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Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the talk page for details. | I Love Bees (also known as ilovebees or ILB for short) was an alternate reality game (ARG) that served as a real-world experience of, and a viral marketing campaign for, the Halo 2 video game. It is a product of 42 Entertainment, commissioned by Microsoft and approved by Bungie Studios – the creators of Halo 2. Image File history File links Information. ...
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Alternate Reality, see Alternate Reality (computer game). ...
Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. ...
This article is about the video game. ...
42 Entertainment (originally 4orty 2wo Entertainment) is a Seattle-based creator of alternate reality games (ARGs) founded by Jordan Weisman. ...
Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ...
Bungie Studios is an American video game developer founded in May 1991 under the name Bungie Software Products Corporation (more popularly shortened to Bungie Software) by two undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones that primarily concentrated on Macintosh games for its first nine...
Overview
Like all ARGs, I Love Bees was a cross-media game that deliberately blurred the line between in-game and out-of-game experiences. To "play" I Love Bees, interested people would generally visit websites thought to be involved with the game, collect and document the shifting information on these sites, and discuss the game with other users. Players also interacted with the game in unexpected ways, for example by receiving unexpected phone calls from Artificial Intelligence characters, or by sending and receiving emails.
The game was initiated when a plastic honey bear was received in the mail by people who had previously participated in alternate reality games. That bear was filled with honey and nine vinyl letters that spelled I LOVE BEES when unscrambled. At around the same time, an advertisement for Halo 2 shown at screenings of I, Robot at Lowes Cineplex theatres flashed a link to ilovebees.com, which is ostensibly a site related to beekeeping. Alternate Reality, see Alternate Reality (computer game). ...
I, Robot is a science fiction film released on July 16, 2004, loosely based on Isaac Asimovs Robot Series. ...
Beekeeping, tacuinum sanitatis casanatensis (XIV century) Beekeeping (or apiculture, from Latin apis, a bee) is the practice of intentional maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. ...
Both events, not connected publicly for several weeks, caused the curious to visit the website ilovebees.com. The site, which appeared to be dedicated to honey sales and beekeeping, was covered in confusing random characters and sentence fragments. Suspecting that this was a mystery that could be unraveled, Halo and ARG fans spread the link and began to work on figuring out just what was going on.
The game culminated by inviting "crew members" (players) to visit one of 4 cinemas where they could get a chance to play Halo 2 before its release, as well as collect many items of memorabilia, including a DVD summarizing the events of the game. This article is about the video game. ...
Gameplay The ilovebees.com website first gained public attention when jars of honey were received by members of the alternate reality game community. The jars contained jumbled letters. When cleaned and assembled, the letters spelled out ILOVEBEES. Later, the game would gain its entry into public fervor with the URL's appearance at the end of theatrical trailers for the Halo 2 game on Xbox. From the blurring of media and mystery, it became clear that this was an alternate reality game. Eager to unravel the mystery of the site's hacking, interested internet users began to explore more information, mostly by trial and error. Alternate Reality, see Alternate Reality (computer game). ...
This article is about the video game. ...
The Xbox is a sixth generation era video game console produced by Microsoft Corporation. ...
Dana, the webmaster Dana, the ostensible webmaster of the ilovebees site, had created a weblog stating that something had gone wrong with her website, and the site itself had been hacked. In later entries she reported that her attempts to fix it were in vain, and asked for help.
Early players tried e-mailing Dana, exploring the ilovebees.com website for hidden data, treating the corrupted data on ilovebees.com as encrypted files and attempting to decrypt them, and other methods to attempt to gain more information from the site.
Count Down Calculations show the count down timer posted on ilovebees.com counts down to the exact moment the Master Chief awakes in Halo: Combat Evolved, The Pillar Of Autumn level, which is approximately 12:07 pm GMT, Thursday, November 9th, the year 2552.
Plot The plot of ILB is elaborate and convoluted (not helped by the fact that the story was revealed out of order), as well as open to interpretation with regard to gaps in the story. Readers seeking a detailed explanation of the story should visit any of the summary sites that appeared across the internet after the game's resolution, including The Netninja Wiki.
The game's story essentially began with a military spaceship crashing to Earth in an unknown location, killing the crew and leaving the craft's controlling AI program damaged. This AI, known as the "Operator" or "Melissa", was not alone. Other AI programs shared its system or affected it from other systems. One program, called "SPDR" (System Peril Distributed Reflex) or "Spider", was a software task meant to repair Melissa, but Melissa, disoriented and self-protecting, did not take kindly to this interference.
In an effort to survive and contact any surviving allies, Melissa transferred herself to a San Francisco-area web server, which happened to host a bee enthusiast website known as I Love Bees. To the distress of Dana Awbrey, the website's maintainer, Melissa's attempts to send signals began to appear largely as codes, hidden in images or other text, interfering with the operation of the I Love Bees site and corrupting much of the content.
At the same time, another AI program appears which has until now remained dormant in Melissa's system. Calling itself "The Sleeping Princess" this AI takes control of the webmaster's email address for ilovebees.com, but because this AI has difficulty using the English language, it instead uses phrases constructed from parts of emails already sent to it.
Dana, attempting to regain control over the corrupted website, accidentally erases data which comprises part of Melissa's memory. Furious, Melissa lashes out at the webmaster, obtaining pictures of her using the webcam on her computer and promising to take revenge. Alarmed, Dana announces she is washing her hands of the situation and is taking a previously planned trip to China earlier than expected.
While the Spider program attempts to fix Melissa, random dumps from Melissa's memory began to spill into the website, largely detailing Melissa's history and expanding on the story element of the ilovebees game. Of particular note was the revealing of yet another AI, a malicious Trojan-horse virus long infecting Melissa later known as the "Pious Flea." The Spider tries to erase the Flea but is outwitted, as Melissa erases the Spider instead of the Flea. The Flea continues to overwrite Melissa's programming ("Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape") with its own mysterious goals, stated as: "Seek The Truth, Behold The Truth, Reveal The Truth".
Meanwhile, Melissa reveals audio files to people she believes to be loyal members of her crew. These audio files are largely unlocked as real-life players met at the prearranged payphones that the times listed, often having to recite specific phrases mentioned on the site in order to complete their mission. Slowly, a story emerged following a band of unlikely heroes. These characters included Janissary James, the 17 year old daughter of a super soldier; another military AI, named "Durga," residing in the computer system of a teenager named Jersey Morelli; a medical student/immigrant to Earth from a colony world called Coral named Kamal Zaman; and a Junior-level Office of Naval Intelligence analyst named Rani.
With the assistance of other characters, the real-life protagonists broke into a secure military installation and managed to deactivate a Forerunner device which was implied (though never conclusively proven) to begin the firing sequence of the Halo installations. However, the price paid for the deactivation was a powerful energy transmission which alerted the Covenant of the location of Earth. Halos are fictional megastructures in the Halo video game series. ...
The Covenant is a fictional militaristic and theocratic alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonist body of the Halo science-fiction video game series. ...
Resolution A turning point in the story was when some players caused the Sleeping Princess, another AI living on the ilovebees.com server, to be destroyed by Melissa. While many were outraged by this (the child-like Sleeping Princess screams as she is 'murdered'), it is later revealed that the Sleeping Princess was not destroyed, but contained. With the aid of the Pious Flea the players managed to free the Princess once more and allowed her to merge with Melissa. The merge allowed Melissa to restore the parts of herself that were damaged in the initial crash.
Whole again, Melissa saw how she had been manipulated by the Pious Flea, and returned to her own time, merging with Durga. As a parting gift, she also left another series of audio clips. These audio clips show how the main characters of ILB fared. The tone is somber, as ILB ended with the Covenant invading Earth, corresponding to a major plot point in Halo 2. This article is about the video game. ...
