For 10 months the BBC worked with outside contractors Preloaded, creator of the various mini-games and puzzles in the game, and Creative Virtual, a specialist in artificial intelligence on-line chat robot technology, to create the game, at a cost of more than £250,000 [REF].
On 2005-05-11 the BBC publicly announced that it was calling for beta testers, a move that some alternate reality game commentators considered to be unusually straightforward and open for the world of alternate reality gaming [REF].