Through the last month an alternative reality game related to the new Star Trek movie has been leaving clues on websites and in the real world, leading to a story of Romulans running around Earth and a desperate warning to Vulcan. Today the game has come to a close with a video message from Leonard Nimoy thanking participants announcing a winner from the finalists (all of whom are TrekMovie community members).
Nimoy Announces the winner
Leonard Nimoy thanks participants for ‘warning Vulcan’ and awards a hand-made USS Enterprise model to the winner, Matt. The video appeared in widgets from AlertVulcan.com this evening and we have uploaded it to YouTube.
Congrats to Matt!
MAY 12TH STAR TREK ARG REPORT 12 – FINAL
"All Good Things…"
After last week’s update, it was clear that something big would happen for the ARG on May 12th. The community that built up around the game gathered for one last time, and waited. And waited. And waited.
We checked the original binary sites that started the game We checked the chat sites where we first met the intrepid Romulans and learned of their desperate attempt to thwart genocide on a massive scale. We checked www.johannbayer.eu, whose grid puzzle tested the community’s motivation for days. We checked www.AlertVulcan.com, where the community united with the Romulans to amplify a warning message to Vulcan.
Nothing. All the sites remained unchanged.
In some timezones, May 12th turned to May 13th, and community members started to wonder if we made a mistake.
And then — the static cleared, and we were greeted by a message from the prototypical Vulcan: Mr. Spock himself! (above).
The PMs got it right: "hitching," "kosmopol," "Raphael," "Matt," and "WarpTube" all contributed immensely to the game, especially here at TrekMovie. And although the selection was random, I can think of no one more deserving than Matt, whose really plunged into the dynamics of the game, scrutinized the storyline, contributed thoughtful analyses, volunteered to follow through on others’ sometimes hare-brained speculations (mine included!), and made the whole effort more pleasant with his persistence and sense of fairness.
Congratulations, Matt!
Thank you and well done to everyone who contributed to the community effort that grew around this ARG. It’s been a blast, and made for a richer Star Trek experience!
If you want to follow the game from the beginning, check out the TrekMovie Star Trek ARG Category.
Congrats, Matt!! :D
Congrats Matt!
Congratulations Matt!
:D
Congrats Matt, it seemed like one heckuva’ game :-)
First! darn I didn’t know I might win something if I participated…
nevermind the first… that was very very wrong…
Fun stuff. Well dont everyone!
…..make that “well done everyone.” Makes a little more sense!
Congrats to Matt and to the other finalists. I am so happy that the TrekMovie community are the ones in the final five.
and a big thanks to Aliotsy who has been corralling these cats for the last month.
way to go Matt! It’s so cool to have worked with each person on that list! Everyone who participates is a winner but those 5 sure went above and beyond!
Geekdom at it’s height
Congrats! Well worth all that seriously hard work!
Congratulations!
Coolness Matt-Yes Anthony deserves to be proud that his smart community members won and placed in the top five! Give us the details on the model and a better pic of it-Looks sweet! Congrats Matt!
The probabilities are astounding… that it ended up with someone who deserved it most. Congrats, Matt. Great job!!
Unusual ending, for sure!
Congrats Matt
Congratulations Matt, and to the other finalists as well. Starfleet knows who it can depend on.
Congrads Matt
This has to be one of the most crap endings to anything I’ve been involved with and really kinda ruins the entire thing movie included.
How was this top 5 chosen?
Why was it limited to just them?
What about all the other people that solved clues and helped guide this game along?
Totally disappointing. Completely not in the spirit of Star Trek and the group effort put forth by the community at large. A lot of people who put a lot of effort into this were left sitting in the dust.
Congrats to Matt and the other finalists. Didn’t even know about this contest. XD
Congrats, Matt! I’m envious — I want that ship! :)
However, Vulcan wasn’t saved. I saw it get sucked into a black hole with my own eyes. So, in place of the Enterprise, you win the tissue Chris Pine stuck in his bloody nose after the bar fight.
Better luck next timeline. :-)
congrats ^^
Good job Matt and all the finalists!
Now get back to your job and families, enough life wasted.
Well, here we are.
I’m very grateful that we saw a conclusion to this game. Thanks you, PMs (whoever you are) for seeing it through. And for having Leonard Nimoy do the announcement at the end… it just doesn’t get cooler than that.
However, I don’t deserve this prize. This was a group effort, and almost all of us decried competition amongst each other for the sake of “winning.” So as cool as this all is, I intend to adhere to that feeling. This goes to all of us. There were a lot more than five of us who contributed enormously to this, and that includes this article’s author.
The question now is, how? I haven’t been contacted yet, but when I do I hope to find out more specifics. And I’d like to make it so that each of us has a piece of this prize.
(And no, I’m not talking about cutting it up into pieces. :-p )
I need more info from them first and then I can know better how to proceed with this, and how best to divide this huge reward amongst all of us who played an active part. So I will be in touch.
So. Does anyone in-game want to share their thoughts? How does this story end, anyway?
Congratulations Matt!!!! You got a awesome prize!!!!
