 LiveWires Design is a small multimedia company located in Vancouver Canada. Since 1996 the staff have developed 20 educational computer games for museums and science centres in North America and Europe In 1997, we developed four games for the national science museum in Amsterdam. One of these, which explored fraud on the Internet, became very popular. As a result, police suggested that we produce a similar game warning about predators who contact children over the Internet and lure them away from home. At first, we responded with a polite, "No, thank you." In those days everyone was excited about the possibilities of the Internet. People were talking about how it would advance research, speed communications, and stimulate creativity. We didn't want to be seen as nay-sayers. But late one night our chief software engineer, Colin Savage, went to a corporate web site that offers video links, hoping to find another insomniac engineer to help solve a problem. He was horrified to discover that he was the only person using the video-conference technology for its intended purpose. Others were bartering pornographic pictures, often of children. One person boasted that he had abducted a child and intended to molest her on-line. He invited others to watch. The next day, MISSING was born. Colin Savage |