Adrian Hon (born August 1982) is an English writer and game designer specializing in alternate reality games and

transmedia storytelling Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. From a producti ...

. He is the CEO and founder of Six to Start, creator of the fitness game

Zombies, Run! ''Zombies, Run!'' is a 2012 mobile fitness game co-developed and published by British studio Six to Start and Naomi Alderman for iOS and Android platforms. Set around Abel Township, a small outpost trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, players ...

, and a non-fiction and sci-fi author. Hon was lead producer and designer of the alternate reality game

Perplex City Perplex City was an alternate reality game created by the London-based developer Mind Candy under the direction of the lead producer and designer, Adrian Hon, that ran from April 2005 to February 2007. The first "season" of the game had player ...

at Mind Candy from 2004 to 2007.

Mars Society

In 2001, at the age of 17, Hon delivered a TED talk on Mars exploration. He cofounded youth outreach program Generation Mars, served as the editor of the Mars Society's official online magazine and forum, and in 2002, spent two weeks at the Mars Society Desert Research Station.

Alternate Reality Games

Hon became interested in alternate reality games in 2001 while working on a neuroscience degree at university. In 2001, Hon was a co-moderator of the Cloudmakers, the discussion group for The Beast. At the end of the game, he wrote a 130-page walkthrough of ''The Beast'' and participated in the post-game debrief at Microsoft. In 2004, he joined Mind Candy as their director of play. He produced the alternate reality game

, which ran from April 2005 to February 2007. Players solved puzzle cards to uncover the mystery of a missing artifact known as "The Cube" and competed for a real-life £100,000 prize. For his work on Perplex City, Hon received one of the 2005 Origins Award winners, the "Vanguard Innovative Game Award", with Michael Acton Smith. In 2022, Hon was featured in an NHK documentary ''Finding Satoshi'' about a long-running puzzle, "Billion to One", which was solved in December 2020 by Tom-Lucas Säger and

Laura E. Hall Laura E. Hall is an American immersive artist, puzzle game designer, and writer. She has written several books about video games, immersive entertainment, and escape rooms. Hall co-created one of the first escape rooms in the United States. In ...

Six to Start

In 2007, Hon founded Six to Start with his brother Dan. In September 2011, the Six to Start team, with writer

Naomi Alderman Naomi Alderman (born 1974) is an English novelist and game writer. She is best known for her speculative science fiction novel '' The Power'', which won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2017. Biography Alderman was born in London, the daugh ...

, launched a Kickstarter for mobile exergame

, a running game and audio adventure that uses a phone's GPS and accelerometer.

was funded by a

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, K ...

campaign which raised more than five times what was expected, a total of $72,627 from 3,464 backers in October 2011. ''Zombies, Run!'' became the highest-grossing Health & Fitness app on

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the co ...

within two weeks of its initial release.

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan We ...

named Six to Start as one of their top 10 most innovative companies of 2013, describing ''Zombies, Run!'' as "one part audio book, one part video game, and one party sneaky personal trainer". Six to Start and Alderman also created The Walk, a similar game to encourage increased physical activity throughout the day. The app was sponsored by the UK's

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

and

Department of Health A health department or health ministry is a part of government which focuses on issues related to the general health of the citizenry. Subnational entities, such as states, counties and cities, often also operate a health department of their o ...

and was the first game to be funded so. In 2018 The Walk was turned into a podcast and released through

Panoply Media Megaphone (formerly Panoply Media) is a podcast technology company owned by Spotify, focusing on ad-insertion and hosting. It was formerly an audio content producer started by The Slate Group as Panoply Media, and later shifted to focusing solel ...

. In March 2021, digital fitness lifestyle company

OliveX Animoca Brands (Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd) is a Hong Kong-based game software company and venture capital company founded in 2014 by Yat Siu. It was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange from 23 January 2015 to 9 March 2020. ...

acquired Six to Start. Hon was appointed chief innovation officer at OliveX and serves as executive director for Six to Start.

Writing

From 2010 to 2013, Hon wrote a regular column for The Telegraph. As of 2022, Hon is a monthly columnist for the print edition of EDGE magazine.

''A History of the Future in 100 Objects'' (2013)

In 2013, Hon wrote ''A History of the Future in 100 Objects'', an alternate history science fiction book looking back on the 21st century from the perspective of the year 2084. The book was the subject of a 2017 art exhibition for the Shanghai Project by artist Chen Xi, curated by Yongwoo Lee and Hans Ulrich Obrist. In 2020,

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...

published a new edition of ''A History of the Future in 100 Objects'' with fifteen new chapters and three revised chapters.

''You’ve Been Played'' (2022)

In 2020, Hon wrote a viral Twitter thread and follow-up post comparing conspiracy theory QAnon to a video game designed to hook consumers. Hon released ''You’ve Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All'' in 2022, about the development and use of gamification.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hon, Adrian 21st-century English businesspeople Alternate reality games Living people 1982 births English video game designers Mars Society English science fiction writers Gamification Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of the University of Oxford University of California, San Diego alumni