Back in January, I reviewed Cloverfield and10 Cloverfield Lane. I briefly mentioned that it all started with a trailer of a movie without a name attached to Transformers and the hunt for the name and the story turned into a puzzle game where people have to find clues in the trailers and search the internet to unveil that a bigger story was being told that would lead up to the events of Cloverfield and it would start up again for10 Cloverfield Lane. The viral marketing worked so well that other companies began doing it for their movies too. Even Legendary Pictures began doing it with their Batman trilogy, Godzilla, and Kong: Skull Island.
For those that don't know, ARG stands for Alternate Reality Game. An ARG is an interactive game that uses the real world as the platform and employs transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players' ideas or actions. The very first clue coming from the first Cloverfield ARG was the graffiti on the walls and a t-shirt worn by one of the characters in the first movie preview that all said Slusho on it. Slusho became the first clue and when people searched it, they found a website dedicated to this fabricated product and people would dissect every inch of the website to find more websites for people to dissect spiraling into a large story leading up to the film's release finding out about a giant monster that has been disturbed in the ocean by Slusho's parent company, Tagruato. Years later, the second ARG began as soon as a random preview for10 Cloverfield Lane aired on TV. The ARG for10 Cloverfield Lane sort of took the game to the next level by having people actually searching outside of their homes to look for clues in certain areas. Once again, the search was on and as the clues and story was being unraveled players started getting suspicious that it was going into an odd direction finding out that it was about aliens invading Earth, which left a lot of people confused and disappointed that it wouldn't be about the monster from the first film.
Now, it may be happening again for God Particle, the third Cloverfield movie, after a Slusho truck was spotted at San Deigo Comic-Con last month. On the truck, it has a link for a twitter account to keep track of where it will appear (you can find the link at the bottom of this page). Also, if you were at San Deigo Comic-Con, you can also find out that it has a Snapchat logo that you can scan. Once you scan it, it will show you 5 icons. A monkey with its hand raised, the number 4, a smiley face, an hour glass, and a robot. People have already deciphered that it is a message that says, "Ask for Happy Time," but people are still trying to figure out what the robot stands for. Perhaps there is a different meaning on the message. Back in March 2016, J. J. Abrams, the producer of Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, said that there were some interesting ideas for the Cloververse (In the voice of Oprah Winfrey, "You get a universe! You get a universe! All of you movies gets a universe!") saying that if they have the chance to make it,"could be really cool to connect some stories." What could this mean for God Particle? Well, we are just going to have to wait and find out what happens.
What do you think? Will you be following the ARG or are you going to stick this one out? Is the Cloverfield ARG really beginning again? Will Jar Jar Abrams come through with his "Cloververse" idea and connect the stories together or is the Cloverfield series forever in that twilight zone where the stories are not really connected and are just separate stories? Leave a comment below and make sure to bookmark for more updates. If you REALLY want to follow the ARG, visit the Cloververse reddit and join with many other people like you to look for clues.
Twitter: @SLUSHOTRUCK
Reddit: Cloververse