I love bees

Summary
During the summer of 2004, the website ilovebees.com was used as a publicity site for Halo 2, with the site being pointed to by adverts for the game during movie trailers. Ostensibly a beekeeper's personal site, the server appears to have been taken over by an unstable A.I., who's thoughts are scattered on the site.

A message on the frontpage directs viewers to the blog of a girl named Dana. Dana claims that she built the ilovebees site for her Aunt Margaret and recently her site got in this bizarre state, could anyone help her? Dana acts essentially as a narrator in the game, describing events for people who missed the action.

The frontpage had a counter counting down to July 27, 2004 (when it says "network throttling will erode"), August 10, 2004 (when "this medium will metastasize"), and August 24, 2004 (at 8:06 am, when it will be "wide awake and physical") - many thought something big would happen related to Halo 2 on these dates, however it was only related to the ILB game. Currently there is a counter counting down to the day the Covenant will attack Earth, 500 years in the future.

On 8/10/04, a list of GPS coordinates with times were added to the site's Links page, along with a countdown to "Axons go hot". With the exception of one leading to the Pacific Ocean, all of the coordinates lead to payphones. On 8/24/04, the countdown ended as it reached the first set time. People who answered the payphones (the "axons") at the scheduled times spoke to a recording of the A.I. and were asked basic questions about the character. If answered correctly, an audio clip would be released and a number would be added to a counter on the website. The audio clips, when threaded together formed an audio drama about characters in the Halo universe. As the number reached 777, the AI, as played by a voice actor instead of a recording, began interacting with players through the payphones.

The AI would ask for their name, rank and proof that they were human. Players would provide their usernames, choose ranks and improvise proof (ie, joking, singing). Their names were added to the site, crediting them for activating the axons.

After the game was over, players were invited to go on a "training mission" which was actually a chance to play Halo 2 multiplayer before its release. Various sites around America were used to host the event, including movie theaters and malls. Players were told to say the phrase "The Operator left a message for me." to gain access to the event. Unfortunatly, several of the hosts were unaware of ILB and thought it was just a Halo 2 event, disappointing many fans. At each event, players were given DVDs (seen right) containing all of the ILB audio files as well as deleted material.

This style of publicity is similar to that which surrounded the movie A.I. which featured a grand Alternate Reality Game. Both games were run by 4orty2wo Entertainment.

Trivia

 * Yuri Lowenthal, voice of Kamal Zaman, is also the voice of the Prince in the Prince of Persia series. A piece of Kamal's dialog, "People think time is a river that flows in one direction, but time is an ocean." is very much like the Prince's "Some say time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction, but I have seen the face of time and I can tell you they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm."


 * Soon after ILB became popular, someone bought the domain www.ilovepees.com and auctioned it on e-Bay. The person claimed whoever made it a redirect to their own site would get tons of traffic from ILB fans who would type in the address incorrectly. It was sold for something like $40.


 * The surname "Zaman" means "time, age, era" in Arabic.


 * The people of Bungie did not originally consider this to be official Canon for Halo, since 4orty 2wo was basically allowed to do whatever they wanted with the game. However, in the 7/28/06 edition of the 1up show, Bungie employee Frankie stated that Ilovebees was being "embraced as canon" by Bungie. The video can be viewed at the 1up show site or by copying this link and fastforwarding to the 27min mark: mms://zdmedia.wmod.llnwd.net/a111/o1/1UP/1upshow_0307_320x180.wmv

Characters

 * Melissa
 * Seeker
 * Janissary James
 * Jersey Morelli
 * Kamal Zaman
 * Colonel Herzog
 * Major Standish
 * Thin Kinkle
 * Sophia Bossedon
 * Aiden Maki

Ships and Objects

 * UNSC Apocalypso
 * Chatter

Similar Halo Marketing

 * Cortana Letters
 * Transmissions

Starting points
Those wishing to read more about the I Love Bees ARG should visit the I Love Bees Wiki, especially: Major changes in the game and summaries are documented at the BeeLog.
 * Summary of events
 * The Puzzles
 * Dana and Margaret
 * Speculative story so far

The game

 * ilovebees.com - The site itself
 * The ilovebees weblog
 * ilovebees2.com - The Unofficial Sequel

Fan sites

 * welovebees.com
 * 'Fireflies' ILB wiki
 * NetNinja ILB resources
 * theBruce's ilovebees Compilations and fanfiction retelling

Communities discussing the game

 * Unfiction forum
 * Bungie.net forum thread
 * An IRC channel devoted to discussing the ARG

Press coverage

 * First and second Slashdot articles.
 * Wired article
 * "I Love Bees" design team receives a Game Developers Choice Award
 * "I Love Bees" Nominated for a Webby Award