The Lost Experience is an Alternate Reality Game based on the TV show Lost, which ran in 2006 (between seasons 2 and 3 of the show). The game centered around the Hanso Foundation, a supposedly philanthropic organization which provided the funding for the DHARMA Initiative, and a group of people seeking to uncover the sinister truth behind the foundation's activities. The ARG added to the show's mythology by giving more details of the origins and purpose of the DHARMA Initiative, as well as the (well, a) meaning of the Numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) that reappear throughout Lost.
Primarily presented through websites, elements of the ARG also appeared in magazine ads, real life events, as well as the tie-in book Bad Twin.
A behind-the-scenes video is here.
Later Lost ARGs were the much less complicated, but much flashier, Find 815, and then a DHARMA story that got cancelled after stage one due to the economic recession. Lost University isn't strictly an ARG, as it doesn't pretend to be a "real" story, but it still is essentially the latest and presumably last of the series.
This ARG includes examples of:
- Conspiracy Theorist: DJ Dan, host of a conspiracy podcast who frequently discusses the Hanso Foundation.
- Entry Point: The initial entry point is a TV commercial that aired during Lost, advertising the Hanso Foundation and giving the phone number. Calling led to the first few clues.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: While most of DJ Dan's broadcasts were prerecorded with fictional callers, there were a couple of live events where real people were able to call in.
- Organ Theft: One subplot involved the Hanso Foundation selling organs.
- Phone-Trace Race: Spoofed when DJ Dan gets a call that turns out to be from Rachel Blake (using her hacker alias, Persephone). He tells his cohost Tanya to trace the call and she says "Trace it? With my pencil?"
- Phony Degree: Early on, it's revealed that "Dr." Thomas Mittelwerk, who has taken over the Hanso Foundation, never actually obtained a degree anywhere.
- Plot Coupon: There were a couple instances in which players had to collectively gather a number of Plot Coupons in order to progress the story, such as the "glyphs" which revealed segments of the Sri Lanka video, and later the Apollo candy bars.
- Product Placement: Jeep, Sprite, Monster.com, and Verizon sponsored the game. Each company ran a subplot that, in one way or another, tied the company into the story. Occasionally game clues would make their way into the companies' other advertising.
- Recursive Canon: Within the story of The Lost Experience, the series Lost is presented as fiction inspired by "real" events and organizations- going so far as to have Rachel Blake crash a Comic Con panel featuring the show's cast and writers.
- Synthetic Plague: Thomas Mittelwerk's plan is to use a genetically engineered virus to, it's implied, kill 30% of humanity, in order to create a radical enough change to alter the Numbers and delay human extinction.
- Talk Show Appearance: Hugh McIntyre, the Hanso Foundation's communications director, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to discuss the Foundation and its relationship with Lost.
- We Care: The Hanso Foundation's ads portray it as a philanthropic organization working to better humanity, while behind the scenes they are actually involved in numerous illegal and immoral activities.
