If you’re a Hunger Games fan you’ll know that over the past few weeks Lionsgate has been running a new viral website at TheCaptiol.pn. There’s been much mystery surrounding it – and new questions continue to pop up – but is the site fulfilling its intended purpose?

It all started on on August 29th – the same day that Lionsgate premiered the underwhelming teaser trailer at the MTV Video Music Awards. The website appeared with a jittery and unrecognizable version of The Capitol logo. Mysterious.

Then, almost exactly by the how-to-create-hype books, a Twitter, Facebook, and Website appeared for every District. There was no explanation and it appeared to be in preparation for TheCapitol.pn.

On August 31st the website allowed users to get inside. There were several statistics to be seen, but there was little to no interactivity for fans. More mystery.

Nothing happened for a couple of weeks until September 28th when random Twitter users (who, yes, were Hunger Games fans) were contacted by Lionsgate and told they would be a recruiter for a specific District. What does a recruiter do? That still seems unclear, but their Twitter profile picture was changed to a Recruiter logo and they occasionally tweet things related to their District. Since these are real people, you’ll also find them tweeting about their normal, every day lives. That doesn’t seem to fit well with the “District Recruiter” image Lionsgate wants them to have.

Finally on September 30th District 12 was allowed to process their District Identification Passes. This is the best part of TheCaptiol.pn yet. You fill out your real-life information and you’re then presented with a pass which you can export to various social networks. It was particularly impressive that the site allows you to export to the just-announced Facebook Timeline feature (aka ‘the new Facebook profile’).

So that’s where TheCapitol.pn stands today. Each day the site is allowing one new District access to the District Identification Pass feature.

But is this enough for a good marketing campaign? Fans of the books surely love the ability to be placed in a District and to receive a pass. To everyone else – to those who only saw the trailer at the MTV Video Music Awards – the trailer and viral site really make little to no sense.

I believe a better idea would have been to allow users to be “sorted” (yes, Potter-style) into a District. TheCapitol.pn could’ve asked personality questions and based on those decided which District you’d best belong in. Maybe if one of your answers to a question about your hobbies was “I love catching fish!” the system would’ve been inclined to place you in District 4. The way the site stands today offers you no ability to influence which District you’re placed in.

Yes, in the books the residents cannot decide which District they live in. But this is the internet, and this website is supposed to encourage non-fans to visit. Lionsgate’s best shot right now at spreading the word is relying on existing fans to talk about TheCapitol.pn through social media. By allowing us to export our DIPs to Facebook and Twitter, we ARE spreading the word, but non-fans will likely be confused by these random passes now appearing as our profile pictures.

For those who don’t know about The Hunger Games, if they were intrigued by the trailer they could’ve visited the site and had the chance to interact with it and learn why they were sorted into the chosen District.

I hope Lionsgate has more plans for TheCaptiol.pn. It’s a very nice looking website with cool features for fans of the books. While many believe this series is the next box office hit, the studio needs to find ways to recruit new fans in order to maximize their box office return. TheCapitol.pn won’t serve that purpose, and we hope there will be other ways to recruit new fans other than an exciting trailer.