ILB 'ends' the same way in which it began. The System Peril Distributed Reflex, thought to be destroyed, is again in control of ilovebees.com, and again there is a countdown on the site, but it is a 500 year countdown coinciding with the fictional timeline of Halo, and likely corresponds to the day the Covenant invades Earth in Halo 2. This improved SPDR destroyed the Pious Flea, the Covenant virus that brought about the discovery of Earth and led the Covenant to it, once and for all. Halo is video game series created by Bungie Studios. ...
This article is about the video game. ...
Reasons for the Game Even while the game was running, it became clear that ilovebees was a publicity stunt engineered at least in part by Bungie Studios to build hype for the upcoming release of their title in development, Halo 2. Microsoft had played a large part in a similar publicity stunt previously, with their involvement in The Beast [1], an ARG used to promote the movie A.I.. The speculation was finally proven after the conclusion of ilovebees, when it was revealed that the developers of The Beast, 4orty 2wo Studios, were in fact the creators of ilovebees. The media itself often stage stunts for movies and television shows. ...
Bungie Studios is an American video game developer founded in May 1991 under the name Bungie Software Products Corporation (more popularly shortened to Bungie Software) by two undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones that primarily concentrated on Macintosh games for its first nine...
This article is about the video game. ...
Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ...
The Beast is the name given by fans to the alternate reality game created to promote the release of the movie A.I.. The game concerned itself primarily with the discovery of the reasons behind the murder of Evan Chan, one of its characters. ...
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (actual on-screen title: Artificial Intelligence: A.I.) (2001) was the last project that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick worked on. ...
The Beast is the name given by fans to the alternate reality game created to promote the release of the movie A.I.. The game concerned itself primarily with the discovery of the reasons behind the murder of Evan Chan, one of its characters. ...
Bungie also has had a history of doing promotional puzzles for upcoming games, specifically relating to the Halo franchise. Prior to the announcement of Halo: Combat Evolved, former Bungie employee Nathan Bitner released a series of cryptic emails later called the "Cortana Letters". Although not strictly an ARG, the Cortana Letters did encourage fan participation, and melded reality with fiction as Bungie employees pretended to have no idea who Cortana was or how she was sending her emails. Halo is video game series created by Bungie Studios. ...
Halo: Combat Evolved, or simply Halo, is a video game in the first-person shooter (FPS) genre, created by the Microsoft-owned Bungie Studios. ...
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"Training exercise" As the ARG came to a close, players were given the chance to go to one of 4 locations for a "training exercise" to take place. While originally open only to ILB players, invitations were quickly extended to the general public. Indeed, most of the people who went to these exercises were not ILB players, merely fans of Halo 2. This caused quite a deal of irritation to devout ILB players, who felt that the exercise was specifically for ILB fans. Amusingly, a few exercise organizers didn't know about ILB; they were told it was a Halo 2 preview event.
At each of the "training exercises", fans were given a complimentary DVD compilation of materials released throughout the ilovebees game. The DVD also included, among other things, a personal "thank you" message from Melissa and a long string of recorded messages players had been prompted to submit during the pay phone portion of the game, creating imaginary names and ranks as part of Melissa's fictional starship crew. Many other promotional items were available depending on location and availability, including posters for Halo 2. In addition, attendees got the chance to play Halo 2 multiplayer, before the game's release, on the screens of the theatres they were gathered in. This article is about the video game. ...
This article is about the video game. ...
Online gaming redirects here. ...
Awards Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Game Developers Conference has annually hosted the Game Developers Choice Awards presented by the International Game Developers Association for outstanding developers of video game entertainment since 2001. ...
Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Webby Awards are a set of awards presented to the worlds best websites. The awards have been given out since 1996. ...
Year 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar). ...
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences was founded in 1998 to help drive the progress of the Internet and evolving forms of new media. ...
See also Iris is a notable alternate reality game (ARG) and viral marketing campaign for the upcoming Halo 3 video game being produced by Bungie Studios. ...
For the Nine Inch Nails release, see Head Like a Hole. ...
External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: I Love Bees Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
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The game
Press coverage
Falsities During the game, many sites not part of the game pretended to be part of the game. These include: |
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