Showtime Creates Digital Dexter Game Leading To Premiere

Fans of Showtime's series Dexter can now be comforted until the season five premiere. Showtime Digital Media has debuted an alternate reality game for Dexter fans.

The game premiered at this year's Comic-Con in San Diego. Made up of two main websites, sleepsuperbly.com and serialhuntress.com, a weekly digest called hunterprey.com, and various microsites, the action takes place on the Web and on mobile phones, and leads up to the season premiere of Dexter on Sunday, September 26.

Showtime produced the game in conjunction with the Boston-based agency Modernista!, an independent creative agency that works to engage consumer audiences across social media, mobile applications, social games, television and print media channels, and the design of new digital products.

The alternate reality game will unfold online, and involves players working together online to bring down a suspected serial killer. The story follows the trail of a serial killer dubbed "The Infinity Killer," and the crowdsourcing crime-solver, Dee "Serial Huntress" Pratt, hot on his trail.

At Comic-Con, fans visited a crime scene littered with mysterious clues that led them to "The Serial Huntress," a fictional ex-FBI agent by the name of Dee Pratt. The Serial Huntress uses crowdsourcing techniques via her web site, www.serialhuntress.com as tools to hunt and apprehend serial killers. The Huntress and her crime-solving followers communicate through discussion boards and an ongoing video blog.

Dexter fans went on to discover the connection between the "Infinity Killer," the crime scene found at Comic-Con and an online service, Sleep Superbly, whose website features dream optimization "therapy" sessions. Players online found video sessions of a customer called "F8" that, while not confessional in nature, are filled with enough incriminating clues to seemingly connect him with the reported murder.

To join in the fun, Showtime suggests visiting hunterprey.com to catch up with what's happened and help solve the crime.