Tag Archives: ARG

Gravity Falls: Cypher Hunt

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Remember this, we’ll be seeing it later // Disney

I was only 10 when I watched Gravity Falls for the first time. I remember, as a odd child who was intrigued by mysteries, being immediately drawn to the series with it’s paranormal elements mixed in with a coming-of-age story. Some would say this show would even be perfect for me. I loved everything about it, right down to it’s wonderful theme song that made me want to go on adventures and find monsters in Oregon (a long way away from my home in Scotland).

iconic. // Disney

All of this being said, I feel almost ashamed to admit that I didn’t find out about it’s ARG until about a year after it was fully complete. I was aware of it going on, but had no clue that it was an ARG. Out of all the ARGs I’ve ever missed out on, I think this one makes me the saddest.

THE ARG

Made as an unofficial fan tribute by Alex Hirsch, the maker of the show, fans participated in the ‘Cypher Hunt’. The goal was to find a statue of the show’s main villain, Bill Cypher, in real life after he’d been turned into said statue in the show’s final episode. Cypher Hunt-ers had to go to real life locations and find clues in each of them to finally unlock the co-ordinates. For any kids show to have an ARG, this was perfect. The entire show was dedicated to de-coding hidden subliminal messages and mysteries.

This ARG acted as one last hurrah to loyal fans and was truly the perfect send off to an amazing show.

RIP Gravity Falls 2012-2016

Credit to Vailskibum94 on Youtube for this great recap of the ARG

The Sun Vanished: The Rise of Twitter ARGs

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An obviously real picture from an obviously real news broadcast // Twitter: @TheSunVanished

If mankind ever found ourselves facing a post-apocalyptic situation, what would you do? Would you phone your loved ones to make sure they’re safe? Would you leave your house and go investigate yourself? Or would you go on social media and post about it, while finding out more info via that way. I know personally that the latter is the most common answer for most people.

With a resurgence in YouTube ARGs/metafiction, it’s only natural for it to progress onto different social media outlets. One in particular that gained fame was ‘The Sun Vanished’, a twitter account that poses the interesting question: what would happen if the sun vanished? (shocker!). The answer? Probably aliens.

THE ARG

Twitter user @TheSunVanished makes their first posts on April 30th 2018.

From then on, the creator combines tweets with photos and videos to create an immersive storyline of a post apocalyptic world in which one of the things we rely on almost everyday is taken from us. The eerie realism of the tweets lulls us into a state of belief, as even I found myself getting lost in the story. It truly makes us question, what would we do in this situation? Luckily, this ARG is an extremely easy read with all links mostly connected to the main twitter account (such as other accounts that are part of the ARG). I’d recommend reading it for yourself, especially as this is the first actually semi-active ARG I’ve covered on this blog.

Comment below if you’ve got any theories!

This House Has People In It

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What a nice, normal family. // Image credit to Adult Swim

In my last blog post, I touched upon Alan Resnick and AB Video Solutions/Wham City and some of their ARGS/metafiction projects. However, I specifically didn’t mention one project of his due to my plans of giving it it’s own post.

This House Has People In It is another project done by AB Video Solutions for Adult Swim. What may seem like a simple video of surveillance footage of a typical suburban family is actually only surface level entry into an extra two hours worth of hidden videos to find. Aside from Cloverfield, this is probably my favourite online ARG. The amount of time that blatantly went into it is astounding and it’s without a doubt Wham City’s best work to date.

THE ARG

To offer an in-depth synopsis of this wouldn’t even scrape the surface level of what it’s truly about. The family we see throughout the video are preparing for the youngest son’s birthday party but then start to notice that something is terribly wrong with their teenage daughter. What starts off ominous (thanks to the new horror trend of found footage, I suppose) turns into a surrealist horror. As much as I’d love to discuss the intricacies of This House Has People In It’s ARG, finding out things for myself was one of the best wild rides I’ve ever been on. If you’ve not got time to put a few hours aside and investigate for yourself then watch YouTube Night Mind’s video explaining it, as he covers almost all areas. I’ll link some other helpful links down below too to help you with your investigation.

