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Welcome to the wonderous world of the 10 Cloverfield Lane ARG. What the hell is an ARG? Well, if you're not familiar, let me introduce you to the Alternate Reality Game -- an obsessive, time-consuming and, when done right, a delightful form of gaming that brings the fictional into the real world and vice-versa. ARGs play out across multiple platforms in tech and real-life mediums, engaging the players in a treasure hunt of sorts to find the clues and solve the puzzle.

In this case, the puzzle is 10 Cloverfield Lane, the highly-anticipated quasi-followup to Cloverfield -- a film which helped pioneer the ARG as a form of marketing. If you're anything like me, you probably spent a significant chunk of 2007 engrossed in the gameplay, scouring the net for clues about the mysterious monster set to devastate Manhattan. There hasn't been a film-based ARG that could compete in the years since, but thankfully, with 10 Cloverfield Lane, the folks at Bad Robot saw fit to introduce a new game that not only matches the quality of its predecessor, but levels it up in a lot of ways.

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Image via Paramount Pictures

If you haven't spent the last eight weeks glued to a computer screen trawling for tidbits, I've got you covered. Below you'll find a fairly in-depth recap of the game to date (which I intend to update as more comes along) and all the clues it's provided to the mystery of 10 Cloverfield Lane. Fair warning -- this post is a beast. If you're into this kind of thing, you'll find plenty of info and links to dig into, but if not, I've provided a handy recap of the most salient information at the bottom of the post. Now, without further ado, let's get this (very nerdy) party started.

Be aware there are potential spoilers ahead, though there's nothing below that wasn't a public quote from the creative team or part of the ARG, and I've stayed clear of spoilers, so anything else is an educated guess. Much like the original campaign, I'd imagine the in-game reveals will serve more to color in the details than reveal the plot directly.

Why Should I Care About an ARG? It's 'Cloverfield' Tradition

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"It's a lion, it's huge!" Back in 2007, J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot pulled off the marketing equivalent of a magic trick by surprising unsuspecting moviegoers at their local Transformers screening with the trailer for a secret project. The footage kicked off without introduction, opening on hip twenty-somethings in the midst of a boozy farewell party, shot entirely in handheld, before the festivities were interrupted by quakes, explosions and, most ominously, a bellowing roar. After a few moments of frantic screaming, tripping and running, the trailer dropped the mic as the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty tumbled down a Manhattan street, and the screen flashed, not a title, but simply the release date "1-18-08". It was an ingenious marketing move, and an example of Abrams' much-maligned mystery box at it's best. Just like that, the internet went into a speculation frenzy, thrilled at the prospect of a hyper-realistic monster movie. But what was the force behind the destruction? Cthulu, Voltron, and Godzilla were among the popular theories, and then there was that infamous "It's a lion/It's alive" mix up.

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With theorizing at a peak, Bad Robot unleashed the next brilliant phase of Cloverfield's marketing strategy -- the ARG. The Bad Robot team set up Facebook accounts for the characters, blurry chronological snapshot clues hinting at the destruction, fake corporation websites and news stories, and a whole lot more. Essentially, a series of clues scattered across the internet that built up the world of Cloverfield. You didn't have to play the game to get the movie, but if you did, you got a whole lot more than the average movie-goer.

Cut to January of this year, and Bad Robot managed to pull off the impossible for a second time, surprising audiences with another trailer for a secret movie in front of another Michael Bay film (13 Hours). But this time, it was all about the title. The trailer opened with a deceptively jaunty vibe, the ever-lovable John Goodman and two injured young folk (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Ghallager Jr.) bopping about to "I Think We're Alone Now" in a homey, if anachronistic, atmosphere. Suddenly a quake ripples through their quaint abode, the music slows to dragging, and things turn sinister in a hurry as you realize that at least one of these people is trapped in an underground bunker against their will with an unknown deadly threat lurking just outside. The word "Cloverfield" flashes across the screen for a moment before the full title, 10 Cloverfield Lane, is revealed. Boom. Lightening in a bottle for the second time. Instant frenzy and fanfare, and a double whammy marketing scheme that revived a long-dormant brand while garnering substantial attention for a small film that might have otherwise flown under the radar. Just like that, speculation and theorizing ran rampant again.