And God Bless Leonard Nimoy!!! You’re the best!!!
Congrats Matt! I wish I was as brilliant as you to handle all that!
From one Vulcan, from another.
Live Long and Prosper Matt, you will always be able to find your way out of the most difficult situations.
And thank you, Ambassador Spock, for making the most momentous announcment.
At least we got a proper ending with an announcement *gg*
As a proud American I would like to say, in a British tradition, this: Three cheers for Matt! Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray! Congrats, Matt. May you and yours live long and prosper!
Congratulations Matt.
To be honest, we all had a fair chance of winning, Spocks vulcan neck pinch selected your name, you win, game over. You don’t have to do anything and none of us, including the ones from the hat will feel unhappy if you keep the prize, no one deserves it more anyway. I bet if you asked everyone to say one name, they all would of said yours. I know I would.
Well done bud, this is a sign and you know what it means *wink*
So I take it Vulcan wasn’t warned then? ;)
Cool ARG, thanks to all involved.
What still intrigues me though is how the Fringe episode tied into it, if at all. Any word on that?
Alriiight! Way to go, Matt. Congrats, buddy. Happy for ya.’
-18.. What a sore, sore thing to say…bloody fool.
Well done Matt.. good work sir!
Congrats to Matt!
And here is video in youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAmUn2K_4Go
(It’s really cool to hear my name spoken by the great Leonard Nimoy!)
Gratz Matt !!
thats pretty sweet
After somebody spoke a cool idea in chat, I’ve founded a group in Facebook for everybody, who played this ARG.
Let’s keep in touch!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=80681288757
Wait a minute. What happened to Kaleh?
Congratulations Matt — great work to the rest of the team!
Congratulations Matt! You deserve it.
I am just a little disappointed that the ARG ends without showing what happened to the different Romulans. Is Kaleh dead? What are the bad Romulans doing now? How did they come here? Are they now traveling to the future again? Is MalakO really dead? Is Vulcan really saved? I mean we saw something different in the movie. ;-) I really would have like to know the relationship of the ARG with the new Star Trek movie. An end summary would have been nice.
But all in all I have enjoyed the game. It was fun working together with so many other people from around the world. Hopefully they will do a new ARG for the next Star Trek movie and we can come together again for it.
They were right, if anyone was going to get something other than fun and frustration, it had to be one of you. Congratulations Matt! Playing this game with you all was a great experience. I’m in for the next one.
(Note to PM’s, Next time give us a real ending to the story)
MATT!
I was hoping there would be onion rings for the winner…
Oh well…. ;)
Seriously, I believe you are truly deserving of this honor!
Every time I came back to the chat, It was most often you, Matt, who updated me.
You were among the most selfless and logical of players.
I will value reading your chat, how you were always looking at every corner of this puzzle, how you seemed to understand it.
Bravo!
Live long and prosper (and stay in touch!)
-David
Congratulations hitching, kosmopol, Raphael, Matt, and WarpTube!
Long live Kaleh!
I want to thank everybody here, who played – and made – this ARG!
You rocks, girls and guys! :-)
Here is my Vulcan Salute for everybody:
http://merzmensch.blogspot.com/2009/05/star-trek-mit-vulkanischen-gruen.html
Great job everyone.
Congrats Matt and the other top 5 for getting top spots in a game that had little or no defined rules set.
I would have loved a more In-Game ending connecting and answering more questions, but a Nimoy message is still cool.
Congratulations! Well done!
Wow…they’ve kept Nimoy busy through all this.
Good job Matt… and the rest of the ARG gang!
Congrats, too, Matt….I’ll miss all the problem solving, and the fun from the chatroom. It got a little silly at times, but hey, that’s all part of the fun. It just ended all too abruptly.
And I think anyone who participated in the game would have thought hearing their chatroom name announced on the video by Nimoy to have been an incredibly cool prize in and of itself. I know I would have! :)
I’d really love to hear a “debrief” from the PM’s about the game, and whether we truly ran through the entire script, or if perhaps time or other factors forced an abrupt end. I think the fact that we saw the kidnap video get switched back to the chat transcript suggests strongly there was another chapter.
To have been a part of this little corner of Trek’s “reboot” in the midst of the movie was an unexpected treat, and were it not for TM, I’d never have known about it. Kudos to Anthony Pascale for dealing with ALL of us!! :0)
Beyond that, to have been a part of a small but literally world-wide community involved in solving these mysteries along the way couldn’t have been more Trek-apropos. We had players from Peru, the UK, Germany, and the American midwest in that chatroom. It was a blast. And the thought of helping unwind part of the puzzle was a tremendous rush – even if it was only to note the change of a background on a Twitter page!
It was a fun time, all, glad I was able to join in with you. I hope we all keep in touch, either here @ TM or on the facebook group. I don’t know how long the chatroom will remain open, but I’ll swing by and say hi just to see if anyone wants to visit :)
Congrats Matt! I would love to know who wrote this entire game up…that took almost as much imagination as the movie script itself; not to mention implementing it across several countries. Pretty amazing job.
Matt, go ahead, you did alot of work and were picked fairly.
Congrats