Haunted Apiary Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The Haunted Apiary (also known as I Love Bees) is an alternate reality game (ARG), related in some way to the first person shooter Halo 2. Although a lot is not yet known at this time (as is the nature of such events), it is widely believed to be the work of Microsoft and Bungie, who created Halo.
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2 The story so far 3 The current state of the game 4 Theories about the game 5 External links |
The first reports of the game began around July 16, 2004, when some prominent members of the ARG community received jars of honey in the mail, in which the letters spelling out "ilovebees" were immersed.
At around the same time, an advertisement for Halo 2 shown at screenings of I, Robot at Loews Cineplex theatres flashed a link to ilovebees.com, which is ostensibly a site related to beekeeping.
The site, however, was covered in content that did not pertain to bees at all, but was instead some form of gobbledygook. This link quickly spread amongst Halo fansites and ARG sites.
Shortly after the site was "attacked", the webmaster created a weblog stating that something had gone wrong, and the site itself was attacked. Later entries state that her attempts to fix it were in vain.
A general explanation of what has so-far happened is as such, taken from the weblog of an in-game character, Dana:
A community effort was made to piece together the various text from ilovebees.com and the current state of the story that has unfolded from this text, including speculation, is at the Haunted Apiary Wiki.
The game has, so far, reached a third and possibly final stage. A counter to something being "Wide Awake and Physical" has expired, and a series of GPS co-ordinates and, later, times appeared on the Links Page of I Love Bees. People going to those co-ordinates at those times have discovered that payphones exist at those areas, and that something is calling these phones at those locations.
If the person answers correctly, that "axon" (as the AI calls it) goes "hot". When 2 to 12 "axons" go "hot" in an area, a small wave file is put up for download.
These waves are a story comparable to the radio drama War of the Worlds, with heavy Halo references, including a 17 year old female, Janissary James, who is the daughter of a super soldier, a military AI named Durga infecting a teenager's (Jersey Morelli) computer system, and an medical student/immigrant to Earth named Kamal who may have more in common with Durga than expected.
As the plot unfolded, a device taken onto the planet by a human ship turned out to be a powerful bomb, sent by the human's enemy, the Covenant. With the assistance of other characters, the group held up a secure military installation and deactivated the weapon. However, the price paid for the deactivation was a powerful enough energy transmission to alert the Covenant to the location of Earth.
While the plot was unfolding, players in the game occasionally began to receive live calls from the AI, Melissa. Group exercises were planned to allow members of her "crew" to interact with each other in interesting ways, one day dressing up from the part of the ship they "served" on, to assembling doctored images of ordinary objects and how they would look in the year 2552. Several other plotlines developed on the ilovebees page in addition to the .wav files, following the existence of the AIs trapped on the server.
Major changes in the game and excellent summaries are documented at the BeeLog.
Players wishing to get involved in the Haunted Apiary ARG should visit the Haunted Apiary Wiki, especially:
It is believed by many in the Halo and ARG communities that this is a publicity stunt by Bungie, to build up hype for Halo 2, in a manner similar to the game The Beast which surrounded the movie A.I. Indeed, as Microsoft were behind that first game, there has been speculation that Apiary is a sort of sequel.
Bungie has had a history of doing these sorts of puzzles for upcoming games. To "announce" Halo, Bungie (or rather, a Bungie employee named Nathan Bitner, now supposedly in the army) released a series of emails later called the "Cortana Letters", in which a character from Halo talks about her reality. As with the Cortana Letters, I Love Bees makes heavy references to both Halo, Halo 2, and an older Bungie game called Marathon.
The impact of this game on the community outside of Halo and ARG circles, and its effectiveness as a publicity stunt is mostly yet to be seen; however, Nintendo has started up its own ARG for rival first-person adventure Metroid Prime 2, most likely to go directly up against Apiary.
This is an Article on Haunted Apiary. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Haunted Apiary The beginning of the publicity
The story so far
The current state of the game
Starting points
Theories about the game
External links