Editing I love bees

{{Status|RealWorld}}

{{Redirect|ILoveBees|both the blog and the website|I Love Bees (Blog)|I Love Bees (website)}}

'''''i love bees''''' is an [[alternate reality game]] developed by [[4orty2wo Entertainment]] used for the marketing of ''[[Halo 2]]''. During the summer of [[2004 (real world)|2004]], the website ''www.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]].

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 [[Battle of Earth|invade]] [[Earth]] as ''Halo 2'' begins.

==Appearances==

{{Featurelist|secondcolumn=title-5|title-1=Characters|

*[[Aaron Lewis]] {{Fm}}

|title-2=Species|

|title-3=Organizations|

|title-4=Locations|

|title-5=Events|

|title-6=Weapons|

|title-7=Vehicles|

*[[Capital ship]] {{Mo}}

**{{UNSCShip|Apocalypso}} {{1st}}

**[[Smart AI]]

*[[Chatter]] {{1st}}

*[[Deep-Space Artifact]] {{1st}}

The issue of whether ''i love bees'' should be considered canon is somewhat complicated. In the [[Archive: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 [[Treason|traitors]], which was changed to them being rendered permanently comatose.<ref>[[Archive: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 (2009 edition)]]'' while the [[SPDR]] and [[Razorback]] appear in ''[[Halo Infinite]]'', retconning previously existing canon to some degree. 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>

*Soon after ''i love bees'' became popular, someone bought the domain name '''www.ilovepees.com''' and auctioned it on eBay starting at $1000. 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>

*[[Wikipedia:Yuri Lowenthal|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 were 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/Reuse|website}} Though in-universe Dana put them in for her own amusement,{{Ref/Reuse|damage}} some of the keywords explain that it is a work of fiction, such as "bee hoax".

{{Ref/Sources}}

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

*[http://www.wired.com/2004/10/i-love-bees-game-a-surprise-hit/ Wired article]

 

[[Category:Alternate reality games]]