and media scavenger hunts Internet scavenger hunts invite participants to visit different websites to find clues and solve puzzles, sometimes for a prize. Participants can win prizes for correctly solving puzzles to win treasure hunts. The first internet hunt was developed in 1992 by Rick Gates to encourage people to explore the resources available online. Several feature films and television series have used online scavenger hunts as viral marketing, including The Da Vinci Code and the Sci-Fi Channel's series The Lost Room. Actor Misha Collins currently holds the Guinness World Record for organizing GISHWHES, the world's largest media scavenger hunt which included 14,580 participants in 972 teams from 90 countries as participants. A 2012 hunt organized by eBay had prizes totaling $200,000. Many online hunts are subject to internet gaming laws that vary between jurisdictions. You can also play scavenger hunts with multiple people. Simulated treasure hunting might also be considered a minor video game genre; for example Colossal Cave Adventure, Zork and Pimania involve treasure hunts. With the explosion of mobile apps, there has also been an explosion of how Scavenger Hunts can be used within an app. Beyond the typical find and return method of a scavenger hunt, apps now allow for participants to snap photos, take videos, answer questions, GPS check-ins, scan QR codes and more directly in an app. Vastly expanding the concept of what a scavenger hunt can consist of. Some companies, such as thesecret.city, have started to run scavenger hunts through popular messaging apps, like WhatsApp and Telegram. On top of this, a new genre of game (Alternate Reality Games or ARGs for short) has popularized a real-life/internet hybrid form of scavenger hunts. In these, users all over the world collaborate to solve puzzles based both on websites and in real world locations. The games unfold in real time and can run for multiple weeks or even months. References Outdoor locating games