The Freelancer.com Internet Scavenger Hunt is a two week challenge comprising over one hundred cryptic tasks, uniting individuals all over the world to solve challenges, scavenge items and cause mayhem! Many of the tasks will require you to take photos, videos and submit text based answers. As such it's important to keep a smart phone with you at all times to capture your attempts. Each task a scavenger team completes earns the teams more points. And of course, the team with the most points at the end of the competition wins!
Note: Any attempt to steal points will lead to harsh penalties. The points are all locked in a titanium safe lined with Kryptonite (surprisingly expensive!) so all attempts will be futile. Either way, if you're competent enough to break into a Kryptonite lined safe you're competent enough to win this competition.
The questions cover just about everything. Yes, everything. The list of questions could wrap around the world two or three times -- maybe... We don't know, but the list of questions is pretty long. To give you an idea of what sort questions there are:
1. Create and upload logo for your team
[10 points]
2. Now create a theme song for your team. Make sure it encompasses your team ethos. Upload a music video of it to YouTube.
[30 points]
3. Race around the world! Get your team logo photographed in 3 cities that are at least 2000 kilometers apart. Make sure we can recognise a famous landmark!
[50 points]
4. ZHOFR PHWRW KHIUH HODQF HUGRW FRPLQ WHUQH WVFDY HQJHU KXQWI RUWZR WKRXV DQGDQ GWZHO YHBRX KDYHV ROYHG WKLVT XHVWL RQHDV LOBWK HVHFU HWSDV VZRUG LVURF NVAVZ
[30 points]
You don't need much at all to compete! You don't even need human beings! As a company, Freelancer.com doesn't discriminate against zombies (or "the living impaired"). All you need is a team logo and a team name. We will require you to have this displayed in all of the photo and video tasks to prove that it was your team that completed the task.
You can have as many members as you like on your team. The Scavenger Hunt is a global challenge though so it is advantageous to have people from around the world in your team. If you’re a Forever Alone type, that’s completely fine as well! I'd suggest getting a team of Forever Alones together though -- without social lives any team composed entirely of Forever Alone members would be a mighty force of scavenger justice!
Sign up on the Scavenger website using either your Freelancer or Facebook account. It's highly suggested you link your Facebook account to your Freelancer account as many features use Facebook. Once you have signed up you'll need a team; you can either create a new team or join an existing team.
To start this process, click the Log In button. That's the button on the top right. If it says Log Out you're doing it wrong. Otherwise, it's that shiny blue button. Click it! Go on. Everyone likes shiny.
The task list will be released at 5pm EST (New York) on March 9 and the hunt will close at 6pm EDT (New York) on March 25. You have between these times to complete as many tasks as possible and submit your attempts!
Our insurance does not cover temporal paradoxes. Time travel (except when explicitly allowed) is prohibited! Insurance that covers time travel is really, really difficult to acquire... We searched for a provider with full temporal coverage everywhere! All we ended up with was some shady guy in a fez who called himself a doctor... We're fairly sure he doesn't have any real qualifications though.
Complete Tasks! Each task has a set of points allocated to it for achieving certain goals. You will earn more points the more thoroughly you complete each task. Points are flexible too -- if your team go above and beyond the call of duty we're liable to nudge a few extra points your direction as well.
Imagine we asked you to take a photo of a strong man ripping apart our origami bird. I mean obviously we'd never make a task like that -- we love our origami bird too much -- but imagine if we did. If you gave us a photo of a questionable strong man (i.e. distinct lack of strong), then you're not likely to get all the points for the question. If you turned up with a photo and video of Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger ripping apart a man sized origami bird however, you'd be getting all the points available for that question.
On top of this, there are a few bonus points your team can receive that are separate to tasks. Each team earns 3 points for each team member who shares the fun through Twitter or Facebook, up to a maximum of 30 points. Additionally, for each task submitted, the team is awarded one point, up to a maximum of 30 points.
Indeed you do. Non-Photoshopped photographic or videographic proof is required to get points in the majority of the tasks your team faces. For the task involving the fire-breathing dragon (as opposed to those normal, cuddly dragons of course), it's suggested you have one team member with the sword and shield and another team member with the camera. Holding the video camera in your sword or shield hand is not suggested and may result in a free cremation.
When videos are required, you can just upload to Youtube and provide the link to us. For photos, we'll provide an easy to use interface for uploading the images.
The first suggestion is to share the Scavenger Hunt via Facebook and Twitter so as many of your friends as possible can join your team. When your friend arrives at the Scavenger Hunt site and have signed in, they can join your team in two ways.
Any team member can invite and add others to their team. Only the team captain can remove team members however. As such, you should absolute faith in your team captain! The team captain is noted by the word "Captain" when you view your team.
You should not be joining more than one team. This won’t increase your chance of winning and will just result in a confusing situation for everyone involved. If you do want to join two similar groups where you have friends in both, consider asking them if they’d prefer to merge teams.
You could also incite a fight between the two groups, forcing them into a life-or-death paintball duel. Whichever group wins is the group worthy of your inclusion. It's sort of like Darwinian evolution but with paintball guns -- we're writing a paper on the concept.
The full list of rules and guidelines will be launched soon before the start of the competition. All the rules can be summarised briefly however: be legal and be nice. Anything that breaks the law or our definition of legal/nice will result in the disqualification of your team and a nasty note to Santa implicating you in a North Pole fraud scheme.
Yes! This is a global scavenger hunt! Anyone from anywhere in the world can join! In fact, many of these challenges take place in different continents, so it even makes sense to get friends from different companies competing in the same team!
If you're currently in orbit or a parallel dimension, please contact the Support Team for clarification as to your in-game status. Astronauts in orbit may be allowed assuming their exposure to radiation hasn't given them superpowers.
The Scavenger Hunt will close at 6pm EDT (New York) on March 25. We will announce the winners shortly after.
A team leaderboard will be available when the competition begins.