Just a fair warning, there’s a certain character in this series found in some hidden videos and when I saw them I genuinely couldn’t sleep that night. Have fun!

Hi Boomy.

Further reading:

Guide to the entire ARG (MUST SEE!)

AB Surveillance Solutions

The Sculptor’s Playground Video

The Sculptor’s Clayground Website

Vice Interview with Alan Resnick

The Cloverfield Paradox: An ARG Analysis (Part 3)

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6 of the people responsible for Cloverfield’s fall from grace / Credits to Netflix

With the 10 Cloverfield Lane ARG drawing in new fans to the franchise, things could only go up from there, right?

Sadly, The Cloverfield Paradox was released in 2018 on Netflix and met with overwhelmingly bad reviews. Much like 10 Cloverfield Lane hadn’t been originally a Cloverfield movie, this was originally intended to simply be a sci-fi flick called ‘The God Particle’.

The movie, with it’s Cloverfield references seemingly stitched on by the studio forcibly akin to Frankenstein’s monster, is considered easily the worst in the franchise. Reports even came out that the movie had already been filming before Cloverfield connections had even been written for it. This, of course, isn’t uncommon in Hollywood – films get rewritten and reshot all of the time – but when the entire movie revolves around the ‘Cloverfield’ concept and the original script (which is entirely lacking said concept) is already mid-filming, the cracks become very blatant.

THE ARG

Fans of the Cloverfield franchise (now dubbed the ‘Cloververse’) got excited when a Slusho! van was found at San Diego Comic Con in summer 2017, and was then spotted going around the country handing out free slushies. The tenth anniversary of the first film rolled around, and still radio silence of an ARG until the Tagruato website was updated with…

An error message.

It’s now stuck on the last error message update forever. This ARG was simply to tie in the Helios space station from the new film in with the Cloverfield universe, but it was done rather sloppily with no real depth. With the Tagruato.jp essentially gone and most of the old sites down aswell, Cloververse’s ARG has essentially become unplayable until the next film, whenever that rolls around. For a series with such a strong ARG marketing technique until the third film, it’s very disheartening as a fan to see it end in such a lacklustre state.

And with that, my blog series of chronicling my favourite ARG comes to a close, not with a bang – but a whimper.

Credits to Giphy

Visiting 10 Cloverfield Lane: An ARG Analysis (Part 2)

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Seconds before disaster in the 10 Cloverfield Lane bunker. // Paramount

Cloverfield wouldn’t receive a sequel until 8 years after the original’s release. Without hesitation, I booked tickets to see it on opening day.

10 Cloverfield Lane (dir. Dan Trachenberg, 2) is honestly a true marvel to behold. Some may argue it’s juggling of suspenseful thriller and sci-fi flick is flawed, especially when you realise that it wasn’t intended to be part of the franchise.

THE ARG

The sequel’s ARG focuses on one of the characters seen in the new film, Howard Stambler played by John Goodman. With MySpace now seen as culturally outdated, the Tagruato.jp website was updated with a new employee of the month section, which portrayed Howard – establishing to fans of the ARG that he worked at the company and thus was tied to the first film’s universe. After many finding websites (including the now defunct radioman70.com and FunAndPrettyThings.com), unlocked the access to see chat logs showing Howard’s attempts at communicating with his daughter and telling her to get to his bunker after she’d been taken to Chicago by his ex-wife. Howard, involved in a secret project by Tagruato in the past, is led to believe the events of the film are due to a nuclear attack carried out by the Soviets. We, the audience, know that’s not the case.

REALITY OR FICTION?

Without a doubt, this ARG was more in-depth and immersive than it’s predecessor. A text based survival game was made, after someone survived 1600 in-game days the real world location of a locker in Chicago was revealed, with a cell phone with voicemails from Howard found inside.

