I love bees

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 appeared to have been taken over by an unstable A.I., whose thoughts are scattered on the site.

Background
A message on the frontpage directed viewers to the blog of a girl named Dana. Dana claimed that she built the ilovebees site for her Aunt Margaret and recently her site got in this bizarre state, and asks if anyone could help her. Dana acted 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 pay phones. On 8/24/04, the countdown ended as it reached the first set time. People who answered the pay phones (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 pay phones.

The AI would ask for their name, rank and proof that they were human. Players would provide their usernames, choose ranks and improvise proof (eg. 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. Unfortunately, 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.

Story Synopsis
The I Love Bees storyline is long and complex. Thus it needs a separate article to describe everything.

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 eBay. 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. Their starting bid was $1,000, but when it failed to sell, they made two more auctions, each lowering the price. It was finally 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 27 minute mark: mms://zdmedia.wmod.llnwd.net/a111/o1/1UP/1upshow_0307_320x180.wmv
 * The Walk-away Girl Story line from Axon Clips Chapter 1 went through 56 revisions before it was final.
 * The game was re-written in midstream in order to accommodate players who wanted to see more puzzles. Since the radio play was pre-recorded, the re-write was what brought the live calls.
 * There were 7 hours worth of script written in 5 months.
 * The lack of ability to beta-test meant that 5 hours before the phone calls went live, the Puppet Masters were still trying to see if the payphones would ring.
 * The Puppet Masters had not expected Weephun to rat out the Sleeping Princess so easily and had to do quite a bit of rewriting in order to deal with it.
 * When they went live in week 1, week 8 was still unwritten.
 * 4orty2wo Entertainment was very careful not to mention who the client is because players get turned off if the advertising is too overt.
 * A player tried to answer a live call in the middle of Hurricane Ivan. The Puppet Master (Puppetmaster 2) broke character to tell him to run to safety: "Dude, it's a hurricane. Put the phone down."

Internal
Main Characters
 * Ilovebees Credits
 * I Love Bees Axon Clips


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

Things


 * UNSC Apocalypso
 * Chatter
 * Moons

Similar Halo Marketing


 * Cortana Letters
 * Transmissions

External
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

Fan sites
 * welovebees.com
 * 'Fireflies' ILB wiki
 * NetNinja ILB resources
 * theBruce's ilovebees Compilations and fanfiction retelling
 * Guide to 'Haunted Apiary - Let Op!'

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
 * G4 show on the game - WMV file.