''Sharkrunners'' season 1 was a game created by area/code for the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel, known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery, is an American cable channel that is best known for its ongoing reality television shows and promotion of pseudoscience. It init ...

as part of the channel's 20th year of ''

Shark Week Shark Week is an annual week-long programming block on the Discovery Channel focusing on shark-themed programming. It originally premiered on July 17, 1988. The block is featured annually in the summer, and was originally devoted to conservati ...

''. The game used satellite tracking of six

great white shark The great white shark (''Carcharodon carcharias''), also known as the white shark, white pointer, or simply great white, is a species of large Lamniformes, mackerel shark which can be found in the coastal surface waters of all the major ocea ...

s off the coast of

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. Users were able to take control of research vessels to gather, in real-time, information on the sharks, while trying to earn funding.{{Cite web , date=4 April 2017 , title=Developer's website , url=http://areacodeinc.com/work/sharkrunners/ , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170404074350/http://areacodeinc.com/work/sharkrunners/ , archive-date=4 April 2017 , access-date=4 April 2017 , website=areacodeinc.com Players could rename the sharks. At ports, players could use four main services: buying gas, boat upgrades, equipment, and hiring crew. There were four boats in the game. Each could have an engine refit (increases both cruising and top speed by 10%) and upgraded fuel tanks (increases fuel capacity by 20%). ''Sharkrunners'' season 2 used satellite tracking of ten

tiger shark The tiger shark (''Galeocerdo cuvier'') is a species of ground shark, and the only extant member of the genus '' Galeocerdo'' and family Galeocerdonidae. It is a large apex predator, with females capable of attaining a length of over . Popula ...

s and ten

grey reef shark The grey reef shark or gray reef shark (''Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos'', sometimes misspelled ''amblyrhynchus'' or ''amblyrhinchos'') is a species of requiem shark, in the family (biology), family Requiem shark, Carcharhinidae. One of the most com ...

s off the northern coast of

Queensland, Australia Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, ...

. ''Sharkrunners'' was removed from Discovery Channel online in July 2011.

Institutions

When creating a character, the player is given the choice of three institutions to join: :- The International Marine Observation Project (I.M.O.P.): a high-tech research institute run by no-nonsense marine scientists looking for hard data :- The Piermont Group: a media-savvy philanthropic organization that is interested equally in scientific data and dramatic images :- Friends of the Ichtheological Nation (FIN): a hard-core ecological activist group devoted to protecting and preserving sharks at any cost

External links

Fan site

Website of area/code
the game's creators

References

Discovery Channel original programming