by Jenna Wortham for www.wired.com
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A new YouTube video and blog point at the latest venture in immersive marketing/gaming — a possible alternate reality game, or ARG for the new Fox show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
EniTech Research Labs is claiming to have a camera capable of capturing images 1193 days, or roughly three years, into the future. Employees are documenting their findings and asking for feedback on a company blog; there’s even a Cyberdyne Facebook group.
ARGNet, along with several other sites, speculate that the site could be a viral marketing ploy for new Fox show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, pointing to a potential ‘nother rabbit hole, a site counting down 1191 days, and a world map of nuclear strike targets, along with a tally of the human and cyborg populations.
Keen viewers noted that a EniTech researcher mentions involvement with CyberDyne Systems, also referred to in EniTech blog posts, which Terminator fans will remember as the company behind Skynet, a defense system that becomes self-aware, and instigates the machine revolt that fuels the trilogy. Additionally, a post at EniTech refers to Miles Dyson by name, a programmer targeted and killed by Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 to prevent the cyborg war.
The best part of the viral marketing gag is the high level of reciprocation and the humorous exchange between players and ARG creators: A craigslist’s ad seeking a willing time-traveler featuring a hilariously bad ’80s mullet was recently reposted on the EniTech blog; the image of San Francisco (pictured above) was taken at the suggestion of a Digg user, who quipped: “They should take an image of San Francisco. I must know if we eradicated the Mission hipster problem.”
We’ll keep following the threads as they unravel; stay tuned for more details as they surface.
