To celebrate the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft and AMD launched The Vanishing Point, a global cross-media puzzle game to reward their most enthusiastic, tech savvy consumers. The game spanned four weeks as players from around the globe worked together to decipher embedded clues in real world events and solve puzzles online to win a trip to the ultimate vista, outer space. Throughout the puzzle sweepstakes, players could also search for information about the identity of Loki herself, to earn the privilege of having their name inscribed on an entire production run of AMD computer chips.

Spectacular real world events transmitted secret messages that were captured in photographs or video before they reached “the vanishing point”.

The game launched mysteriously, with a stealth campaign utilizing Japanese puzzle boxes, USB drives, AMD computers and videos on YouTube. In the following weeks, players found cryptic clues written on a 6-story water projection screen at the Bellagio fountains; in the skies in Sydney, Miami, Los Angeles, and Phoenix; projected through high resolution transformations of world landmarks like London’s National Gallery, Singapore’s Victoria Theater, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gates, San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts and Toronto’s Hockey Hall of Fame; and coded in a unique fireworks spectacular on Seattle’s Lake Union.