“I quickly pulled up our servers’ logs and on the graph, everything is spiked,” Daugherty said, adding that the station’s listeners had jumped 100 times the normal audience. He had to tweak the station’s servers, which had reached maximum capacity. “I‘m like, wow, this is kind of insane.” In an era where online connection can often turn hostile, “Internet Roadtrip” is a throwback to an earlier, friendlier version of the web that features simple and soothing graphics, forces fun collaboration among strangers, and lacks the pesky pop-ups and banner advertisements that can clutter online games. And it’s brought WBOR, whose programming seldom reaches listeners outside of coastal Maine, an unlikely legion of new fans. The station’s DJs joined the Discord online chat connected to the game to chat with users, take song requests, and make recommendations on where to travel next, earning the station the adoration of the game’s players. Many sport display names such as “wbor is love” or “WBOR convert.” “It’s nice to feel validated by thousands of strangers that what we’re doing is not in vain or pointless, and that it does still hold pretty deep relevance — especially in the context of streaming and competing mediums,” Daugherty said. The game moved out of range of WBOR on Thursday morning, but its legacy has lived on in the Discord chats. “WBOR was our guide through Maine. The voice from afar that showed us the wonders of the state,” one user posted. Neal Agarwal, who created “Internet Roadtrip” on his site Neal.Fun , has built other breakout games including “Infinite Craft,” which challenges users to generate new items by dragging and dropping other items onto each other (water and fire make steam, for example). He said he was inspired to build “Internet Roadtrip” by online group gaming experiences such as a Twitch stream where users collectively played Pokémon . “I grew up in the era of flash games on the internet, and that era of weirdness and possibility is something I definitely want to capture on my site,” Agarwal said. “I think the web is an amazing creative medium that isn’t being used to its full potential.” In “Internet Roadtrip,” players can vote every few seconds on what the car does next: drive forward, make a turn (when available), honk, or change the radio station. Results are tallied live in a window at the top right corner of the screen. There’s also a live map and windows designed like green and white street signs showing the current town and thoroughfare of the imaginary car. The game started on Boston’s Tremont Street, next to the Common, on May 6. Agarwal is based in New York and said he doesn’t have any connection to Boston, but wanted to begin in a coastal city. He figured that would give users the option of going on a cross-country trip, and he wanted a city for players to get the feel for the game before venturing to rural areas. The game moved south, crossing through Rhode Island, and then drove north again, eventually hitting Interstate 495 in Hopkinton and finding its way to New Hampshire and then Maine. Many players wanted to go Canada, while others have aired preferences for excursions to sites such as Stephen King’s house. Fights over the direction of the car can be seen in the wild turns and circuitous side trips that the car took to Mount Desert Island and Bangor. When in Bar Harbor, users drove the digital car into the ocean, taking advantage of a Google Street View glitch. Daugherty threw on Ween’s “Ocean Man” to commemorate the splash. Players even steered the car to WBOR’s station in Brunswick, creating what Bowdoin senior and WBOR DJ Janet Briggs said on-air was a very “meta” moment . She was worried that her show’s theme of playing the 1,001 albums to listen to before you die wouldn’t resonate with listeners. “I’m about to play like a Jacques Brel, like, literally a French jazz album that none of these people are going to want to listen to, while they’re trying to get me to play Minecraft music,” Briggs said. “It actually ended up being kind of funny. It was a live jazz album that had a bunch of clapping and weird crescendos. It’s very theatrical.” Users showed their appreciation, and excitement about the moment, by several rounds of honking. Then she started taking song requests. “I ‘Rickrolled’ them at the beginning, because obviously,” Briggs said. (She played Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” to bring the famed internet prank to the players’ simulated car stereo.) “As a captive audience, it’s the only option.”
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