Was that Clovie stomping around outside (Abrams squashed that one pretty quickly), and if not, what could the monster be this time around? Would there be monsters at all? Maybe this one's about the parasites? Is John Goodman's character a psycho or a savior, or both? And most importantly, how does it all connect to Cloverfield? Fortunately, the folks at Bad Robot knew exactly what they were doing, and exactly where the dogged fanbase would look for answers...in the still-standing relics of the original ARG, which hadn't been active for nearly a decade. Namely, the Tagruato website, where the new game begins.

What is Tagruato? The Key to 'Cloverfield' Mythology

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The fictional drilling corporation known as Tagruato was a major player in the Cloverfield ARG, but if you've never heard of the company, don't be surprised. Unless you played along, or paid very very close attention to the buildings in Star Trek, there's no reason you should know the name. You might, however, be familiar with one of Tagruato's subsidiaries -- the ICEE-esque Japanese beverage company Slusho, which has cameoed in a majority of Bad Robot properties including Alias, Lost, Fringe, Super 8, even the off-brand Heroes for some reason (blame Greg Grunberg?), but most importantly, Cloverfield.

Slusho appeared briefly in the film itself (Rob was heading off to Japan for his job as the company's VP of marketing), but along with its parent company, it played a huge role in the ARG that informed the film. There's a lot more detail to this, which you can read an in-depth a summary of here (or you can pick through the individual pieces yourself in the CloverfieldClues backlog), but here's the gist:

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Slusho's secret ingredient, the highly-addictive "seabed nectar" is retrieved by Tagruato's deep sea drills. In 2007, a Tagruato employee made an "amazing discovery" before he and his entire family were killed only days later and his computers wiped clean. Shortly after, the company opened the new Chuai drilling station off the coast of New York City and launched their space program via another subsidiary company, Bold Futura, with the satellite the Hatsui.

At the same time, a environmentalist guerrilla group called "T.I.D.O. Wave" moved against Tagruato, infiltrating the Chuai station in hopes of uncovering the real goings on. It did not go well, and the activists who embarked on the mission were never found, but the events were somewhat told thanks to a series of video blogs (pw: jllovesth) from one of their girlfriends (later seen passed out at Rob's farewell party). The major highlight being that there was no oil at the drilling station, just "seabed nectar". Shortly after T.I.D.O. Wave's mission and shortly before Clovie's attack on NYC, Chuai station was destroyed (which Tagruato blamed on ecoterrorists) and video footage revealed a "dark shape below the surface" thought to be an oil spill. Except we know from the evidence that a) Tagruato is full of shit, and b) there was no oil at that station, leading to the conclusion that Tagruato discovered and disturbed Clovie, who emerged "confused, disoriented and irritable" and commenced taking down whatever wass in his path -- starting with the Chuai station.

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So how does this all relate to 10 Cloverfield Lane? After the trailer dropped, some clever folks sent Tagruato an in-world email, and noticed that the replies were signed by the "Employee of the Month: 2016 January." An important detail considering the Tagruato hadn't been updated since 1/18/08. Follow up emails led people to the Tagruato Employee of the Month website where, boom goes the dynamite, John Goodman's disgruntled visage (as seen in the image above) introduced the world to Bold Futura's Telemetry Analyst Howard Stambler, confirmed the game was on once again, and led to the next major clue.

Who Is Howard Stambler? Crazy Jon Goodman

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Howard Stambler is the full name of Goodman's character, who is either the kidnapper or would-be savior Winstead's character, depending on what version of reality turns out to be true in the film. If you're drawing conclusions based on the ARG, he might be a little bit of both. Before I give the full breakdown, let's just say that 10 Cloverfield Lane's ARG has essentially blown the original out of the water, adding real world experiences to the tech-based game, leading to real-life locales where people found burner cell phones in Eiffel tower bags and a full-on bug-out kit buried beneath a Swamp Pop bottle in a Louisianna field. It's been killer. Now, let's dig in.

