Editing I love bees

{{Era|ILB|RW}}

'''''i love bees''''' is an [[alternate reality game]] developed by [[4orty2wo Entertainment]] used for the marketing of ''[[Halo 2]]''. During the summer of [[2004]], the website [http://www.ilovebees.com ilovebees.com] was used as a publicity site for ''[[Halo 2]]'', with the site being pointed to by an advertisement for the game played alongside movie trailers.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeyskiiWRdI '''YouTube:''' ''HALO 2 THEATRICAL TRAILER'']</ref> Ostensibly a beekeeper's personal site, the server appeared to have been taken over by an unstable [[Melissa (AI)|AI]] whose thoughts were found scattered on the site. Players would interact with this AI and help her return to the future and save the world from the [[Halo Array]].

[[File:Axon.jpg|300px|thumb|Players wait at a payphone.]]

On July 23, 2004, a group of ''Halo'' fans discovered a hidden URL in the [[Halo 2 Cinematic Trailer]] that led them to a website that appeared at first glance to be hacked.<ref>[http://halo.bungie.org/news.html?item=10080 '''halo.bungie.org:''' ''Bees... you think Ant Farm was involved?'']</ref> A message on the frontpage directed viewers to the blog of a girl named [[Dana Awbrey]]. 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.<ref name="damage">[http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/2004/07/damage.html '''I Love Bees''': ''The Damage'']</ref> Dana acted essentially as a narrator in the game, describing events for people who missed the action.<ref>[http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/2004/08/extraordinary.html '''I Love Bees:''' ''The Extraordinary'']</ref>

The frontpage had a counter counting down to July 27, 2004 (when "network throttling will erode"), August 10, 2004 (when "this medium will metastasize"), and August 24, 2004 (at 8:06 A.M., when it would be "wide-awake and physical")<ref>[http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4644 '''Unfiction:''' ''<nowiki>[SPEC]</nowiki> Analyzing the Computer Text'']</ref> Currently, (as of 2014) there is a counter counting down to the day the [[Covenant Empire|Covenant]] will [[Battle of Earth|attack]] [[Earth]], in 538 years' time.<ref name="website">[http://www.ilovebees.com i love bees] [[I Love Bees (Website)|(main website)]]</ref>

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."<ref>[http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5476 '''Unfiction:''' ''<nowiki>[PUZZLE]</nowiki> AXONS GO HOT - Coordinates'']</ref> With the exception of one leading to the Pacific Ocean, all of the coordinates lead to payphones. On 8/24/04, the countdown ended as it reached the first set time. People who answered the payphones (the "[[axons]]") at the scheduled times spoke to a recording of the [[Melissa (AI)|AI]] and were asked basic questions about the character. If answered correctly, an [[I Love Bees Axon Clips|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 payphones.<ref>[http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/2004/09/axon-spike-rendezvous.html '''I Love Bees:''' ''axon spike rendezvous'']</ref>

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 containing all of the ILB audio files, as well as deleted material and screenshots from the site.

In 2552 an alien artifact splits up the UNSC AI Melissa into three parts. One part stays in 2552, has amnesia and is named Durga. The other two parts, the Operator and the Sleeping Princess, are sent back in time to the website "I Love Bees". Also with the latter is a Trojan Horse AI ("The Seeker") sent by the Covenant as a spy. The Operator falsely believes the Sleeping Princess is the Trojan Horse, and tries to kill her. Participants in the ARG would communicate with the Operator and the Sleeping Princess to learn details of the plot, forming different factions for either character.

The audio drama consists of recordings taken by Durga in 2552, explaining what's going on in the future. Durga is taken in by a boy named Jersey, who realizes he has “God's own spyware” and uses her to spy on the hot girl in the building, Jan. In doing so, it comes to light that her family is a lot more interesting than first apparent. Durga goes on to spy on several other people she finds interesting and eventually assembles them into her “crew”. She takes her crew to a military base to deactivate the alien artifact, which will potentially keep the Halo Array from activating, and the action causes the AI fragments to return to the future and merge back together into Melissa. It seems like everyone will live happily ever, but then the Covenant invade Earth as ''Halo 2'' begins.

