Secrets and Passwords in the Source Code Promotes Dante’s Inferno

Here at Mitto we appreciate video games, and we appreciate secret passwords even more. That’s why we were intrigued by one technique used recently by EA in their ad campaign promoting newly released game, Dante’s Inferno.

Recently, if you viewed the source code of many popular social networking or gaming sites, you would see ASCII art from Dante’s Inferno, and a hidden password to be used to gain access to http://hellisnigh.com. However, in order to get access to this site, you need six passwords, each of which are hidden in the source code of different websites all across the Internet. The source of one such site, Digg.com, is pictured below.  



Most non-gamers first heard of this new video game through the commercial that was aired during the  Superbowl (shown below).


The overall PR campaign for Dante’s Inferno has definitely stirred a lot of controversy, especially among several Christian groups, because of its “hellish” themes and outrageous PR stunts (one contest challenged attendees at Comic-Con to harass their “booth babes” for a prize date with them). You can read more about the PR Campaign for Dante’s Inferno on the ars technical website.

We haven’t played or seen the game, but we did think that hiding ads on several popular websites earned EA some geek street cred.