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Two quick notes:

  • We still don't know what the hell all the Eiffel Towers are about, but they're all over the trailer and the ARG.
  • Swamp Pop, the soda featured in the trailer, hasn't led to any significant hints despite being available for purchase nationwide for some weeks now. The site does, however, offer a sold-out "long-term shelter supply", which is a fun little nod.

The first step was the jump from Stambler's "Radioman70" T-shirt, which, when typed in as a URL, leads to FunandPrettyThings (FAPT for short), a deceptively simple website apparently designed by a tween girl that is, in fact, Stambler's desperate means to reach out to his long-estranged daughter, Megan. Some sharp-eyed players noted that that among the images was a set of alphabetical beads missing the letters that spell out "Megan" and a clickable image from Pretty in Pink that prompted a password command. In short order, the password was determined to be a line from the film "Do you want to talk?", which opens up a chat dialogue for Stambler to communicate with Megan.

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In an attempt to keep this guide from spinning out of control, I won't recap all of Stambler's messages, but suffice it to say, there have been a series updates over the course of which a few things became very clear:

  • Stambler can't spell for shit. There was a significant effort to find patterns or hidden messages in Stambler's errors, but to no avail.
  • He is a paranoid survivalist who is possibly delusional (there's a substantial contingent who believe Megan is dead and her passing broke his psyche).
  • Thanks to his career in satellites, Stambler knows that a massive threat to the human race is imminent, and he's begging Megan to take any means necessary to reach his bunker before it hits. However, whether he knows the actual origin of the threat (he has a lot to say about Soviets) remains to be seen.
  • He hates his ex-wife. That probably has nothing to do with the movie, but there it is.

But here's where it gets really fun. Over the course of Stambler's FAPT updates, new links became active, including a survival guide he created for Megan full of "life preserving information". Subsequent posts provided one redditor with a set of coordinates that led him to a field in Louisianna where he found a Swamp Pop bottle marking the ground and he literally dug up a cartridge case filled with survival gear and a pair of USB drives containing audio recordings of a satellite launch. You can listen to or read the transcript of the files here, but in summary, they revealed that there is some funky ass inexplicable shit going on up in space. Take from that what you will. Worth noting, this was addressed to "friend", not Megan.

Shortly after, a survival simulation game appeared on the "life preserving information" page, set up by Stambler to prep Megan for what life in the bunker would be like. I won't lie, it's hard, which is why it was so impressive when another Redditor made it to 1060 days on the sim and unlocked a new message from Stambler that led to a locker in New Orleans where a burner phone was found in an Eiffel Tower lunch bag. The phone contained a voicemail from Stambler to Megan -- seemingly voiced by Goodman himself, which is just damn awesome. So far the phone has not revealed any major hints, but there has been a recent contact attempt from Stambler, so stay tuned. A message about his ex-wife Denise selling his family's antique silverware led to a CraigsList post, and when players attempted to contact the seller, it prompted a message on FAPT from Denise, who confirmed, if nothing else, that Stambler is short-tempered and unhinged.

The most recent update comes not from Stambler or Denise, but a third party who also uses the term "friend" and left an audio file that, when filtered through a decoder, presents an image of a vague object hovering in space above earth. The only update since is a desperate and defeated message from Stambler, who seems to be losing hope of communicating with Megan, UPDATE: With the film now in theaters (and thus, Howard headed into the bunker) he has officially given up hope and left one last defeated voicemail, which you can check out here and here.