Credit to WalnutJSoap on Youtube
Credit to Cloverfield Clues

A ‘survival kit’ found in Louisiana which contained jigsaw pieces that were missing from the same puzzle seen in the film. Even an expired Craigslist ad was found of Howard’s ex-wife selling antique spoons, and allowed a correspondence to be set up with her.

10 Cloverfield Lane’s ARG is a masterclass in marketing with and will undoubtedly go down in the ARG history books, it’s such a shame that the franchise eventually took a tumble.

To conclude in part 3.

Credit to the channel ‘Younique by Crissy Terrio’ for their findings
Part 1
Part 2

further reading:

An article that gives a surface level look at the ARG

An almost full comprehensive history of the ARG

Cloverfield Clues

The Cloverfield Files: An ARG Analysis (Part 1)

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The iconic imagery of 2008’s Cloverfield // Paramount

Cloverfield (2008, dir. Matt Reeves), a found footage monster movie birthed by the thought, “What if the US had a Godzilla of its own?” was met with positive reviews upon it’s release. Praised for being an original creature-feature, many eventually simply brushed it off as just that. However under the surface, unbeknownst to the general public, it was so much more.

This is personally my favourite ARG due to it being the first one I actually found out about/got involved in. Each character was given a MySpace account which interacted with the other characters in the movie, providing more backstory to each investigator. Not only this, many tie in websites featuring puzzles, clues and secrets were also developed.

THE ARG

The Cloverfield ARG focused in on the fictional company ‘Tagruato’ and the slushy drink (which is now beloved to Cloverfield fans) ‘Slusho!’, the latter had already featured in producer J.J. Abrams’ show ‘Alias’ and eventually as an easter egg in many of his other works. Different phone numbers were given during the campaign, which ARG hunters could call and were met with various messages (such as the Cloverfield Monster’s roar and a Tagruato company voicemail). Aswell as this, people could sign up to the ‘Slusho!’ website, which eventually emailed them sonar pictures of a creature approaching Manhattan.

The general plot of the first film’s alternative reality game is that ‘Slusho!’, a subsidiary of Tagruato which the main character of the first film works at, is revealed to contain a highly addictive ingredient: seabed nectar, which is being secretly harvested from the seabed under the guise of an oil rig and has highly negative side effects if consumed in it’s raw form. By drilling for this seabed nectar, the Tagurato corporation wakes up Clover (the monster) and inadvertently begins the events of the movie.

And that’s only the beginning.

Stay tuned for part 2.

further reading: Cloverfield Clues (an entire catalog of the ARG) and an in-depth article.

the introduction

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Hi,

I’m Orla, which you most likely could be able to tell from the title of this blog.

ARGs, short for Alternative Reality Games, have always fascinated me since I first found them. Any internet urban myth or horror story, I’ve always been deeply intrigued. Most of my Youtube subscription box is channels dedicated to breaking down and debunking them. But then I thought, who’s got the time to sit down and watch a half an hour long video about a Kanye West based video game that secretly was a cult indoctrination?

If only there was a blog that I could easily access and ramble on about the newest ARGs that fascinated me? Maybe this university assignment came at the right time.

Before I got into anything serious on this first post (I mean, we barely know each other, I’m hardly going to be telling you my mum’s maiden name), I thought I should give a brief description of what an ARG is for future reference.

All credit goes to user InsideAMind on Youtube who makes great ARG explanation videos!

Aside from the name, an ARG is a interactive storytelling method that uses the real word as it’s setting. Various things like social media and websites are used to portray the story to the audience as they can also help solve the plot/mystery. Some great examples are ILoveBees, The Cloverfield Universe, The Dark Knight ARG or Alan Resnick’s This House Has People In It (which I’ll touch upon on a later blog post). I’ll also just be talking about general quirky videos and stuff I find online.

hi i’m orla.

Talk more soon 🙂

ps. feel free to message me about any cool ARGs or stuff, i’ll be making a twitter soon