I Heart Bees Again - Halo 3's Iris ARG

I Love Bees is regarded as one of the more successful alternate reality games (ARGs) ever run in the US. It should be no surprise, then, that the game's spiritual sequel entitled simply Iris , is causing quite a stir. It began on June 11th, with cryptic messages in the Bungie forums. Designed to take players through the history of the Halo world over the course of the summer, players have already uncovered some 'pre-game' information; for all intents and purposes the actual game hasn't started yet. Michael VanderZand probably wish it was already over, though: then he might have some peace and quiet. The climax is expected sometime on September 26th, the day after Halo 3 releases to stores.

Comments

Re:I love adolph hitler

[Dogtanian]

wish I could have been born earlier so i could have been a nazi. If you'd been born earlier, you'd have been killed as part of the Nazis' eradication of the mentally feeble.

New viral campaign: "Halo" by Lionel Richbee

[Dogtanian]

I've been alone with you inside my mind
And in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times
I sometimes see you pass outside my door
Halo, is it bees you're looking for?

I can see it in your eyes
I can see it in your smile
You're all I've ever wanted, and my arms are open wide
'Cause you know just what to say
And you know just what to do
And I want to tell you so much, I love bees...

Viral marketing

[blackicye]

Do these marketing campaigns really work? Is there some way to tell?

It seems the only people they are virally marketing to are the ones who are already dead set on buying their games once they are released..

Re:Viral marketing

[daranz]

Ilovebees was a very unusual way of promoting a game: because of how unique it was, it got a lot of free publicity. It was also the first ARG that many people ever came in contact with, so that probably generated more interest. On top of that it was viral, since it spread mainly by people, and not by advertisements. So yeah, I'd say it generated a lot of buzz, which is what marketing departments love.

Re:Viral marketing

[bateleur]

This particular campaign seems even more questionable to me. Not only is it targeting the online hardcore who will already doubtless know about the product, it also seems to me that amongst the small subset of players worth targeting interest in ARGs wouldn't correlate all that well with interest in Halo 3.

Even worse, they probably have to sell an entire XBox 360 to any would-be customer as well, since it seems even less likely that someone would already own a 360, be playing the ARG, yet not know about Halo 3 (and already have a clear idea of whether or not it's for them).

Re:Viral marketing

[the unbeliever]

It worked outside of the game genre for Nine Inch Nails' new album "Year Zero"

Re:Viral marketing

[iHasaFlavour]

The simple answer is that they do work. Certainly the Halo one does.

You may be right that the only people who play would be the ones who would buy the game anyway. However, if they are already keen, then this campaign represents an additional means to gain that all important entertainment element that users want from their games.

That's the whole point of games anyway. Yes there is the money aspect, but that's always been there, and is no assurance of success. The only way to make that money is to consistantly provide what people want, and that's fun.

Re:Viral marketing

[Khuffie]

Does it matter? It's fun, and we should encourage that. More 'marketing campaigns' should be fun this way. To me, it sounds like a gift to the people who love the Halo serious, plus it definitely builds up excitement.

Re:Viral marketing

[Cius]

hell yea! I loved the Year Zero ARG. I had no clue about it when I bought the cd, but caught on pretty quick when I took it out of my cd player to find it had changed color. From there a quick gtfq found me the wiki and an entire backstory to catch up on. :-) I think what makes these games truly fun is the process of discovery and community involvement that they foster.

Re:Viral marketing

[theStorminMormon]

I think the viral-marketing aspect of the push may be a bit over-rated. Bungie likes to tell big stories. Look at Marathon. Look at Myst. I think that they would have done I Love Bees (and will probably do Iris) for that reason alone. I Love Bees, for example, included hours of audio drama not in any way necessary to play or understand the ARG. It was a self-contained story that expanded the Halo universe. It provided great back story for Halo 2 (e.g. accounted for the arrival of the Covenant at Earth in the beginning of the game).

I'm not trying to portray Bungie (which I know MS owns) as some kind of artsy philanthropic venture, but I do believe that the culture at Bungie includes not only making games, but telling stories. They tell a pretty good story with Halo 1 and Halo 2, but they clearly enjoy telling that story through ARGs as well. So I'd see the ARG not only as marketing, but as just part of what Bungie does: tell stories.

As far as marketing goes, the point is not to get someone who wouldn't buy the game at all to suddenly buy the game. Whether or not someone picks up Halo 3 is dependent on a variety of factors and a lot of it is random chance. One huge variable will be the number of their friends who are excited about the release. Bungie clearly played to the multiplayer crowd with their multiplayer demo (which was also great for balancing, I suppose). Now they are going after those players who actually care about the story. I'm one. The result will be that the Halo fanbois will be super-excited, and that excitement will spill on down from Halo fanbois to Halo fans, to casual xbox 360 players, to those who don't even own an xbox. I doubt very many of the non-owners will invest in an entire console to play the game, but it should increase the propensity to buy the game all the way down the spectrum.

