Author: Steve Peters (Page 17 of 25)

Original Owner, Godfather of ARG
Steve was the creator and original owner of argn.com. After three years of authoring articles, Steve moved on to bigger and better things at No Mimes Media. During his time here, Steve was also one of the puppetmasters for the popular ARG Project MU. He is affectionately known as the Godfather of ARG.

ILoveBees Breaks Into the “Real World”

August 24, 2004 / Steve Peters

August 24, 2004. It all began at 6:07 am PDT. Payphones from coast to coast began to ring. A twelve-hour wave of carefully planned phone calls began to sweep the country, and Halo fans, Beekeepers, the Media and the just plain curious were there to try to intercept them.

This morning, we got to find out what was in store for those who were following the events of Dana and the rogue AI attacking her aunt’s website. While many were expecting Halo 2 demo disks, what they got instead was one of the largest, most complicated distributed interactions in ARG history. Hundreds of people around the country descended upon over 200 locales, working as a team to answer phone calls correctly, in order to unlock a series of audio clues.

While we don’t have the space here to go into the story itself (for that, check the links below), here’s how the whole thing worked: Players were presented with a web page that listed 30 blocks of seven GPS coordinates, which turned out to represent payphones around the country. Each location had a specific time attached, and each block of seven locations had a common password. As the phones started ringing at the exact corresponding time, players realized that they must respond correctly to the voice on the other end in order for something to happen. It was determined that players needed to provide the nickname for the AI that was calling them, plus the password listed for their location. If successful, the web-page immediately updated, indicating success. Two successful responses per group of seven then resulted in an audio file being unlocked. Players successfully unlocked 22 of 30 files the first day, with another chance to unlock the remaining ones every 24 hours. These audio files, when assembled, are revealing a fascinating story.

And this is only the beginning!

Forums and IRC channels broke all records today. The main chat room, #beekeepers, peaked at over 300 users at one point. In addition, the press is taking notice of what’s going on. Word is that G4TechTV’s Pulse will be airing a story about ilovebees this Friday, so stay tuned.

Here’s a video of one event in Georgia. (6.7 MB)

Unfiction Ilovebees Forums
Guide
Quickstart
Wiki
Chat
Plot Timeline

Photo credits
Berkeley: Stitch
Burbank: MrBabyMan

This Week in ARGs: Flash Mobs of Beekeepers??

August 12, 2004 / Steve Peters

Busy week in the Alternate Reality Gaming world. Here’s a summary of what’s been going on:

Ilovebees-
Well, the ilovebees puppetmasters are nothing if not prompt. Once their countdown to metastasizing was complete, ilovebees.com updated at 9am Pacific on Tuesday the 10th, marking the beginning of Phase 3. The site now contained a lot of embedded HTML text, embedded text in images, some new creepy sounds and a list of 220 coordinates.

The text, when defragmented, continues to reveal more and more about the AI (Melissa) and her origins, in addition to captured conversation from the ship she was apparently installed on. It seems that now Melissa is trying to find a way to break out of her box and become “wide awake and physical.” What this means, nobody knows, but it seems she’s making progress.

The sound files reveal a changeling child, which seems to be her finding her voice and trying it out. Now it seems she’s determined to transmit something to 210 discreet locations in the U.S., [EDIT: Updated the link to stay current] and by the looks of the timer, it seems that this will occur on Tuesday, August 24th, at 6:07 am local time, when the timer indicates Melissa will become “wide awake and physical.”

The jury’s still out on what this all means. Players aren’t sure if this indicates that some real world event is going to happen all over the country, or if it’s just a puzzle of some kind that needs to be solved. Either way, you can bet countless ARG’ers will be showing up in the wee hours of the morning at the various locales, looking for geocaches or waiting for dancing robots in bee costumes. There’s no telling what might happen, so feel free to join in, and bring your camera! We’ll post the best pics here, if you send them in.

[Edit: In addition, we’ve created a toll-free hotline for those of you at the various locations to use to report your findings, should you not have immediate web access. Feel free to call (866) xxx-xxxx [EDIT 8/25: number now offline] to record your findings. We’ll forward your report to the unfiction forums right away.]

Trailhead
Discussion
Quickstart
Guide
Wiki Guide

Urban Hunt-
Meanwhile, the folks over at Urban Hunt have been advancing a very compelling story. Secret documents/maps from the failed Reality TV Show Dread House have turned up, so it seems it may not all be an urban myth after all. There’s definitely a secret here, and things are still just getting started.

What happened to the contestants and the crew? Did they just disappear, or did something even more sinister occur? And what do dreams have to do with all this?

Check out The Guide for this if you want to get up to speed, as it’s very well done.

Trailhead
Discussion
Wiki

so, y0ut hink ur l33t???????????????

August 7, 2004 / Steve Peters

You were bruteforcing passwords in preschool. You taught Kevin Mitnick everything he knew. You’ve telnetted to port 139 on countless computers and typed PWNED, crashing them into oblivion. Nothing’s a challenge any more. What’s left to do??

