Narada: The new Star Trek ARGAlternate reality games (ARG) are wonderfully engaging ways to activate a existing fans, loyal advocates and early adopters. They are also fantastic ways to draw new people into a storyline or activity, as the best ARGs are inherently viral and social by nature. There are several excellent examples of this type of online game/campaign which have been done over the past year or so.
The Lost Experience and
The Clown Travel Agency done for The Dark Knight which I wrote about last year are two good ones to check out.
Today, Bill came across what looks to be a new Star Trek ARG.
I love
J.J. Abrams, and I've always loved Star Trek ... The
new film launches in May, and whatever this thing is, it looks pretty cool and obviously took some time to dream up.
Connecting the dots is hard with good ARGs, but Trekkies love a good hunt. ;-) One of the first pieces of content to surface was this video, showing someone speaking in French who apparently found a 'device' in Paris on La Rue de la Federation a few days ago...
On a random site, scattered amongst
a gallery of photos from a Star Trek party, are several photos like this one which contain a URL written on the wall:
These are the URLs:
http://0100001101100001.eu/http://0100000101101100.eu/http://01001111.com/The web addresses are binary code for "Ca", "Al" and "O" ... abbrviations on the Periodic Table for Calcium, Aluminium and Oxygen ... Here are links to the full-size photos from www.thecobrasnake.com:
/outofthisworld/IMG_2996.html/paristrek/IMG_2458.html/hollywoodstars/IMG_8403.htmlThe element symbols show up in the videos, but who knows what the hell they mean. In his email, Bill wrote:
follow a tonne of awesomely cone head type video deconstructing, google maps following, secret site unearthings & the like here, what's immediately noticeable about this is that it's f*cking difficult & rightly so. this is for Trekkies after all : )
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27713
http://trekmovie.com/2009/04/15/new-clues-in-star-trek-viral-arg/
i digg this sh*t, enjoy.
Me too. Thanks dude!
In the forum posts (which explain things much more than I'm doing here) you learn that this image which is in the videos on the binary web sites:
... is actually an image of "Narada", the name of the ship in the prequel comic:
I wonder where it goes from here ...
Comments:
