there's viral and there's VIRAL (only one of these will get you eaten)

[bliumchik]

So drjon posted a (really, really creepy) video in which Russian soldiers in a helicopter film in infrared another soldier trying to escape some speedy ~zombies (zombies don't run, also don't have heat signatures) before coming to a gruesome end. I was intrigued, largely from sheer empathy for the gasping, retching soldier behind the camera that had to be restrained - that's some excellent acting going there.

Anyway, I thought I'd check out the website at the end of the clip, zonesecurity.ru, and see if there was more where that came from, but as far as I could tell it was just a Russian virus protection advice site. Then I went to the site linked in the youtube userinfo but it was just a bunch of bright colours and some writing in Spanish or Portuguese, possibly relating to fashion. I flailed at Stan a bit on msn and he turned up two alternate youtube posts. The first suggested viral marketing for 28 Months Later on the basis of rumour that at least part of the movie will be set in Russia. The second first argued that it was actually viral marketing for the upcoming STALKER game, claiming that "the video was posted on all STALKER fan sites and on Youtube by ManMadeHell (whose nickname is STALKER's marketing slogan)" before returning with a definite denial of STALKER links from Oleg Yavosrkiy. (A quick google of zonesecurity.ru turned up a bunch of messageboards, one of which suggested that it was in fact viral marketing for a Russian online security company. I sense a common theme.)

Then I googled ManMadeHell and found a profile and a bunch of posts on a Russian STALKER-related messageboard, which upon closer inspection turned out not to be Russian - the characters are Cyrillic but I don't understand most of the words. It's not close enough to Russian to be Ukrainian - I suspected Yugoslavian considering SiroDra mentioned a previous iteration of the video that claimed to belong to Yugoslavian police, but the user that posted that version does not appear to be related to the original poster. Then I had the bright idea to click Google's translate function and it turned out to be Bulgarian. THEN I noticed that the account was created this year and the videos posted last year, so that was a dead end. The only other ManMadeHell I could find was an empty Deviantart account and a whole bunch of general non-gaming references to Chernobyl. Oh, and what appears to be the original account on Youtube, which is now empty as well.

So, in conclusion: all signs point to STALKER except for that little one where the STALKER guys claim it's not theirs. Either Oleg is lying, or it's an independent contribution, which seems unlikely as the contributor hasn't stuck around to claim any credit, or it really is a 28 Months Later stunt and they are just really bad at it.

Comments

[drjon.livejournal.com]

There is, of course, another conclusion...

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but as we've already established They're Not Zombies, and I wouldn't expect random instances of psychotic cannibalism to escape the news networks...

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I enjoyed the original STALKER (or, as Yahtzee would correct me, ess-tee-ay-el-kay-eee-arr) but haven't made an attempt to connect to the prequel yet. Still enjoying the post-apocalyptic splendor of Fallout 3, which also has zombies feral ghouls as, at best, tertiary adversaries....

And hell, I wasn't sure 28 ____ Later was even at the viral-marketing stage yet. Last I'd heard Boyle'd nixed "Months" from the title.

[samson-of-5.livejournal.com]

Hope you had your antivirus running through your world wide web escapade. (Geez, when was the last time that term was used?) It might be fossil content from something developed in the past, maybe even a STALKER (sigma dont even expect me to try to type out Yahtzee's version) alpha promotion. Hmm, gets kind of appealing that way, makes me think of ghost towns, and dusty newspaper morgues. Wonder what interesting things reside in the web that have never been uncovered because of a mislink, only to be forgotten? Maybe there is a Duke Nukem Forever alpha out there, back when it was being developed with the Quake engine. Oooooo. Okay Im done being silly now. :P