Tag: i love bees (Page 3 of 6)

GDC 2005 Spotlights Alternate Reality Games

March 12, 2005 / Steve Peters

As Elan Lee took to the stage to accept the 2005 Innovation Award for I Love Bees at the Game Developers Choice Awards on Wednesday night, Alternate Reality Gaming stepped off of the sidelines and into the spotlight. Lee, on behalf of his team at 4orty2wo Entertainment, thanked the players, and made a special point of thanking Microsoft and Bungie for showing trust in their vision of producing an Alternate Reality Game that would promote the release of Halo 2. I Love Bees was one of three games presented with the Innovation Award this year, the other recipients being Katamari Damacy and Donkey Konga. During the presentation, a video teaser featuring various ILB website pages, photos of crewmemebers and soundbites from some of the live calls highlighted what a unique form of entertainment I Love Bees truly was.

The games that win the Innovation Award usually cause quite a stir at the Game Developers Conference, and this was no exception. There was definitely a resultant buzz going on the following day, with many attendees talking about what I Love Bees, Alternate Reality Gaming and Pervasive Games in general are all about. These questions were answered when I Love Bees was featured in a session on Experimental Gaming on Thursday, led by ILB Puppetmaster Jane McGonigal. Jane was able to talk at length about what I Love Bees entailed, and what the concept of Alternate Reality Gaming is, giving specifics about gameplay, community aspects, and the “This is Not a Game” philosophy. Jane is also one of the forces behind the current I Love Bees exhibit at UC Berkeley.

The Innovation Award and subsequent Experimental Gameplay presentation definitely got people’s attention, with many developers expressing deep interest in jumping on the ARG bandwagon. However, the folks at 4orty2wo Entertainment were tight-lipped about what projects they may be currently working on, for obvious reasons.

Complete List of 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards Winners

“I Love Bees” and Elan Lee to Receive 2005 Innovation Award

February 15, 2005 / Steve Peters

Inside word comes to us today that “I Love Bees” and lead designer Elan Lee will receive a 2005 Innovation Award from the International Game Developers Association, to be announced at the upcoming Game Developers Choice Awards in March. The Innovation award is a special creative/design award given to standouts in innovation every year. Previous games that have won this award include Counter-Strike, Rez and Black + White. As this is a largely console/PC focused organization, we think it’s great for a game like ILB to be recognized.

The award will be presented at the 5th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards on March 9, 2005 at a ceremony during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. For a list of the other nominees, check out the IGDA website.

Congratulations go out from ARGN to Elan Lee and his ILB team, for a job well done and recognition of what a cool thing Alternate Reality Games are!

ARG-Parties Announced

January 31, 2005 / Steve Peters

One of the by-products of Alternate Reality Games is the communities that they create and foster, and the sometimes longlasting friendships that can result. Consequently, ARG fans have been busy recently setting up various player meets in the upcoming months. Witness another ARG-Fest-O-Con and now a Hivemeet that are being planned as a way for online players to get together to party and re-live some of the games’ fun in real life.

Following on the heels of successful ARG-Fests in Las Vegas, Orlando and Vancouver BC, players are currently organizing ARGFest NYC, which will take place on July 22-24, 2005 in New York City, and have created a wiki to help coordinate events, accomodations, etc. Discussion of plans and ideas for ARGFest NYC can be found in this thread on unfiction.

For those of you who gave your lives to chasing down Axons a few months back, some midwest Beekeepers are currently planning the first ever Ilovebees Hivemeet in Chicago on May 13-15, 2005. The website they’ve created will help organize events, accommodations and travel plans. In addition, folks are discussing Hivemeet Chicago plans in this unfiction thread.

These meets are player sponsored and organized, so keep in mind that there are no “official” events planned, although if history is any indication, you can expect some realworld ARG-ish fun to drop in on you in one form or another. Watch the respective websites for updated news and information on these events.

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

December 19, 2004 / Jonathan Prendergast

The 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 erodeâ€¦”

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?

Ilovebees-Inspired Artwork to Raise Money for Charity

December 9, 2004 / Steve Peters

Artist Charles Allen Harris has announced that he will donate 50% of sales on his prints, to Child’s Play, the Penny Arcade Led Gamer Charity. Notably, one of his prints was inspired by the recent Ilovebees ARG, entitled Melissa-The Operator.

So, if you’ve got a Beekeeper on your Christmas list, pick up a Melissa print and help a great charity at the same time. 🙂

Live Phone-in Chat with IloveBees Actors

November 9, 2004 / Steve Peters

The Alternate Reality Gaming Network will host a live call-in phone chat with some of the voice actors featured in the Ilovebees Alternate Reality game, hosted by the kind folks at AccuTalk. It will be open to callers both in the US and abroad, and will take place this Saturday, November 13th at 12:00 noon Pacific/3:00pm Eastern. On hand will be Kristen Rutherford (Durga/Melissa/Sleeping Princess) and more from the cast (stay tuned).

This phone chat will work very much like a call-in radio show, as callers will have a chance to talk directly to the actors, and ask whatever questions they like. Watch this unfiction thread for more details as they become available.

EDIT 11/10: more details…
If you’d like to participate, call (404) 920-6610, then enter the conference code 516230#. You’ll be prompted to state your name (or screen name in this case), then will be put on hold until the chat begins at noon.

By default, you’ll be in listen-only mode. If you’d like to ask a question or make a comment, press *1. This will put you in the queue, which will be gone through in order. We’ll move overseas callers to the front of the queue. When it’s your turn, you’ll be ‘voiced’ and able to talk.

EDIT 11/13:
The chat went well. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here is a recording for your listening pleasure:

ilbphonechat (7.47 MB)