A viral marketing campaign has been launched, hinting at – well, nobody really knows for sure. At first it was thought that Activision was building up to a Modern Warfare 3 reveal.

It all began when publications began to receive some dog tags referencing characters from Modern Warfare 2 – Vladimir Makrov and Lt. General Shepherd. Shepherd died, and Makarov supposedly went into hiding. The dog tags also contain a web address – www.findmakarov.com – and a date; Tuesday 1 March 2011. This date falls right in the middle of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), an event at which Activision chose to unveil Modern Warfare 2 two years ago.

Upon visiting the Find Makarov website, one is presented with a countdown timer, which will expire on the aforementioned date. The timer’s numerical font and ‘smoky’ green background reeks of Modern Warfare.

This sent the rumour mill into hyper drive, with the first obvious conclusion being that Activision will be revealing Modern Warfare 2 at GDC. This was soon denied by Activision however, who communicated through American gaming journalist Geoff Keighley. “Let me be clear we are not revealing yet. Anything indicating otherwise is a hoax,” said an Activision spokesperson.

This makes the whole thing all the more mysterious. Current rumours now suggest that Activision may be pulling some sort of reverse psychology trick to hype up Modern Warfare 3, and the tinfoil hat brigade even think Keighley is in on the act.

The more tantalising prospect is that EA is somehow involved and they will be revealing something about Battlefield 3 while simultaneously upstaging Activision who has yet to actually announce anything about Modern Warfare 3.

Whatever the case may be, we do know that there is a countdown timer slowly diminishing toward 1 March 2011. It better be worth all the fuss.

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