ugachaka :: Jacob was here

I haven’t seen Cloverfield yet, but the ARG (or alternate reality game) to promote the movie keeps getting stranger.

The ARG started with the Ethan Haas Was Right site. The early trailers for Cloverfield linked fans to this site where they completed a series of puzzles and then added their email address to a list to receive updates on the next step in the ARG.

I did all the puzzles, and weeks later, I received an email from the site’s creator/leader “Van Mantra” which linked to Alpha Omega: The Game, some sort of MMORPG (or massive multiplayer online role-playing game). It seemed to have no relation to the movie, but I thought the game must be fake. The game is based upon an post-apocalyptic world, but it says it was all destroyed by natural disasters and diseases rather than by the big monster from Cloverfield. I never tried the game, but I signed up to be notified when it finally launched.

I continued to receive emails updating me on the status of the game’s launch, but none of them seemed to have any info about Cloverfield. I almost unsubscribed, but I stuck with it.

Just a few weeks ago, I got another message from Van Mantra.

Your destinies are your own. Now is the time to play your role. Mobilize, arm yourselves with knowledge, and enter the world remade.

This message linked back to the Alpha Omega game site again, which now has a little blurb about the Ethan Haas site puzzles. I just don’t get it.

Is this MMORPG tied into the movie somehow? I guess I will figure it out when I see Cloverfield, but if anyone else has completed the puzzles and joined in on the game, I would love to hear how it all fits together.

This ARG has been pretty in-depth, and with JJ Abrams involved, who knows what it all means.

I just finished reading Game Over: Press Start to Continue: The Maturing of Mario by David Sheff and Andy Eddy awhile back. Since it had such a nice business slant, I posted my review over at my business blog at wannabeMogul.com–even though I really read the book because of my incredible urge as a childhood Nintendo fanboy.

If you haven’t read this book and want to learn more about the gaming industry, read it. I suggest checking Half.com or Amazon to try and pick up a used copy.

The book is a great read even if you aren’t a Nintendo fan.

The really interesting part of the book is how it sheds a light on what Microsoft might have been thinking when they launched the Xbox and how much Nintendo’s plan for the NES might have influenced that.

I have posted about ARGs here before, but I wanted to link over to my new blog at wannabeMogul.com where I just put together a lengthy post about the ARG and viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight by 42 Entertainment, the same guys who did ILoveBees for Halo 2, and the mysterious death of Heath Ledger.

The viral marketing campaign is intense for this movie, and the death of Heath Ledger almost made me suspect it was going to get even more outrageous.

I have often pondered as Seth Godin did why more money isn’t saved by the consumer when they choose to make a purchase online rather than in a physical store.

When you purchase an item online rather than in a store, you could argue that you are saving the company the expense of stocking the item and hiring an employee to check you out and bag the item. If you are already covering the cost of shipping, shouldn’t there be more savings?

The same goes for online rentals. In reality, it’s just a file server spitting out the file to you, so why pay as much as you do a service like Blockbuster–or even Netflix–who stocks and distributes a physical copy of the media from a staffed distribution center? Even counting costs associated with producing and serving the file over the Internet and rights payments, Apple has to be making more money off each rental than Blockbuster.

Is Apple just trying to prevent a complete breakdown of the rental industry by pricing their rental service close to what is actually charged by Blockbuster or are they simply looking to make as much money as possible while they can?

I, for one, have been holding out hoping that G4 would someday pick up the torch of generating game coverage similar to the way that GameTrailers has with their retrospectives.

It looks like they might now be headed down the right path. X-Play will be expanding its coverage of videogames to include more than just review video segments.

Although there are no direct promises of game features, the press release does say that there will be more analysis and interviews. I can only hope that these segments lead into more gamer-focused features that we can all enjoy. I have really enjoyed what GameTrailers is doing with their retrospective segments–similar to what G4’s Icons used to be–so it would be great to have something like a smaller version of that on the air as a part of the X-Play program.

The new daily program should premiere on January 14. Check your times.

Ain’t It Cool posted up the latest trailer for The Dark Knight. Check it out.

This movie looks to continue the great new direction for Batman that Batman Begins started.

A new trailer for Cloverfield was posted up on Ain’t It Cool revealing a partial view of the creature that haunts J.J. Abrams dreams.

I hear it’s not the black cloud monster from Lost.

I am actually a fan of the show ‘Life’ on NBC. It follows the cases of a detective who is vindicated for the killing of his business partner after serving 10 years in prison with new evidence. He now has his old job as a police detective back along with a hefty settlement to live off of and comes closer each week to solving the mystery of who really killed his business partner.

The series has been pretty cool, then they go and do something like having a missing teenager hide his secret financial documents in level 10 of Prince of Persia. The worst part of it all, besides their horribly bad game terminology, is that they have the little sister of the gamer reveal her skills by showing her hands going all muscle memory while watching a cop play the game.  Who does that? I sighed as I watched it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB3ir_h3VeY&eurl=http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/13/nbcs-life-investigates-prince-of-persia/[/youtube]

Neil Blomkamp’s latest treatment of the Halo series in live action form is truly the best I have seen. You can’t deny that seeing the Brutes actually attacking, spike grenades and the spiker pinning Marines against a wall isn’t badass.

Frankly, the first one seems like just a tease compared to the last two. I thought the second one was fairly uneventful–Warthog deploying and two Marines running from the Brute forces just seemed like a deleted scene from Blackhawk Down. THIS live action short is Halo.

For some reason, you can only check it out on the Discovery Channel site. Go check it out and maybe you will learn something. Compare this one to the cheap teasing of the other two below.

The first live action short:

The second short with the Warthog, somewhat of a prequel to the third: