by Maria Bonasia, 30th May 2001

"What's going to happen?"

"Something wonderful."

"I can't tell you where this is headed."

The final comment is purported to come from a beleaguered Doug Zartman, imploring us frenzied Cloudmakers to stop clogging his mailbox with plaintive requests for clues, or even just confirmation that he is spearheading the Game.

He isn't.

Here's the problem: recently, we normal, intelligent people have been devoting outrageous percentages of our days, weeks, months to a game that broadsided us with two enticements-it wasn't bloated and hung down with its own hype, and it was free. As in, no money. Sophisticated, jaded, observant people that we are, we know this is because Dreamworks and Warner Brothers want to publicize a summer movie. We're being asked to promote the film - to our friends, roommates, partners - to go with an open mind, and no preconceptions (which we have, or had, because that's just the nature of things.) In our age, we know before the ink no longer smears on the contracts whether a movie will be good or bad. Or indifferent. (Which, ironically, is what we've become, faced with the overwhelming glut of such information.)

Well - damn if we're not interested now! Wow. Can any of us think back to when we didn't have two or three mindbending puzzles to hack, or crack, or scream about, or go running to all corners of the internet in search of obscure tidbits? Well, yes. Of course we can. It's just not fun to do so.

Which brings me to the real heart of the problem: why are we doing this? What's at the end? What kind of game are we playing? And what's the prize? A game, after all, needs a conclusion, just as a maze has a heart. But the difficulty is, if we're not even sure what type of game we're playing, how can we know what lies at the end?

Let's put aside the fact (quite undeniable) that this is for selling a product. Let's put aside the idea that this is to make us want to view a movie, and to get as many other people that we know to attend as well. Let's put aside the fact that perhaps, under the surface of the game lies an unsavory plan to get the majority of players to purchase additional software, game players, books and DVDs. (For me, that's a whole different issue... and a whole other essay.)

What remains? A great deal - not the least of which is that this game represents not the future of marketing for movies, or for games, or even for the web itself, but the future of movies. Give us all enough time and technology, and we won't be watching Lord of the Rings or Spiderman - we'll be living it. And talking to others about it. And changing events before they unfold, leading to a form of viewing that isn't viewing at all.

Which brings me back to what we're playing now, and what we're playing toward. During the long, long, loooooonnngg nights struggling through pi calculations and researching English gardeners, a few options as to "prizes" seemed possible:

• The more incisive gameplayers might be given free passes and/or special showings.
• To truly "solve" the Game, attendance of the movie would be necessary, to seek out info alluded to in gameplay and revealed onscreen.
• There are "alternate ending" films to AI made for gameplayers.
• There is something else at the heart of the maze.

The first three options are standard rewards in both orthodox and unorthodox marketing campaigns. Perhaps the second choice is slightly more unusual, but was certainly hinted at during the now-infamous Blair Witch campaign. However, all three of these options are inherently tied to viewing the movie after playing the Game, and that's something most of us were planning to do anyway.

Which is why I believe in the fourth option. There's something else at work here - in a movie and game about intelligence, (multiple, artificial, innate, evolved, acquired) the Game sings, and stands, and plays by itself. To play the Game, you don't need to watch the movie. (I suspect that to complete the Game, you won't need to watch the movie.) It's been proven that all of us depend on each other's spoilers to carry us through those puzzles that we can't solve individually - which was a hardwired fact of the Game since the beginning. On the morning of the premiere, we'll know the plot, subplot, conflict, climax and dialogue down to the last poignant pause. Surely the PMs know this; they also know that most of us will go anyway, to experience it for ourselves. So something undiscovered still remains - the heart of this (and whatever that implies.)

At first, I thought it was a brilliant recruiting forum; Spielberg, having decided to give us hungry pups a shot at "auditioning" to work for Mount Olympus (aka Dreamworks) in a manner reminiscent of The Last Starfighter, uses the AI promotion. This has been a favorite speculation of many a Cloudmaker. However, I suspect it's not going to happen. If it's true that most of the work for creating the Game has been outsourced, than those intrepid freelance PMs have a far better chance at pulling home a Dreamworks paycheck than we do. (At least they're in daily contact with them - and besides, I don't think Spielberg is so hard up for employees that he needs to post the equivalent of a multimillion dollar help-wanted ad.)

Second (and more intriguing) is the possibility that this Game might, would, could produce what we've been wrangling with all along: an (admittedly low-level) sentient artificial intelligence. While this would blow my mind - and completely blur the line between entertainment and philosophical and technological advances in our modern society - I suspect that's not the case. It's almost too big a discovery - somewhat along the lines of Spielberg trotting out a cloned velociraptor at the premiere of Jurassic Park. Too big, too world-shattering, too wonderful, that happy scientists could not keep from shouting the news themselves, long before an inflexible, predetermined date. Besides, when a discovery is made by one group of scientists, others are always close behind, perhaps mere months or weeks from their own equivalent breakthrough. The human genome race is a wonderful example. So, even if Warner Brothers, EA, Microsoft, Spielberg, or Dreamworks had funded (and subsequently owned) technology that developed a low-level sentient AI, (and decided to keep the discovery under wraps) another think tank could make the same discovery within a reasonable window of time - and the concerned corporations would have no control over their announcement. While this would be unbelievably cool, it probably isn't a feasible option. (Wish it were.)

Option three... how to start? As wonderful as this game is, it's creepy. Chilling. Insidious, even, in that it consumes our idle and working hours, instills paranoia, sends us looking for connections to the Game in the most obscure corners of our lives. Is there anything at all familiar about these emotions, these paths of perception? Specifically, as they relate to "entertainment" - taking that as films, books, games, puzzles, or thought -provoking amusements in general?

This game is the result of a multitude of brilliant minds. Some we know (or suspect); others we wait to congratulate on elegant, well-researched puzzles and plotlines. But there is one mind that has placed its unique trademark in every clue; lurked behind every page: Kubrick's.

I'm not sure where to go with this-and with what I'm about to speculate. I am a rational person who devours mysteries, and this is one of the best mysteries I've experienced in years. But I'll strike out in foreign territory here, and hope not to offend anyone. This game was built on speculation, (as is most of science fiction) and this seems to be the most logical route for what appears to be an incomprehensible mystery. It could be - it just could be - that Kubrick is alive. While I wish rather than believe this, there are clues throughout the game that looked at in a certain way, present this as a legitimate possibility. (How many? What kinds? Really? No, really?)

Really? I'm not sure. Several dozen, at least. Look at the concrete, actual gameplay-the kinds of puzzles and sites. Look at Kubrick's movies. Look at his life, and at his relationship with Spielberg. Look at the game overall - and the marketing (non-marketing, that is) and at AI (the actual movie, or what little information we've collected about it.) Look at the Game from a metaphysical standpoint - why this movie? Why this storyline? Why now? Why is it playing out like this, and why us-why are we responding as we are?

While that is the more outrageous speculation, and the reality may be proven that the good director is irrevocably deceased, it doesn't mean that Kubrick is not attached to this. He almost unquestionably was. In certain terms, his footprint is "in the sphere." Somewhere, in those seven hundred documents faxed to Spielberg lay the Game - and I suspect, a pretty advanced stage of it. What sprang from that framework is a magnificent tribute to Kubrick's philosophy - about movies, books, science, mathematics, games, art-life in general. This is the real game, Cloudmakers - and we've proven that we're well equipped for the task. Let's see what's trying to be said with the death of Evan Chan-and who's actually saying it.

Just don't bother Zartman anymore.

Maria Bonasia can be reached at blbxwtbw@mindspring.com.