Tag: axons

Halo 2’s “I Love Bees” Alternate Reality Game

ilbreview.jpgThe story of I Love Bees proved to be slightly confusing at times, but the gist of it is this: Beekeeper Dana had a site which was attacked by some sort of virus; a countdown was placed on the site which spawned endless hours of speculation as to what the hell “System Peril Distributed Reflex” represented. Besides looking at the odd snippet of information through corrupted pictures and jarbled text, all the players could do was wait on tenterhooks until July 27th, on which “Network Throttling would erode…”

Sure enough, come noon July 27th, ilovebees.com is updated. Someone was mad at Dana and posted pictures of her all over the site; Dana freaked out and decided to flee the country.

The next major plot advancement came August 10th, when “the medium has metastasized”. A lot of information was posted on the site- the most important being GPS Coordinates. 220 were posted in total, all of which pointed to locations the length and breadth of the United States.

On August 17th, to the dismay of some, the coordinates changed- now there were 210 in total. However, there were now specific times telling people when to be at a particular coordinate- which proved to quell a lot of confusion. The importance of being at the “axons” was further emphasized when Dana added to the excitement by implying on her blog that we really should get to them! All players could do was kill time, and many found the night of August 23 to be a sleepless one.

So what happened when the axons (pre-determined payphones in large cities) went hot?

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Ilovebees Suddenly Seeking 777

axon hunter thumb.jpgIt’s been a trying week or so for the Ilovebees ARG. After having axons piled on top of more axons, the players are starting to feel a bit abused, and momentum seems to be waning. Although the folks behind the game are revealing some stellar content in the form of audio clips, the pacing overall is proving to be a challenge for even the most optimistic.

According to Dana’s latest blog entry, players are being encouraged to press on toward the 777 live axons mark. The problem is, the phones seem to be being answered less and less often, which is quite a contrast from two weeks ago when there were as many as 30-40 people at some phones. Sadly, at this rate, it may be weeks before we find out what happens when 777 axons go hot. Currently, we’re at 496 out of 777. That’s a lot of phones left to answer!

On the plus side, the story that’s being revealed continues to intrigue. A new snippet is released each time a codeset goes active, and players have assembled them into a narrative that reveals not only a confirmed tie-in with the Halo universe, but a tale of chatternet hackers, geek love, nefarious kidnappings and blackmail. ARGN has assembled a repository of the audio story so far, and will add more as it is revealed.

Finally, as a little off-topic diversion from the endless answering of phones, ARGN is sponsoring an Axon-Hunter Photoshop Contest. Only a couple days left to get your entries in.

Graphic Credit: jamesi