On July 22, 2013, a role-playing game called “Kanye Quest 3030” was released for the Windows PC platform. The game, developed with the RPG Maker engine, was published by a creator named “Phenix,” who would later be revealed to be Australian designer Clara Hope.
The game, which was not authorized by West, involved the rapper falling into a portal in 2010 and being transported to the year 3030, to discover that the United States had become a dystopian dictatorship ruled by a clone of rapper Lil B. As Kanye, the player had to join up with other rappers including 2Pac and RZA to defeat Lil B allies like Eminem and Nicki Minaj to set the nation free.
At one point in gameplay, a non-player character asks the player what they would like to do, with a prompt for a six-character answer. Two years after the release of the game, a player wrote online that he had found a clue during gameplay that revealed the correct answer to be the word “ASCEND.” After entering this word, the player was transported to a vast hidden section of the game with a very different tone and aesthetic than the main part of “Kanye Quest 3030.” The hidden game promised to “help teach you something beneficial” and required the player to collect a series of codes to enter into various terminals.
After each password was successfully entered, the player’s computer screen would get slightly darker and the next task was revealed. A final screen, introduced with the words “Your Ascension,” took the player to a white room with a single terminal. This terminal informs the player that by agreeing to its terms, the player would achieve their “ascension.” It then asked for personal details including their mailing address. If the player chose to enter this information, the game would inform them that someone would make contact with them at some point during the next two weeks and that they should watch for the signs. The game then ended.
Some readers of this player’s web post would connect “Kanye Quest 3030” and the hidden section’s references to “ascension” to a purported Internet-based cult called Ascensionism. The first online references to Ascensionism date to 2006 with a draft Wikipedia article and a Yahoo! Groups community. The author or authors of these pages based Ascensionism on self-betterment with transhumanist elements. Their essays stated that a human is composed of both a physical spirit and an ethereal spirit, and that souls undergo multiple reincarnations until the soul deems itself fully virtuous, at which point it self-destructs into the raw material needed to form new souls. Ascensionism also put forth a variation on the law of karma, dictating that any negative experiences encountered by an individual are the result of activity in a past life. Pessimism and self-doubt were seen as impediments to the move toward full virtue.
The request by “Kanye Quest 3030” for contact information led these readers to conclude that the game was intended to recruit new members into Ascensionism, which was portrayed in media coverage as a potentially dangerous cult. However, no one who entered their contact information into the game was ever contacted, and data miners would later discover that the game did not transmit any information to a server and that this was just part of the gameplay experience.
The mystery behind “Kanye Quest 3030” and its possible ties to an Ascensionist sect continued for several years, with Internet sleuths at times linking it to an independent record label and a conceptual artist — connections that turned out to be false. Some connected “Kanye Quest 3030” to another independent role-playing game, “Calypso,” which some believed included voicemail recordings collected from “Kanye Quest 3030” players. But “Calypso” did not directly offer any new information on Ascensionism.
In September 2022, it was discovered that Hope was the creator of “Kanye Quest 3030.” She revealed that she had developed the game a decade earlier as a high school gaming project, and that the hidden inner game was simply part of another game that she had partially developed that she inserted into “Kanye Quest 3030” as an Easter egg. She had used the name “Ascensionism” after doing a Google search of New Age pages and found several using the term. The game had no connection to the original rumored Ascensionist movement.
Key Sources:
Breslin, R. (2020, January 18). Meet the Kanye West game that could be linked to a cult. GameByte.
Fact Magazine. (2015, May 18). Was that Kanye RPG a recruiting tool for a cult?
Hernandez, P. (2015, May 18). For two years, this Kanye West game has been hiding a disturbing secret. Kotaku.
Kramer, K. (2013, August 30). Everything you need to know about Kanye Quest 3030, The Kanye West Video Game. VICE.
Wendy, O. (2019, August 29). Kanye Quest 3030 — How data miners discovered the greatest ARG of the decade. Medium.
Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religious Movements 