Unexpected Convergence in Researching Game History

Last night, I was continuing my quest for more information about Stephen Sondheim's Halloween Hunt from 1968. A certain Los Angeles Times article quoted in one of his biographies was my goal. At the same time in a separate window, I was reading Larry's entry on a death during a Russian urban hunt. He linked to Pervasive Games as a source. In the original window, I typed in the keywords I was looking for. The first link to come up was, disappointingly, my own blog. But the second link was from Pervasive Games!

Funny coincidence, right? Okay, sure, but the link I pull up is about how The Last of Sheila inspired Don Luskin's Games which inspired Midnight Madness. Hmmmmm...sounds vaguely familiar, almost like I wrote it myself. But it turns out that the people at Pervasive Games wrote a book and had been doing the same research I had at pretty much the same time, getting the Los Angeles Times newspaper clippings from Luskin close to when I got them from Patrick Carlyle. Talk about coincidence.


An idle thought in the back of my mind has been that beyond satisfying my own curiosity, perhaps I could put what research I uncovered into book form. But it looks like the folks at Pervasive Games have already done that, saving me a lot of time, travel, and tests of my limited interviewing abilities.