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Credits Posted for I Love Bees
Ryan Barrett writes "Credits have been posted for the I Love Bees
alternate reality game. As many suspected, its puppetmasters included Sean Stewart, Jordan Weisman, and Elan Lee, who created the game The Beast for the movie AI. Many of the principle members of Cloudmakers also participated, one of whom was the voice of Melissa.
Sean, Jordan, and Elan have founded a company, 4orty2wo Entertainment, to continue producing ARGs. I don't know about you, but I'm very excited."
That is one nasty web page. It is made to LOOK like an unclosable cross between a popup add and an error message covers most of the material. Fortunately, the web page itself is killable.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The character of Rani sounded eerily like one of my ex-girlfriends. I was profoundly relieved to learn it wasn't her. It just wouldn't have been fair.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Okay, will they fix the web site now? I want to learn about bees!
Yes, it's more than a gimic. It's a stand-alone story, at least in this case. Depending how involved you wanted to get in it, it was also a lot of puzzle solving and detective work. If you went so far as to answer any of the pay phones that were ringing around the country, it was also a fun outdoor activity.
Many people who played ilovebees are also going to get Halo 2, but the game itself was never actually mentioned. You can follow the completed story and just enjoy it for what it is: a fun, free, science-fiction audio play. It stands on its own, but I'm hoping it will be referred to in Halo 2 gameplay.
In general, an "alternate reality game" is tries to be an interactive story that involves sending an receiving messages between players and characters, as if the characters and their situations were part of reality.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
1) An ARG, as defined on Unfiction, is "A genre of interactive fiction using multiple delivery and communications media." Basically it's an adventure game that is not limited to being on a computer screen.
2) No. But that doesn't mean it can't be fun to experience (and it was).
It doesn't really refer to Halo 2 gameplay, but it fits into the mythos. The Libary has the full story.
To summarize the relevant connecting parts, a UNSC ship in 2552 gets a Covenant virus on them, finds a Forerunner artifact just floating in space, and falls through a hole in slipspace. Part of the ship's AI, along with the virus, went back in time and landed on this website; the other part went onto a server on the Earth of 2552. As it turns out, the brain used to create Melissa was from a former Spartan-II and the sister of one of the I Love Bees characters.