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.

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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.

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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?

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