So What Does 'Cloverfield' Have to Do with It? Basically Nothing...For Now

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Sort of. Maybe. But, of course, nothing with J.J. Abrams is ever that simple

Abrams and Trachtenberg have remained adamant throughout the brief marketing phase that 10 Cloverfield Lane is not a sequel to Cloverfield, referring to it in vague terms like "blood relative" and "spiritual successor", comparing the films to Twilight Zone stories that put a unique spin on well-trod genres. However, many held out hope that there might reference the events of the first film or, at least, hints that the films share an interconnected universe. Now, it seems that is decidedly untrue -- or, at least, they don't share a "timeline", which is the term Trachtenberg has taken to using in his most recent interviews. In his recent AMA, Trachtenberg clarified that "10 Clover Lane and Cloverfield are two different stories. They're on different timelines," but also teased a possible interconnected universe in the future, "But, I think the exciting thing is that now Cloverfield is becoming a universe, and there are some connections. And hopefully, there will continue to be more connections."

In his interview with /Film, Trachtenberg repeated the "timeline" sentiment but shied away from calling it a "parallel universe." Even more telling, in his interview with Stephen Colbert, Abrams (who has already hinted at a third Cloverfield film that could connect the stories) finally dropped the A-word we've all been waiting for -- these are "anthology" films -- but he also teased "a connecting idea that [they're] working on and if lucky enough [to make it]." So that's that. 10 Cloverfield Lane does not connect to Cloverfield...at least for now. I have a lot of theories on how the films could prove interconnected in the future, but I'll save those for another piece and leave it to y'all to speculate in the comments for now.

Why Is This So Long? Because I'm Huge Nerd, Here Are the Cliff Notes

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I did my best to keep this concise, but you got to remember I'm trying to summarize weeks worth of interactive gameplay (and a whole other ARG before that), so yeah, this is a bit long. If you don't care to read the rest, here's the absolutely-need-to-know details we've learned from the ARG.

  • John Goodman plays Howard Stambler, a scientist for Bold Futura -- a subsidiary of the fictional corporation Tagruato, whose deep sea drilling led to the monster attack in Cloverfield.
  • The Cloverfield ARG focussed on Tagruato's deep-sea drilling, which led to Clover's attack. The 10 Cloverfield Lane game has focused on Bold Futura's space missions. That seems telling.
  • Stambler is a deeply paranoid survivalist and possibly unhinged guy desperate to reconnect with his daughter before the impending attack he believes is coming.
  • Given the nature of his profession (he works with satellites), it's possible Stambler knows the reality of the "not of this natural earth" threat humankind is facing, but considering his insistence that threat comes from the Soviets, he might be misreading the clues entirely.
  • According to the satellite launch files, there is some freaky shit going on up in space -- if I had to guess given the clues, I'd say the new "monster(s)" comes from above, not below.
  • Other than the Tagruato connection, 10 Cloverfield Lane doesn't seem to share any overlap with Cloverfield beyond the title.
  • According to director Dan Trachtenberg the two films do not exist on the same "timeline", though based on his and Abram's wishy-washy language, and the insistence that the hope is to set up a bigger scheme, it's possible that they will exist in different timelines of the same universe or that there is some other overarching connection that's not yet revealed.
  • We still don't know what the eff all the Eiffel Towers are about, but they may amount to nothing more than Stambler's idea of what Megan would like, and a means to help inform the players that we were on the right track.
  • The ARG is not completed, and may continue after the film is released. I'll keep this piece updated as new information drops [within reason; we're talking days, not years here.]
  • Regardless of whether the film's narratives end up connected, Bad Robot has done a tremendous job of replicating the intrigue of the Cloverfield experience, from the surprise trailer drop to the intricate ARG, which was remarkably compelling and satisfying for the brief time in which it played out.

That's all for now folks, hope you enjoyed catching up on the viral campaign, and if you played along with the ARG as well, I hope you had as much fun as I did. And to all the players across the web (especially those killing it on the subreddit), thanks for all your obsessive diligence! And a side note, now that 10 Cloverfield Lane has had a number of screenings, spoilers are out there in force. Please be courteous and keep them out of the comments. This was a great experience, don't muck it up.