How about hack a presidential election? OK, maybe not a good idea, but a new book entitled The The Mezonic Agenda: Hacking the Presidency lets you take a stab at it without the risk of unfortunate consequences. The novel, which is to be available soon, lets the reader interact with the book and accompanying CD, decrypt its contents, and ultimately control the fate of a mock US Presidential Election. According to the Mazonic Agenda website, players can attempt to vote for themselves as the winning candidate during a simulated election to be held in early 2005. Would-be presidents must use their hacking skills to manipulate the results of the Mezonic mock election. The winner will receive a free pass to the BlackHat 2005 conference in Las Vegas, plus a library of security books.

Think you’re up for the challenge? You can download the software without the book, but having the book will give you a leg up, as you’ll gain insights on how to use the software to your best advantage.

In addition, there will be several warm-up hacks for you to cut your teeth on. Each solve will reveal clues and provide insight into the skills needed to enter the contest. New puzzles will be posted every few weeks.

Ilovebees Moderated Announcement List

August 6, 2004 / Steve Peters

We’ve had a lot of requests for this, so ARGN is going to maintain Moderated Announcement Lists for various ARGs in play. The first will be for I Love Bees. If it proves to be a success, we’ll add more lists for other games.

If you’d like to stay current on only the major events in the game, this list is for you. It will be similar in function to the moderated lists on Yahoo or the moderated blog, only the updates will arrive via email. Only updates, new puzzles, solves, and stuff deemed important will be sent on this list, making it as absolutely low-noise as possible.

[Edit: This list will effectively mirror the existing Netninja Bee Blog, sending any updates to your email inbox.]

[Edit: THE SIGN UP FOR THIS LIST IS CLOSED.]

Ilovebees: The Beast is Back?

July 28, 2004 / Steve Peters

What began as a mysterious Fedex package of honey, has become one of the most intriguing and highly anticipated (for some) events on the ‘net in quite a while. At first, when ARGN received the honey (filled with letters that spelled I LOVE BEES, leading to ilovebees.com) a little over a week ago, we thought it was a new grassroots ARG starting up, but when it was discovered that the ilovebees.com address made an appearance in the recent Halo 2 trailer, we realized this may be much bigger than originally anticipated.

We were right. Since the trailer hit the web on Friday, the entire cyberscape is abuzz, trying to figure out what’s going on. The story has been picked up on computer gaming sites such as IGN, GameSpot, and even Slashdot. Thousands of posts on innumerable boards are clamoring to figure out what is going on.

What is confounding some is exciting others who recognize this as a new Alternate Reality Game. Those in the know are even proclaiming this to be the followup to the ARG that started it all: The Beast, which was a promotional game for Spielberg’s film A.I. back in 2001. The Beast spawned Cloudmakers, an online smart mob of over 7000 who rabidly followed, solved, and obsessed over who killed Evan Chan. The Beast was a viral promotion like no other, and was an amazing event for those who were involved.

So, what is going on here with ilovebees.com? How does it relate to the Halo 2 universe?? Well, ilovebees.com is an amateurish website for Margaret’s Honey that’s being hacked by someone…..or something. Margaret’s niece, Dana, is the webmaster, and the site points to her blog, where she is asking for help dealing with the virus or whatever it is that is screwing up her aunt’s site. Players have emailed her, and Dana has actually replied to some players personally, thanking them for their advice. Upon closer examination, it was discovered that the various images on the site were corrupted with text phrases, which when assembled correctly formed a rather bizarre narrative about a Queen and a Widow.

On July 27th, one of the mysterious countdowns on the site expired, resulting in an update with more hacking goodness, and scaring the crap out of Dana. It seems whatever is taking over her aunt’s site is now actually threatening her.

So, what does Halo 2 have to do with all of this? Well, a great Story So Far explains things pretty well, even though it is a lot of speculation at this point. [EDIT: The Guide is also a great place to start, as it’s a chronological narrative of what’s been going on, and is kept very up to date.]

The ARG community has done an absolutely amazing job so far, organizing information and using tools that were unavailable just a few years ago to create an information and dissemination system the likes of which have never been seen before. If they’re right, this is just the beginning of what is sure to be an amazing ride. Stay tuned.

Here are some links to get you on your way:

QuickStart
I Love Bees Guide
I Love Bees Wiki Guide
I Love Bees Trail
Bee Quicklinks
Moderated Blog

Here are some forums discussing I Love Bees:
Unfiction
TeamXBox
Bungie.net

IRC Chat:
#ilovebees

Ilovebees.com Link to Halo 2 Release Confirmed

July 23, 2004 / Steve Peters

It looks like ilovebees.com (aka SPiDeR) is definitely tied in with the upcoming Halo 2 release for XBox. Check out the trailer for the game being shown in theaters around the US:
Super Hi-Rez version (64mb) | Regular version

Watch the end. It’s there. So, we know there’s something major going on here, and know that there’s a countdown of sorts in progress. Watch for something big within a few days. With Microsoft and Bungie behind this, who knows how deep this rabbithole will go!

Discussion:
Unfiction Forums
Bungie.net