a technological era almost entirely alien to the modern internet. These are the men and women who remember The Beribboned Door. And yet, when I get in contact, none will speak to me. They brush me, and my questions, off. One of them, a regular poster named D'mon61 explains:

“Every couple of months we get someone new roll in here asking about it. We’ve had every conversation there is to have about TBD. It's one of those mytseries [sic] that isn't getting solved unless some new info comes to light.”

I hang around, not so easily perturbed. Eventually, they indulge me a little. They act prickly, but I get the impression they want to tell their stories to someone who has never heard them before. There is something lovable about these internet curmudgeons, but you can sense the frustration in the way they write. They don't believe I'll solve the mystery, but they want me to. More accurately, they want me to find some new piece of evidence that allows them to solve it. Much of the information below comes from them, some are stories of their own, most are stories of others they have collated over time.

Like all great mysteries, everyone remembers it differently. Depending on who you ask, The Beribboned Door first made an appearance anywhere from 1987 to 1992. Its first appearance might have been in California, Seattle, London, or Paris. The nature of the game made it extremely ripe for rumour, and early BBS forums and local gaming communities were electric with legends surrounding it. This was not an area of conspiracy that arose retrospectively, the game was shrouded in mystery from the start.

It was not until June of 1993 that the stories gained a widespread audience, when a mainstream gaming magazine mentioned The Beribboned Door by name in an article about the proliferation of faked identification at the European Computer Trade Show.

The European Computer Trade Show was a popular convention, a sort of precursor to E3, targeted towards industry professionals. However, by 1992, the show had gained a reputation as a place where eager amateurs could fake their way into the very inner circle of what was, at the time, cutting edge development. American gamers would travel internationally in an attempt to rub shoulders with the game development elite.

“Despite frequent protests from organisers, who maintain that the show is private and only those with approved identification will be admitted, it has come to the point where the exhibitors themselves are aiming content at trespassers. If you can fake your way through in September (and please let us know how, because we've not been invited!) there will be plenty of entertainment available including...and the The Beribboned Door pyramid.”

Ambiguous advertisements making huge use of negative space often appeared in gamer magazines the month before large conventions.

So, what was The Beribboned Door, and why did it stand out from all the other games of the time?

The Beribboned Door was unique in the very truest sense of the word – there was only one version of the game. The Beribboned Door appeared at conventions and trade shows inside a dark glass pyramid. It was not unusual for companies to use gimmicks to lure people over, and compared to the flirtatious models and complex simulators used by other booths, the pyramid was rather pitiful.

However, what it lacked in glamour, it made up for in mystery. The outside of the pyramid was decorated with astrological symbols. The inside was dark, illuminated only by the computer screen. There was a chair, a black desk (in which the computer was encased), and a keyboard. The thing which gathered most attention was not the pyramid itself, but the security guards surrounding it.

In some versions of the story, these guards are suited secret service agents, but the IRC channel guys deny this. SimplePie tells me:

“They were just rent-a-cops. They were pretty bemused by the whole thing. This was back in '91 or so. Most of them had never seen real nerds before. Certainly not hundreds of us. They were there to stop anyone from breaking into the game via brute force. All the stories from the very beginning, before the game even got really popular, feature the security guards. It's as if they knew.”

D'mon61 adds: “Not that it helped anything.”

In addition to the security, there were usually three or four individuals working the booth. Though the roster changed from event to event, there are reports of several distinct characters appearing at different times. None of them ever wore name-tags or cards identifying them as exhibitors at the show. Of this group, at least three people were confirmed to be at multiple events.

The Fat Man – an obese Caucasian male with an English accent whose behaviour was almost nerd cliché. He stammered and stuttered, he quoted Monty Python sketches, he laughed incredibly loudly. Several people believed his behaviour so over the top, so caricature, that they accused him of 'playing a character'.

The Quiet Man – a taller, slimmer man who wore a plain black suit at each event he was spotted at. He was the most commonly sighted and was said to be at every show in which The Beribboned Door made an appearance. He rarely spoke to players, and seemed to be monitoring the game. He would usually stand inside the pyramid with the player as they played.

The Hat Lady – an attractive woman who wore a floppy sunhat and carried an umbrella with her. She was only confirmed to be at 3 shows with The Beribboned Door, though one person claims she was at another under a different persona.

Players would form a queue at the booth, waiting to be admitted inside the pyramid. They had to provide their tickets for the show, as well as valid personal ID. On providing both, the player was issued with a unique 'password'. They were allowed in, one at a time, and the game would not begin until the player was seated before the desk, and the doors were closed. The glass was entirely opaque, and nobody was able to see inside or out.

The game varied greatly from player to player and once they had finished playing, one of the people working the booth would ask them to describe the game in a single word. Different players described it as 'complicated', 'brilliant', 'kafkaesque', 'frustrating', 'art', 'surreal', 'pointless', 'deranged', 'future', 'upsetting' and 'bizarre'.

“I said shit” D'mon61 tells me. “I thought I was being really clever at the time because I was pissed off at the way the game had gone for me. Now I worry I'm part of the reason it vanished.”

However the game eventually progressed, each play through started the same way. A black screen. Green writing. The name - “The Beribboned Door”. Pressing a key would bring up a new screen – green writing on a black background. The guys on the forums and IRC channel know the following verbatim.

“An instant. The smallest possible unit of time. A blip in the infinite. A single grain of sand in the hourglass. A cosmic blink. Please enter your password...”