Whether or not it actually pays for itself, no one will ever know for sure(since it's impossible to tell who would have bought the game with no ARG campaign). But Halo 3 will make more headlines, fanbois will get psyched, Bungie will be yet more endeared to their fans (rep is important in this industry: look at Blizzard) and Bungie will also get to tell more of their story.

It's not like Halo 3 is going to barely break even or something. This one's a no-brainer.

Re:Viral marketing

[bateleur]

One huge variable will be the number of their friends who are excited about the release.

Are you in marketing? Because claims like that just sound really weird to me. If anyone had asked me I'd have said 99% of the decision would come down to the prospective purchaser's views on first person shooters. Like 'em? Then clearly you want Halo 3. Don't like 'em? Then clearly you don't want Halo 3 (even if it has a great story).

Re:Viral marketing

[theStorminMormon]

Are you in marketing?

No, but I am in the business of predicting human behavior for a living and I have designed large-scale, moderately complex simulations (e.g. of an emergency room in a trauma hospital for use in deciding staffing levels). And I know that looking at marketing as an attempt to take a distinct cohort of people from "won't buy" to "will buy" is the wrong way to look at it. First of all, the actual buy/not buy event should be seen as the result of random experiment. There are some inputs that can be influenced, but many that are random. Take Joe Schmoe. Halo comes out in September. What is the chance his car breaks down the same month and he's out of cash? What are the chances its his birthday and he gets a gift certificate to Best Buy? The point is that whether or not Joe Schmoe buys Halo 3 is *not* a deterministic function based on his desire to buy it, but a random function based only in part on his determination to buy it.

Other than random vs. determined, there's the problem of binary vs. continuous. It's not a question of Joe Schmoe either wanting to buy or not buy Halo. It's a spectrum. Units aren't obvious, so let's just invent a scale called "desire" that ranges from 0 (would just as soon eat brussel sprouts) to 100 (would camp out a week to get the first copy). If Joe Schmoe's car breaks down but he's at 100, he's going to say "damn the repairs, I must have Halo 3!" If Joe Schmoe gets a birth certificate and an xbox 360 but his desire is 0, he's going to opt for some other game, or maybe an HD-DVD attachment a few HD-DVDs instead.

So to talk about it in terms of people who will or won't buy Halo is to rule out the randomness. There is no group of people who will buy Halo, and no group that won't. There is only a population that has various levels of desire from 0 to 100 for Halo 3. The more you can ratchet that desire up, the more of those people who, with varying degrees of interest, will actually purchase Halo 3 when all is said and done.

Your own analysis leaves off both the random and the continuous nature of this system, and thus fails to adequately represent the reality.

Re:Viral marketing

[Daedone]

So, what? we should all take a book from sony's attempts at viral marketing?
I think we all know how well that ended

Re:Viral marketing

[poisonfruitloops]

The ARG that was run for NIN's Year Zero worked really really well, nearly every interview for the album had a good chunk dedicated to asking Trent Reznor why he did it etc...

It also caused less people to pirate it (from what i can tell) as the CD it self had clues in it and was like picking up a piece of a puzzle.

I'm assuming this may be the case for the Halo 3 ARG?

(lil' note: the company that did i love bee's did a bunch of other ARG's, including the Year Zero one)

But the short answer? : Yes. It works, albiet for more hardcore fans as appose to the general public.

Re:Viral marketing

[Hal_Porter]

Are you in marketing?

No, but I am in the business of predicting human behavior for a living and I have designed large-scale, moderately complex simulations (e.g. of an emergency room in a trauma hospital for use in deciding staffing levels).

Does your ER simulator sell well compared to Halo? Thought not.

Let's look at the features. Does have dual wielding? Rag doll physics? Damageable scenery? A chainsaw weapon? Realistic blood and gore? Do the patients have decent AI so they can outflank the player and attack in packs when he goes into dark places?

Right that that's the problem. Jeeze, no wonder you're not in marketing.

Re:Viral marketing

[theStorminMormon]

Does your ER simulator sell well compared to Halo?

Huh? It was never even for sale. I used to do statistical consulting for a medical outsourcing company that staffed ER rooms at hospitals. They asked me to build it for them. It was designed to order for their needs.

My point wasn't "I made a product that sells! Woowee!". It was that I do have some experience in:
1. modeling human behavior
2. modeling complex systems

It was a lack of understanding those two concepts that led to some of the flaws I was criticizing.

