July 2, 2001
9:27pm

Lately, I've been addicted to this cool internet game associated with the movie A.I. It all started on April 12th when the second trailer for the movie came out. In the credits was a "Sentient Property Therapist" named Jeanine Salla. If you type the name Jeanine Salla into the Google search site a page comes up that describes Salla as a professor at the Bangalore World University. It is the year 2142 and you have now entered the game.

One of Jeanine Salla's closest friends is a man named Evan Chan. Evan was a biothermal engineer who liked writing haikus and sailing on his boat Cloudmaker. One day Evan's body is found in the sea and his boat had been scuttled (whatever that means). At first his death was thought to be an accidental drowning, but it is later ruled a homicide. You have to find his murderer.

A group of people called Cloudmakers organized websites and message boards to help each other work out the clues. At first I didn't join them because I wanted to solve the mystery myself. However, the puzzles are so sophisticated that it's impossible to do it on your own. I soon joined them.

The game is very elaborate. There are many websites you must visit with puzzles to solve in order to get the clues for this mystery. The websites are very professional in appearance and it's obvious that a lot of time went into making them seem authentic. They even contain a lot of information that's unnecessary to the case, but go a long way to describe the futuristic world in which A.I. takes place.

The most remarkable aspect of this game is the live action element. The characters have phone numbers, voice mails, e-mails, fax numbers, etc. When you communicate with them in these ways, you get responses! Sometimes you can even catch live characters on the phone.

The neatest thing was the ARM (Anti-Robot Militia) rally. About a month or so ago it was announced that ARM would be having rallies in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Of course, all the Cloudmakers thought these rallies would be fake and information about them would be posted to the websites later. However, ARM began to set up registration so people really showed up. There were actual rally leaders in each of the cities. They lead the members to clues for the game. People in different cities communicated with each other via the internet (using cell phones) to keep others abreast of the clues that were deciphered. It sounded like it was a lot of fun.

Gamers were even treated to tickets for an advanced screening of A.I. I definately wanted to go, but I believe the closest theater offering the screening was in Chicago. That sucked. There was no way I'd be able to scrounge up the time or money to go from Cleveland to Chicago. Even for a movie.

It has definately been fun playing these past couple of months. We've figured out how many clues and I believe we are getting close to the solution. The game has to be winding down, especially now that A.I. is out. It will be really interesting to find out the final answer. Many characters have been murdered since Evan Chan's death. Even Jeanine Salla hasn't escaped an early demise. By the wide scope of attempt at permanent silence it is quite evident that this case is bigger than Evan.