History of Biology

Notes

“History of Biology” was an educational flash game released by Spongelab.com back in 2010. The story is that a prominent scientist, Walden Shyre, has gone missing. The player character is a newly-hired lab assistant. Upon arrival, the player receives clues via E-mails from Shyre to complete educational missions. With every mission completed, the player gets closer to unlocking an encrypted server containing the research that Walden Shyre was working on before he disappeared.Some of the challenges are internal to the game, but others lead to an internet scavenger hunt on external sites.As they work through the missions, they are approached by Dr. Jordan Greenwood, a trusted friend of Walden Shyre, who works alongside them. They are also approached by Jack Champey, who runs the company Universal Dynamic, and wants to buy the research. In the end, the player makes a choice of what to do with the research information, resulting in one of three endings.Note: all known cutscenes (intro, chapter 0, and all three endings) have been recovered. All of them feature official closed captioning available via the “CC” button for hearing-impaired users.As of this curation, the game cannot be played live. One reason is due to the death of Adobe Flash. Other reasons come down to the game relying on a server_side connection point, known as “flash_gateway”, which has been taken down. Additionally, the swfs for the 15 missions themselves (#0-#14) (i.e. missions/mission0.swf) appear to have been taken down. However, much of the other content is still able to be retrieved. The original game required the user to login to Spongelab.com to access the game.The main curation consists of a version of the game which has been hacked to remove the login requirement. The hack invovled enabling a special “offline mode” that the developers used for debugging, but left in the final release. The player is able to view the introductory cutscene featuring the title card. This cutscene discusses Walden Shyre’s disappearance. After that, the second cutscene plays, in which the player character arrives in Walden Shyre’s office and reaches their new desk. This goes into the first interactive segment, where the user needs to use clues from a manila envelope to unlock a tablet computer.However, this is as far as the player can currently go while playing the game normally. The clues do not work properly, showing up as “undefined”. Additionally, while the code entry screen has been hacked to take “12345” as well as whatever randomized code the game generated, the game is unable to advance beyond this point. Other SWFs and XMLs related to the tablet computer are included in this curation (i.e. map.swf, map.xml, email.swf, email.xml, interface.swf, interface.xml, notes.swf, notes.xml, missionGame,.swf, missionGame.xml, objects.swf, objects,xml, options.swf, options.xml, tools.swf. and tools.xml). They can be viewed individually via html files that are not part of the games original codebase. Therefore, it may be possible in the future to further hack the intro to be able to use the tablet computer. Even then, the individual “mission” SWFs remain lost, so it is unclear how much further the game can go.However, the user can still experience more of the game through alternate means. The “additional applications” section includes teacher guides for all missions #0-#14. These are the official text walkthroughs for the game. Supposedly, official video walkthroughs were available at some point, but those have yet to surface. These contain the full text from the E-mail messages from Dr. Walden Shyre and Dr. Jordan Greenwood that would have introduced and concluded the missions.Additionally, some of the fake websites hosted inside Spongelab.com, as well as the real webpages that players would be routed to outside Spongelab.com, have been preserved.One fake website showcases the in-universe university “Abrahama Martin University. This once include content for Mission #3, #4, #5, and #6. However, only Lab #1 from Mission #5 has been preserved. Lab #2A, Lab #2B, Quiz #1, and Quiz #2 remain missing.Another fake website showcases the Reginald National Art (RNA) Gallery, which included content for Mission #3, #5, and #6. All of the paintings are viewable, though one contains a dead link to Quiz #1, which was part of Mission #3.Another fake website showcases a blog reported by 19th century monk and genetics pioneer Gregor Mendel. This page was part of Mission #8. However, the current recovered version is entriely in Latin. There was an English version, but it was not archived.One last fake website is an eBay spoof called Biobidder, which contained content for Mission #10. While the main page has been preserved, there was once an additional page that could be reached by determining Walden Shyre’s login information. That page is currently lost.One real website comes from the National Library of Medicine, which once had a flash-based virtual copy of the book