HomeLAN - Can you give us an idea about the game's current subscriber rate and is the subscriber base growing?

Craig Alexander - The subscriber base is growing steadily. I can’t give you an exact number, but its tens of thousands. (The EA corporate PR folks have to approve the release of any kind of sales or subscriber number.) Also, we get hundreds of new players every week coming in through the 5-day demo (downloadable from the major download sites, and you can get a free disc mailed to you at www.enbdemo.com) and through the Buddy Referral program.

HomeLAN - What's been some of the most surprising things that the Earth and Beyond team have encountered since the launch of the game?

Craig Alexander - I’m surprised how clever and tenacious our players are. For instance, a few months ago we started seeding the galaxy with encoded data fragments for players to find. We figured players would crack the code and begin piecing together the messages in a day or so. The code was cracked within three hours, and within a day websites sprung up to track and decode all the discovered fragments.

Since then, we’ve been introducing more complicated coding and more fragments, and the fans are still cracking the codes and assembling the messages. However, all the fragments aren’t discovered yet. For the literally thousands of fans who are following the puzzle, some surprising bits of data are out in the galaxy, waiting for discovery.