For those who believe a movie trailer is only a nice introduction for an upcoming flick, the media is pulling the wool over your eyes. An anonymous marketing campaign for the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence is forcing people to look a little closer at those trailer credits.
An observant few noticed a strange addition to the movie's second trailer: Jeanine Salla, Sentiment Machine Therapist. With that simple clue, a virtual murder mystery game begins.
A search on Google leads to the Bangalore World University, where Salla is a professor. Her colleague and friend, Evan Chan, has been murdered on his boat the Cloudmaker on March 8, 2142. From there, each site leads to links which lead to clues, some hidden and some overt.
If something seems out of the ordinary it is advisable to check it out because, as A.I. is likely to teach, the old platitude that "nothing is as it seems" stands true, especially here. (Hint: highlighting helps a lot, too).
For those who have ever wanted to play detective - the ones who compulsively played Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? as a kid and wished they were Brad Pitt and Morgan Friedman in Seven, a visit to cloudmakers.org will supply all the necessary info to play. The Cloudmakers (named after Chan's boat) are an ad hoc group of obsessed players who have joined together to solve the complex riddle, which often involves the knowledge of chemistry, foreign languages (some obscure) and decoding encrypted internet messages. The variety of puzzles makes it seemingly impossible for one person to solve the mystery alone.
Yet, like those of artificial intelligence, the members of the group are bound by the net, making it likely that even the Puppetmasters (the unknown originators of the game believed to be linked to the A.I. producers) are members throwing out red herrings. An intriguing challenge? Yes. But it certainly could push a person into paranoia, total suspicion of those around them and mistaking the virtual for veracity. If they aren't careful, some might begin to believe they are actually living in a Gattaca modeled version of the universe.
Despite the possibility for obsession, the game offers a thrill for the over-thinkers, the mind-benders, and die-hard puzzle cravers. The virtual murder mystery bizarre, but fascinating. Like a freak show most people may be shocked by its initial strangeness but are compelled by curiosity to take another peek; by the time the game is finished, they're drawn into its madness.
Things get all the more out of control when the game begins to interact with the players, via personal phone calls, faxes and e-mails. Xenophobes never fear. All the useful information can be made available without giving away your personal contact information.
It's not too late to get in on the obsession, which has been going on since April when the second trailer and strange encoded movie posters were released. Cloudmakers will get the "newbies", as they call us virgins, up-to-date.
Maybe A.I.'s release next week will clear a few things up and live up to this hype it's created or maybe it will be an over-marketed letdown like a certain other summer movie with a lot of bombs and planes set in Hawaii. At least, there's Jeanine Salla and her wild Internet goose chase. For now, the virtual "Who killed Evan Chan?" acts as a close substitute for a summer blockbuster.
