Sleep Tight

ARGNet: Operation Sleeper Cell explains how in 2007 a competition was announced, Let's Change the Game, to encourage the designers of alternate reality games to "design a game to beat cancer." Organizers promised a range of resources, which included access to direct marketing, television ads, shops working with Cancer Research UK, live events -- such as fundraising athletic races, and a dedicated island on Second Life. Now the winner has been announced, and it looks like a team from Law 37 has taken the prize for two websites: Operation Sleeper Cell and We Are Not the Agency, which plays upon certain stereotypes about government websites for covert agencies and skewers current post-Cold War clash-of-civilizations rhetoric.

Welcome to the Agency’s site. Or rather, a site that doesn’t belong to the Agency in any shape or form. If you think we actually are the Agency and just in deep cover, then we’re afraid you’re very much mistaken. Anyway, our favourite biscuit of the week and the current E.V.I.L threat level is below, plus some of the loveliest things in the world today. Take a look around for some more Very Interesting Things. That of course are not really related to the Agency, even if they say they are.

Of course, it's not the only game about cancer. Young sufferers of the disease can play Re-Mission, which is staged as an "epic battle" that "rages deep in the realms of the human body." The metaphors of Sleeper Cell are much more about secrecy, conspiracy, and stealth warfare than the open combat imagined by the shooter game for patients.

Thanks to Marc Van Gurp of Osocio for the link.