===Characters===

*[[Melissa (AI)|Melissa]]

**[[Operator]]/Queen

**[[Sleeping Princess]]

**[[Durga]]

*[[Seeker]]/Pious Flea

*[[Jersey Morelli]]

*[[Kamal Zaman]]

*[[Colonel Herzog]]

*[[Major Standish]]

*[[Thin Kinkle]]

*[[Rani Sobeck]]

*[[Aiden Maki]]

 

===Notable Items===

*[[UNSC Apocalypso]]

*[[Chatter]]

*[[Deep-Space Artifact]]

The issue of whether ''i love bees'' should be considered canon is somewhat complicated. In the [[Halopedia:Apocalypso Chat|Apocalypso Chat]], the producers of ''i love bees'' say that Bungie allowed them to tell their own story, but offered certain suggestions regarding storytelling devices and corrected facets such as the original idea that ONI would hang traitors, which was changed to them being rendered permanently comatose.<ref>[[Halopedia:Apocalypso Chat|'''Apocalypso Chat''']], 18:03 - 18:05</ref> In October 2004, this was expanded on by [[Joseph Staten]] in an interview with ''[[halo.bungie.org]]'', who, when asked if ''i love bees'' should be considered canon, said:

{{Article Quote|The Bees would not make the cut. Those guys basically did their own thing with very little Bungie input (save for massaging and approving the initial plot-treatment). While we helped define the boundaries of their fiction, we let them do what they thought best. And I think the game turned out great.<ref>[http://halostory.bungie.org/staten102204.html '''halo.bungie.org''': ''Joe Staten Interview - October 2004'']</ref>}}

{{Article Quote|We're going to have this huge collection of canon and things that we embrace as canon, like I Love Bees and stuff like that.<ref>[http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/4818 '''1UP''': ''The 1UP Show: Episode 07/28/06''] (27:49 - 27:55)</ref>}}

This was shown in the graphic novel as two characters from ''i love bees'', Herzog and Standish as well as events in the ''i love bees'' storyline in which they took place, are referenced in a canon image.<ref>'''[[Halo Graphic Novel]]''', [[Halo Graphic Novel, Page 122|''page 122'']]</ref> Additionally, entities introduced in ''i love bees'', including [[Optican]], [[chatter]]s, and [[communications kiosk]]s, were later featured in ''[[Halo 3: ODST]]''. The colony [[Mamore]] was mentioned prominently in promotional material for ''[[Halo: Reach]]''. Finally, several key elements of ''i love bees'', including [[Melissa]], the {{UNSCShip|Apocalypso}}, and the [[deep-space artifact]] are included in the officially canon ''[[Halo Encyclopedia]]''; despite this, Melissa is explicitly identified as a member of the first class of SPARTAN-IIs. In 2011, Frank O'Connor again stated that ''i love bees'' is considered canon by [[343 Industries]].<ref name="frank">[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rPeMxbvCjYo '''YouTube''': ''Halo: From A to Z with Frank O'Connor'']</ref>

Still, ''i love bees'' cannot be considered entirely canonical. Some elements of ''i love bees'' directly contradict more recent material of definite canon status, such as the time in which [[Tobias Fleming Shaw]] and [[Wallace Fujikawa]] were alive. Thus, ''i love bees'' could be considered as having a similar canonical level to the now-defunct ''[[w:c:starwars:Expanded Universe|Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'', in which the ARG can be considered canonical unless contradicted by more authoritative sources.

*Soon after ''i love bees'' became popular, someone bought the domain name '''www.ilovepees.com''' and auctioned it on eBay. The person claimed that whoever made it a redirect to their own site would receive a large amount of search traffic from players who typed the address incorrectly.<ref>[http://nikon.bungie.org/news.html?item=10131 '''halo.bungie.org''': ''How Stupid ARE People, Anyway?'']</ref>

*A player tried to answer a live call in the middle of [[wikipedia:Hurricane Ivan|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."<ref>[http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,65365-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1 '''Wired''': ''I Love Bees Game a Surprise Hit'']</ref>

*[[Yuri Lowenthal]], voice of [[Kamal Zaman]], is also the voice of the Prince in the [[wikipedia:Prince of Persia|Prince of Persia]] series, and Sasuke in the Naruto series. A piece of Kamal's dialog, "People think time is a river that flows in one direction, but time is an ocean." seems to be a deliberate reference to 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."

*In the website's source code, the following search engine keywords are included: "honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping, hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium, messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game, survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated, thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall, re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees".<ref name="website"/> Though in-universe Dana put them in for her own amusement,<ref name="damage"/> some of the keywords explain that it is a work of fiction, such as "bee hoax".

File:Ilovebees.jpg|i love bees DVD menu.

File:DVD.PNG|The DVD

File:I love politics.png|i love bees players sneaked a banner for their ILB team into a real life political event.

File:ILBs_card.png|The passcard to get into the Chicago event

<references/>

*[http://ilovebees.com ilovebees.com - The site itself]

*[http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/ The ilovebees weblog]

*[http://bees.netninja.com/ NetNinja ILB resources]

*[http://www.thebruce.ca/ilovebees/ theBruce's ilovebees Compilations] and [http://creepy.thebruce.ca fanfiction retelling]

*[http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=364518&viewreplies=true&postRepeater1-p=1 Bungie.net forum thread]

*[http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65365,00.html Wired article]

[[Category:Promotional Material]]