Micrographia, written by Robert Hooke and published in 1665. Some content, such as page text, supplementary notes, and audio are missing. However, most of the content was recovered via Internet Archive. This was used as part of Mission #2.Another real website comes from boldsystems.com. They are a real website for keeping data on the DNA barcodes and taxonomy of various species. However, they hosted a page containing research purported by the character of Walden Shyre, though they make it clear that this is part of the game and separate from their legitimate research data. This was part of Mission #13.One other additional application is the original pre-loader and frame used to hold the game. However, the game will not currently load inside this area, as it checks that the user is logged in and able to reach the “flash_gateway”. Still, it may be possible to load the game with its original frame and preloader with future SWF hacking.One more additional application is the game’s official help page, “Walden Shyre’s Help Server”, which contains hints for the students playing the game.The last part to discuss is the game’s ending. As documented in the teacher notes, there are three endings to the game. After solving all of the missions, the player has the key to half of Walden Shyre’s research, which was stored on the encrypted server. Following an E-mail from Walden Shyre himself, they receive the other half of the data. By Walden Shyre’s own admission, they are the only one with the full research, as Shyre himself could not unlock the data on the encrypted server. The full research reveals a way to create synthetic life, which is an amazing discovery that could change the world. As an example, it is revealed that the tablet the player uses throughout the game contains a battery made from a new bacterium that will continue to generate electricity for years.The player is them given a choice on what to do with the data.Ending #1: Dr. Walden Shyre wants the player to upload the data to the Internet and give it to the whole world. Then everyone can use it, whether for good or bad.Ending #2: Dr. Jordan Greenwood claims that the research is too dangerous for the world. She claims that if the player sends her the data, she will make sure that it is destroyed and can never get out.Ending #3: Jack Champey, owner of the company Universal Dynamic, wants the player to sell the research for 50 million in an unpecified currency.All three endings feature a cutscene of the player looking through a scrapbook while Dr. Walden Shyre is giving an interview on television in the background. The dialogue from the interview is the same regardless of the ending choice, which is confusing. However, according to the file interface.xml, this is the correct configuration. Shyre reports that he encrypted half of his work on a server and used to scavenger hunt to find someone worthy to unlock it. He then went into hiding to prevent people from stealing hiswork while he completed the second half. Now that the full work has been released to the world, he has come out of hiding to discuss the ramifications.The difference in the ending cutscenes is in what is in the player’s scrapbook, as they have collected newspaper clippings describing what happened after they made their choice.In the first ending, some newspapers are skeptical of whether the world is ready for synthetic life. Others praise the player and Walden Shyre for bringing the discovery to the world. As the player released all of the information freely, another paper reports that the whole world may have access to clean, renewable energy.The second ending is confusing. Dr. Jordan Greenwood has apparently published the research, and then publicly condemns work on synthetic life. She is also under investigation for academic misconduct, though it is unclear if this was due to efforts to suppress Shyre’s work, or if she attempted to publish it as her own work. One of the newspapers mentions competition among scientists, and the need to ask whether we “should” do something versus whether we “could” do something.The third ending follows the player selling Shyre’s research, and possibly the bacteria powered tablet computer, to Universal Dynamic Inc for 50 million in unspecified currency. Universal Dynamic announces that they will be constructing a research facility for synthetic life. One clipping reports that Dr. Walden Shyre is cautioning the use of his work for corporate motives.While the game cannot be completed legitimately, the three ending cutscenes are playable in hacked versions of the SWF that played the intro cutscenes. They are made available in three items under “Additional Applications”.Note: Some assets in this curation are shared between “History of Biology” and another Spongelab.com game, “Genomics Digital Lab”. It is also possible that during the curation process, some assets only used by the latter game were grabbed.Note: The extras folder contains the original trailer for the game in mov format.