Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games

Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games: "Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games"

Interview: Trent Reznor on Year Zero, Planting Clues, and What's Ludicrous About Being a Musician Today
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NinWiki: Guide to Year Zero

The initial clue was so subtle that for nearly two days nobody noticed it.

On February 10, 2007, the first night of Nine Inch Nails' European tour, T-shirts went on sale at a 19th-century Lisbon concert hall with what looked to be a printing error: Random letters in the tour schedule on the back seemed slightly boldfaced. Then a 27-year-old Lisbon photographer named Nuno Foros realized that, strung together, the boldface letters spelled "i am trying to believe." Foros posted a photo of his T-shirt on the Spiral, the Nine Inch Nails fan forum. People started typing "iamtryingtobelieve.com" into their Web browsers. That led them to a site denouncing something called Parepin, a drug apparently introduced into the US water supply. Ostensibly, Parepin was an antidote to bioterror agents, but in reality, the page declared, it was part of a government plot to confuse and sedate citizens. Email sent to the site's contact link generated a cryptic auto-response: "I'm drinking the water. So should you." Online, fans worldwide debated what this had to do with Nine Inch Nails. A setup for the next album? Some kind of interactive game? Or what?