Year Zero

Nine Inch Nails

Promotion of their upcoming album
“Year Zero”

The album Year Zero (Rel. April 17, 2007)

 Quick Statistics
• Feb 10, 2007 - Present (in reality Feb - May of 2007)

•Elan Lee’s Co. eDoc Played a huge role in one of the

rabbit holes by creating the t-shirts and various other
things

•The phone numbers in game received over 2 million hits

each

• Total of 20 pieces on almost all major continents; the

total game ended in L.A.

•At concerts because of clues found people started

changing their behavior.

• RIAA miscommunication Reznor was sued for leaking

his own music.

The Game Ran from Feb 10, 2007 - May of 2007 In reality it really hasn’t ended just paused

Elan Lee and eDoc and the clothing it was a huge player in the game and eDoc was acquired by 42 ent.

The Phone Numbers were called 2 million times

20 pieces put in almost every part of the world including Lisbon , London, Sydney, All of U.S.

The show in Spain people went to the restrooms as soon as they were let into the venue b\c of the flash drive found in the
previous venues not to their seats or the pit.

RIAA sued the “pirates” for the music on behalf of record label and then were told off b\c the hope was to leak the music and a
lot of the music was leaked already on purpose. RIAA didn’t know ended up even suing Reznor himself
 Quick Statistics Pt. Deaux
• A new demographic was tapped for players
and a players market.

• New problems were found

• the story was created way before ARGs even

existed, Reznor saw the potential for mixed
media story telling.

• A new set of puzzles and clues

- monaural devices were used to decipher
clues out of the music
- stereoscope to get the phone number out
of garbage audio

New demographic playing the game and old players as well

New game challenges. Moving too fast or not fast enough. The music was not going to bit torrent as expected some of the
puzzles were not being solved fast enough. No clear end as usual.

Reznor had already seen the story created in his head (Revolutionary) as well as he had already wanted to do something like this
and to him was pushing his creative power something completly different.

Puzzles were based on a different bias a lot harder than what we’ve seen before. Using audio spectrographs, the T-shirts sold at
concerts.
Traditional puzzles as well websites encoded.
 Some of the in
Game Stuff
A v i d e o o f w h a t w a s
f o u n d . . .

Redhorsevector.com
 The Game\Story
• Your standard
conspiracy story
-the govt. is releasing
chemicals in the water
-there is the resistance
-Pre- and Post- year zero
events shape what is
happening.
•The end ... kinda ... was a
concert for 50 of the fans
\players a private concert
“the Resistance Movement
\Meeting”

Standard conspiricy theory just with a lot of future events and based off of events that actually happened. i.e. gulf war bush
election, 9/11, next gulf war, privacy act.
 What it Changed
•Trent Reznor (the band’s Lead) was one
of the first people to have an ARG for
ARG’s Sake

“It’s not FU¢£!%g Marketing”-Trent

Reznor

•Disney and Warner Bros. Records

companies were so surprised at the hits on
the sites and various other responses
they wanted to buy 42 Entertainment as a
marketing tool

A truly big budget grass roots ARG BUT!!! not really because of the fact that it still ultimately promoted his album eventhough it
was self funded and paid out of his own pocket

surprised old backward thinking co.’s

 What it Changed Pt2
• The ARG is still open it’s not ended. The
phones are still out there though they’re
out of minutes they can still be re-
activated.
-Doc. B’s theory on Concentric ARG

get doc b. to explain better.

 The End...
a n y q u e s t i o n s ?

Questions?