Just another way for Universal to use the fanbase to sell the movie. Some might it see it as fun, some might see it as saving costs and getting the fans to shoulder some of the promotional work. Though it doesn't half remind me of gaming clans. And there could be tears before bedtime as crews vie against each other.

And for what ever reason I have never fully understood, you don't have to be logged in to look at a particular news item on the Serenity movie website.

Simon | July 25, 20:27 CET

Frankly I don't know whay you should have to be logged in to read anything on that site. You should have to log in to post or reply to anything, but why they didn't let everyone read everything is beyond me.

C. A. Bridges | July 25, 20:44 CET

You should have to log in to post or reply to anything, but why they didn't let everyone read everything is beyond me.

Probably some numbers game. They might want as many registered users as possible and hope some will be curious enough to register just for reading.

Trienco | July 25, 20:52 CET

Here’s how it will work – any member of The Browncoats with 4,000+ Credits is eligible to become a Captain and create a Crew under his or her command. The Captain will recruit up to 30 members to serve in the new Crew. Crews will then be able to participate in challenges. The more people who participate from a Crew, the more Credits that will be awarded to each individual. There will even be bonus Credits for some challenges!

Turn two, the rest are food.

Allyson | July 25, 20:54 CET

Two by two, hands of blue.

I must agree. This is a promotional site, shouldn't fans be able to roam at will?

Madhatter | July 25, 21:15 CET

HAHA. Pyramid scheme. :-) I love that episode, and Harmony.

I don't think it's *quite* that pyramid-y, but I see your point. The whole competitive vibe makes me feel a little bit "picked last at Dodgeball" leery.

chickenbird | July 25, 21:16 CET

The site suffers very bad 'load' issues. By which, I mean too many members online at once.

Becuase you need to join to view, there's no search engines indexing the posts, so you don't get a huge amount of random visitors.

If they enabled search engines to roam as a guest, it'd cause a great many technical problems.

In fairness, I think this is a good idea, although I can see it creating many moderation problems. We'll see.

gossi | July 25, 21:40 CET

I'm still waiting for them to give me credits...what makes me think that they will be able to keep up with this?

Rogue | July 25, 23:01 CET

I think that has to be my biggest complaint with Universal's handling of Serenity thus far – the fact that they seem to be almost entirely leaving the burden of marketing the film to the fanbase. I'd be much more content with the feeling that the fan effort was a bonus, not the baseline.

Plus, I'm still bitter than I can't buy a freaking shirt. But that's me-issues.

Jet Wolf | July 26, 01:35 CET