Launching an ARG is no small task. We had to create interest for a complex narrative by telling almost none of it and have months of content defined in advance regardless of whether it was going to work or not. More importantly it had to enhance the reveal of the product and its accompanying narrative.

We also needed a place for people to gather and receive information in a way that would be interesting and controlled. So we created Vaan (pictured in the banner): our paranoid, clairvoyant figure who knew of the conspiracies and wanted to recruit anyone who was able to decipher the signs the way he did. His paranoia was paired with just enough genius that he was able to create a gauntlet of increasingly difficult challenges for his future followers to prove themselves and help him affirm everyone that Ethan Haas Was Right.

DESIGNING A CHALLENGE

We had our narrative, we planned the experience, we spent days reading and learning the mythology of Mindstorm Labs' new universe. We created dozens of sites, emails, autoresponders, phone numbers with pre-recorded messages and registered records with seemingly real information for characters of the world. Now we had to create an experience that could last no less than 3 months and that it would reward the most dedicated users. We decided to create 5 different puzzles of exponentially harder difficulty, tapping into our inner-cryptographers.

The first step was to design a language only Vaan and his followers could understand. Part of our basic challenge level we created a basic substitution cypher key which would act as the first barrier to each challenge that would follow:

Designing puzzles is not easy, there is a fine balance between challenge and frustration. Luckily, humans have been at this for a long time and there are a lot of established paradigms and techniques. There are also many kinds of challenges that leverage different skills: memory, pattern recognition, reflexes, etc. Using some of these paradigms and principles we designed 5 different puzzles which would deliver a video message upon completion, teasing out a little more of the story.

With our centerpiece in place, it was time to ensure the story could be extended beyond the site. We created fake profiles, phone numbers and websites for various characters in the narrative including some fake businesses and a bunch of dead-ends and rabbit holes full of misdirection. We went to great lengths (within legal limits)to make everything seem legitimate to the point of registering the company of the main antagonist: Triton Enterprises.

Regardless of all this effort, a cunning fan, and member of the press, was able to connect the ARG to Mindstorm Labs and was about to deal a killing blow to the campaign by revealing our client's product. This one took a more deliberate intervention, so we hired a courier, paid him $50, gave him a special package full of carefully crafted documents (full of misinformation) so we were able to keep the campaign from ending prematurely.

Despite all of our clever designs and all the great story-telling, we still needed to bring mass awareness to our campaign, this is when things got a little bit more subversive. During this time there was a lot of talk about J.J. Abrams new movie, which was a secret to everyone. We reached out to social channels and communities and made mild suggestions of similarities with previous teases from a few of his previous projects. It was a long shot, but to our surprise it worked. Within hours the fans and theorists were picking apart the site and it was being covered in national media as being potentially linked to said director's newest project.

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Christian Kowalchuck
3D Artist/ Technical Director

Gabe Watkins
Creative