10 Cloverfield Lane ARG

A viral alternate reality game campaign for the J.J. Abrams-produced surprise sequel, one of the most closely guarded film secrets of 2016.

// producerParamount Pictures & Bad Robot
// my roleARG Designer & Writer
// overview

Howard Stambler's secret, hiding in a shirt

The 10 Cloverfield Lane ARG launched months before the film's release. It began with reviving Tagruato, a fictional deep-sea drilling company from the original Cloverfield movie, whose corporate website had been sitting dormant for years…until the Employee of the Month page was quietly updated with new honorees, including Howard Stambler (John Goodman). The logo on his shirt led players down a rabbit hole to a password-protected secret chat room Howard built for his estranged daughter Megan, to deliver a series of warnings that something terrible was about to happen.

// my role

Designing for scrutiny and balance

I designed and wrote the ARG and all in-fiction content. Everything a player discovered had to feel like it had existed before they found it. ARG players are a specific kind of audience; they will examine every pixel, reverse-image-search every photo, demodulate audio files looking for hidden images, and dig into source code looking for messages. Each piece had to hold up to intense scrutiny while also staying accessible to more casual followers.

Screenshot of FunAndPrettyThings.com, an in-fiction website showing a grid of colorful photos of crafts, food, and personal items, designed to look like a real personal hobby blog, but hiding clues for ARG players.
A hand reaching into a plastic bag to retrieve a small sealed container buried in dirt and straw, labeled with military-style coordinates text reading '10 Cloverfield Lane ARG Coordinates Discovery' — a physical cache planted as part of the ARG.
// process

What can Howard say, and what can't he?

The main tension in the film revolves around the question of Howard's sanity. How much of what he's saying is true? What is delusion? What are lies? Striking that balance meant building a psychological profile for Howard that would mirror that tension; I had to design a story and a voice that made logical and emotional sense in the moment, and also once the film's secrets had been revealed. All without revealing anything that would spoil the experience of the film, and staying true to John Goodman's indelible performance.

Each week Howard's situation got more desperate, with the ARG's in-fiction timeline running parallel to the film's marketing calendar. Howard's chat room led to a DOS-based survival simulation game. Clues in the trailers led to a dead drop site in Louisiana, where fans dug up a buried box. Inside, they found a USB drive with an audio recording of a strange occurrence on the International Space Station. A later dead drop led to a locker in Chicago with a burner phone and messages from Howard himself. The ever-expanding scope of the story captivated the obsessive audience and took them right up to the moment the film began.