unforum

[sam.weir]

[META] Is this an ARG? I'm getting pretty concerned...

[SisBear]

I don't think it's an ARG, either. It's possible that it might turn into one, but so far it seems more like an Alternate Reality Experience. Kind of like with Heroes (Claire Bennet the cheerleader has her own mySpace page, Hiro has a blog, Kaito Nakamura (played by Star Trek's George Takei) has a company website at www.YamagatoFellowship.org). I haven't seen anything so far to indicate that there's a "game" to be played.

As far as the Cloverfield production team having enough hands to handle the online stuff, I believe that Paramount has hired a marketing company to handle all of that for them. Look at the whois behind www.1-18-08.com and www.sectorseven.org (Transformers also distributed by Paramount). I believe the same marketing firm is behind both online marketing campaigns. But, that's JMO.

http://whois.domaintools.com/1-18-08.com
http://whois.domaintools.com/sectorseven.org

[JadedMax]

I'm seriously doubting this whole "game" aspect myself. I mean just going off what we know, what exactly are we looking for? Nothing will clear up anything to the point of closure except the actual movie. And where exactly has Abrams & Co. described or pointed out this is a game or scavenger hunt or interactive experience?

I only say this because there's an eternity until January and absolutely nothing is happening at all. Most people have short attention spans, or don't have the massive amount of time to invest in something like this unless there will be some sort of significant payoff. And thus far there's been little if any of that.

I hate to seem like a downer but what exactly do we have to gain by all this intricate painstaking investigating of everything about this movie? Unless we're going to be able to get pieces of the actual movie itself ahead of time I really wonder what exactly we could get out of this.

[Helo]

I doubted the entire game premise since day one, and I continue to doubt it today. I think it's a lot of fun to watch the trailer, visit a few Myspace pages, and go the Slusho website, but that's all there is to this.

Go back and read any and all of my posts. I've been disputing the game aspect of this movie the whole time. Nevertheless, we have people calling random numbers, hearing cuckoo clocks, speculating Cthulhu, and attempting to hack websites.

This movie brought me to this ARG website, and it's leading me to believe that a lot of ARG players are mentally disturbed.

[JadedMax]

I dunno about the mental states of the folks here, but I definitely believe we skipped ahead and took on some more grand meaning to this thing than was meant to be.

I mean honestly January is a long way away. That's a heck of a lot of foreplay to be into for an hour and a half worth of payoff.


I think the initial trailer was meant to shock us a bit, get us interested, make us aware of what's in the works, then we move on til the next big thing happens. I think it will be a jarring intense thing we have no choice but to know when we see it.

We'll keep on with our lives, go to movies, watch tv, listen to the radio until "wham" there's another big thing. it could be a commercial on tv, or some random thing on YouTube, or a radio ad or something. i just have trouble thinking we're supposed to be breaking pictures down to pixels and analyzing frames of audio. That's just too much to sustain for six long months. We'll all be burned out in a few weeks and the backlash from it all would doom this movie.

[hello moto]

[Helo]

[JadedMax]

well at this point it would be a great move to make. we want answers and as long as we're nipping at Abrams' heels he is in control. I can guarantee if we lost interest he'd ante up something that would be clearly something worth talking about.

People call this a game. Well OK, The only winning move, as a wise computer once said is not to play.

[CJAnderson]

no i doubt it's an ARG. It's just viral marketing for the movie. It has some of the same aspects of an ARG though

[AfterDystopia]

Re: [META] Is this an ARG? I'm getting pretty concerned...

[Almijisti]

I'm on the fence with this one. When I figure that I don't see any game-aspects per se, I keep reminding myself of the bizarre thought balloons on the Slusho! history page. As for the "alternate reality", the myspace pages, annoying as they are, fit the bill. But other than the enigmatic slusho stuff, I don't see any puzzles or the like. There was a pretty elaborate ARG in the Lost Experience (which I was not involved in), so it's not unreasonable to presume that Bad Robot is doing something here.

BTW, I keep referring to Bad Robot rather than JJA because I think we should at least give credit where credit is due. Athena Wickham is more likely to be the person behind all this, not JJA. JJA's got 24 hours in his day, just like the rest of us, so I really doubt he's the mastermind behind the buzz campaign what with another season of Lost to complete editing, the big Star Trek XI pic (which is much more important to Paramount, given the big budget), and of course this movie.

[Nitsujest]

[konamouse]

[Nitsujest]

[rhesusmonkeyboy]

As you said, appears more ARE than ARG