Thousands of players engaged in virtual murder mystery

Reality blurs, hype builds with Web 'A.I.' game

Artificial intelligence: The capability of computers or programs to operate in ways believed to mimic human thought processes, such as reasoning and learning.
— Webster's New World Dictionary

By Daniel Sieberg
CNN

(CNN) -- Evan Chan has been murdered. The enigma begins with this ominous premise. Details begin to surface. A woman named Jeanine Salla is believed to hold the key. Suspects include robots and humans. An anti-robot militia prepares for combat. Chaos may ensue.

Except none of this scenario is real.

At least, not exactly.

It's all part of a dizzyingly intricate game being played out by thousands of online participants.

ALSO Profile: Steven Spielberg From quirky childhood to box-office titan Gallery: A life behind the camera From TIME.com: 'A.I.' - Spielberg's Strange Love    VIDEO 'A.I.' premieres in New York: CNN's Jodi Ross talks with Haley Joel Osment and Steven Spielberg about their latest film, 'A.I.' (June 26) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media) CNN's James Hattori reports on the mystery behind the summer release of 'A.I.' (June 4) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

But the "Puppetmasters" -- as the game's creators are known -- would be just as happy for people to believe that it's really unfolding in a parallel universe to the one portrayed in the new film, "A.I.," from Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks Pictures and Warner Bros. "A.I." is scheduled to hit theaters in the United States on June 29.

Analysts see this online game as both clever marketing and a sign that the entertainment industry has finally begun capitalizing on the ubiquity of the Internet.

But it could become a double-edged sword, say some observers, if Spielberg and company don't deliver a product that lives up to the hype.

'I don't understand it, Hal'

The phenomenon started in April with promotional material distributed by the studios. And it was Harry Knowles, creator of Ain't It Cool News -- one of the most popular entertainment sites -- who's credited with writing the first story about the game.

Knowles says he received an anonymous e-mail in April from a recipient titled "claviusbase" at Hotmail.com. The message suggested he do a Web search on the name "Jeanine Salla," whose moniker is also listed as the "Sentient Machine Therapist" in the official movie credits.

("Clavius Base" is a lunar colony some 200 miles from the Tycho crater monolith site in Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey." Perhaps the best-known evocation of artificial intelligence to date is the Hal 9000 computer in that 1968 work.)

Knowles says he then came across the site for a fictional Bangalore World University -- founded in 2028 at which Salla is supposedly a professor. He continued to dig around, and after checking the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses he happened across almost 50 sites registered to the same group.

This Web page features Jeanine Salla, founder of the fictional Bangalore World University and alleged holder of the "A.I." Web game's key

Knowles says he's now convinced that the studios are connected to the origins of the game, simply because of the direct link between official promotion material and the Internet.

He published a story on his site, and says that at that point "people began to go crazy."

Knowles says there were about 22,000 messages posted on his site during the two months following his coverage.

"Eventually I got overwhelmed with too many queries," says Knowles. "And my site isn't about 'A.I.' promotion, it's about movies."

'It does seem strange, Dave'

Because of the growing fascination with the game, Knowles says there's a lot of pressure on the studio and Spielberg to deliver an innovative film for the wired fans and to live up to the online hysteria created by the game.

"They're raising expectations greatly, simply because of how secretive it is," he says. "If this movie does anything traditional, the audience will walk out and lynch Spielberg."

The game itself has little to do with the actual film, Knowles adds. Instead, its intention is to establish a parallel plot and define the constructs of the universe in "A.I.," complete with a few crossover characters.

Although the game has attracted a new audience, Knowles says the studio risks alienating other parts of the demographic if the game is seen as too confusing or convoluted, and then connected to the film itself.

Harry Knowles, creator of Ain't It Cool News, is credited with writing the first story about the game after receiving an anonymous e-mail that directed him to character Jeanine Salla

"It's gotten a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in the film. At least in this case, the studio finally understood what happened with 'The Blair Witch Project,'" says Knowles.