Re:Viral marketing

[Pope]

Bungie had zero to do with "Myst", that was Cyan. Marathon, on the other hand, was quite brilliant. The only other FPS that has had me even remotely interested in it over the past few years was the original Deus Ex.

Re:Viral marketing

[Chyeld]

Parent was meaning to say Myth, a similarly named real-time tactical game which was created by Bungie and it so popular that people have actually taken it upon themselves to continue to release updated clients for it's various incarnations (Myth:The Fallen Lords, Myth II: Soulblighter, and provisionally Myth III: Wolf Age)

Myth III is considered provisionally part of the series as it wasn't actually developed by Bungie. When Bungie was acquired by Microsoft, they lost the rights to the Myth franchise to Take 2 Interactive. Take2 had another company created a Myth III based off the world that Bungie had already come up with.

Regardless, Myth is a supporting point to the parent's argument. The backstory to the series was ridiculously detailed.

Re:Viral marketing

[CogDissident]

I had a friend mention ilovebees.com to me, but he didn't provide context. I poked around on the site, found some good audio-based-stories, and generally had a good time of it for a few hours, then got bored and moved on. Three weeks later I learned that it was actually an ad for Halo. I would have never guessed. Unless you know whats actually going on, it seems like just a interesting sci-fi story with some real-life tie-ins as an alternate-reality game.

Already solved it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Penny Arcade have already figured out the most important secret message! For this and ANY future ARGS. :)

Please!

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Please don't update us every time a new section of the site is revealed or there is another change. Most of us don't care and the Halo 3 spam would get very very very old and drive me personally off of Slashdot.

Re:Please!

[achosler]

Please don't update us every time a new section of the site is revealed or there is another change. Most of us don't care and the Halo 3 spam would get very very very old and drive me personally off of Slashdot. Bye.

Re:I love adolph hitler

[tepples]

If you really want to be a nutsy, you can still read the party's blog.

Re:I love adolph hitler

[Short Circuit]

Reading their platform, I came to the conclusion that they aren't just nuts, they're delusional. They'd be funny if they hadn't controlled an entire continent at one point.

Several of their planks are inconsistent with strict interpretations of each other. Perhaps that's why they want to have laws written in "plain English", so they can get away with the ambiguities.

Penny Arcade's Take

[Innova]

That terrible Grip

Re:Bungie Desperate After Halo 3 Beta Flop

[MXPS]

who determined that the halo 3 beta flopped? i guess i must have missed that press release..

Re:Bungie Desperate After Halo 3 Beta Flop

[darkhitman]

I guess it's a good thing that Betas are for testing purposes only and not marketing then, huh?

Creating a marketing campaign modeled after the last extremely successful one they made for Halo 2 is not the same thing as being 'desperate', I would think. In fact, I hope you realize that the marketing team is just a little bit different from the team that is actually creating the game. Then again, maybe you don't.

Too bad it's not an ARG

[Sibko]

ilovebees was an ARG, this however, is just a marketing campaign. You really can't call it a 'game' at all. Games require interaction, ilovebees had people making phone calls and traveling places. This Halo 3 'ARG' has consisted of everyone being handed the information on a silver platter. You get a url, you go to the url, you read what's at the url, and then you wait for the next url. It's like watching a movie, not playing a game.

That doesn't mean it isn't entertaining, because it certainly is; some of the information we're getting really fleshes out the background of Halo's setting, and it's fun to ponder the various theories about what it all means.

Re:Too bad it's not an ARG

[Harlockjds]

>ilovebees was an ARG, this however, is just a marketing campaign. You really can't call it a 'game' at all. Games require interaction, ilovebees had people making phone calls and traveling places. This Halo 3 'ARG' has consisted of everyone being handed the information on a silver platter.

which is why this is being called the 'pregame'... it's not the actual ARG.

Measuring the impact of community

[jchenx]

Do these marketing campaigns really work? Is there some way to tell?

It seems the only people they are virally marketing to are the ones who are already dead set on buying their games once they are released..

I agree that this type of viral marketing really isn't going to be good at nabbing that potential "first time Halo player". Pretty much the only people involved are those who are Halo fans to begin with, and of course they're going to buy the game.

But well-done ARG campaigns, such as ilovebees, really bolster that hardcore community. We already know that community building is important for franchises to develop fanbases, but actually measuring their ultimate financial benefit is probably rather difficult. Or at the least, very different than traditional means (counting eyeballs, consumer satisfaction ratings, etc.).

I think we all know why community is important, as we've all seen it at work in all sorts of places. Heck, Slashdot is a community of sorts. Make the community happy, and those that are in it are less likely to leave, and also more likely to try to get other people involved. Having a rich and vibrant community can entice people that aren't involved, to become so. But measuring how many more game sales that actually translates to, is difficult.