But Knowles stops short of saying that the "A.I" Web buzz is bigger than that of "The Blair Witch Project." He gives a couple of reasons for that: More people, he says, can relate to the idea of college kids running around with video cameras -- and a grainy version of "The Blair Witch Project" was available online months before the film's release, which provided frenzied excitement and curiosity.

'I want to do this myself, Hal'

So who's standing behind the curtain?

A spokeswoman for Warner Bros. in New York offers only a few cryptic comments on the game.

"We don't have any official position on that," she says. "It's not something that we created."

Previously published reports have suggested that Microsoft Corp. is involved with the design and maintenance of the game, but no one from the Redmond, Washington-based company would comment for this story.

But it doesn't really matter who's behind the game, says Idil Cakim, director of media strategies at Cyber Dialogue, an Internet and business analyst company based in New York.

Denying any involvement is likely a PR tactic, says Cakim, aimed at heightening the intrigue. She says she sees the game as an ingenuous idea that will benefit the studio and create a true interaction between viewers and the movie.

"Technology is often accused of standing between the user and an experience," says Cakim. "But in this case, they're part of the whole scenario. It illustrates how flexible the Web is as a marketing tool. It doesn't always have to be banner ads.

"In all these cases," Cakim says, "the key is to look at the online community that forms around it. Companies need to understand not just genre preferences, but lifestyle preferences."

For example, a sizable portion of the digital community has read the "Lord of the Rings" books or watched all of the "Star Wars" movies. As such, the Internet is a natural venue to market those films, and both have done well in reaching an online audience, says Cakim.

Indeed, aware of the "A.I." fervor, 20th Century Fox has initiated an online campaign for "Planet of the Apes" known as Project A.P.E. (Alternative Primate Evolution), which centers on "geocaching" -- a techie term for worldwide scavenger hunting. That film is set for a July 27 release in the United States.

The use of the Internet to market a film in this manner also reaches an international audience more quickly, Cakim says.

The majority of this audience is organized into an online community of avid "A.I." game players called "Cloudmakers" -- a reference to the boat on which Evan Chan was killed.

"A.I," a new film from Steven Spielberg starring Haley Joel Osment, is believed to be the inspiration for the game

Most of the Cloudmaker participants who responded to CNN are in their 20s and say they consider the group to be bound together in a united cause.

No one is certain about how many people are playing, but the recent number of registered message board users on Cloudmakers.org is close to 5,000.

Andrea Phillips, a 26-year-old software designer who lives in Oceanside, New York, says part of the excitement is watching game react to players. It appears to be organic in nature, says Phillips, responding to the thousands of people who are playing.

She says she also sees it as a way to stretch her mind.

"To date, puzzles have had us reading Goedel, Escher and Bach, translating from German and Japanese, even an obscure language called Kannada, decrypting Morse code and Enigma, and performing an unbelievable range of operations on sound and image files."

The creation of fake or misleading sites hasn't hampered the game play, says Phillips, since the Cloudmakers are able to cross-reference IP addresses to ascertain their authenticity.

'Daisy, Daisy ...'

So what happens when the movie is released or the mystery is solved?

"We've become a pretty close community in a lot of ways, so I imagine at least some of the core element will stick together," says Phillips. "I know I'll want to keep in touch with a lot of the people I've met through the game."

Adrian Hon, a freshman at Cambridge University, echoes Phillips' friendship sentiments.

"Once the game has ended, I'm sure that I will stay in contact with other friends I've made during the course. Who knows? There are a lot of imaginative and hard-working people in the Cloudmakers -- we might want to start our own game one day."

Is Steven Spielberg the Wizard of this Oz? Is it Bill Gates? Who are the Puppetmasters? Why was Evan Chan murdered?

Questions abound with the online "A.I." game, and perhaps only a fraction of them will be answered. But to the participants, it seems the adage is true: "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game."

Warner Bros., a sister AOL Time Warner company to CNN.com, is a production and distribution participant in "A.I."

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