Halo 2 Website Puzzle Confounds

redune45 writes "The Halo 2 Theatrical trailer ends with the normal Xbox logo, but it also briefly replaces xbox.com with ilovebees.com. Going to ilovebees.com it appears that the site has been 'hacked', adding to the mystery. The 'owner' of the site set up a separate blog with a post talking about the error. There is a huge thread on the Bungie.net forums on the same issue. The WHOIS information for this site shows that it was first registered on June 14, 2004. But no obvious clues other than that are available. What is going on here?" There's at least one Wiki set up to gather clues. We also mentioned this in an earlier Halo story.

Viral marketing

A case of viral marketing? Move along....

perhaps, but...

That doesn't mean that it isn't fun to play along. It's strongly suspected that the designers of this latest "game" are the same folks who created "The Beast [seanstewart.org]", which coincided with the release of A.I. [imdb.com]. So, did it serve as a marketing tool for the movie? Probably. But for many people it was engaging and thought provoking in its own right.

And no, "The Beast" didn't culminate in a mass-email that said "Thanks for playing, now go see A.I!!". In fact, I don't think there were any direct references to the movie throught the course of the game (but the game arguably did take place in the A.I universe). I'm imagining the ilovebees thing will play out in the same way.

I know it's microsoft and as such we are required to hate it, but please try to keep an open mind.

Re:Viral marketing

I actually "played" the AI viral marketing game when I first discovered it. I found it totally fascinating. There was a huge amount of sites that had already made their way to all of the major search engines and had all appearances of being real - tons of strange sub-plots, etc. There were even certain phases of the game where other game players were receiving faxes and such (when they had previously given their fax number to a fictitious company in the game). If you called certain numbers, sometimes there would be live actors answering the phone. It must have taken many months of full-time work to pull that off.

The coolest thing about it was that they never even really mentioned the movie AI. It was just generally about artificial intelligence. It was it's own separate thing, and I have to say that it was pretty cool.

I decided to get into this HALO one just for a bit to see where it would go. I saw an IM address on one of the supposed owner of ilovebees.com blog site. (it's mentioned in one of the user comments to the latest entry). What the hell, I sent an IM. Sure enough, I got a bizarre reply back. From a real person, or perhaps a bot? I don't know - seemed like a real person. They said they'd get back to me later.

About an hour later, they IM'd me back. We chatted a bit and then I was invited to a chat room. There were four people there chatting. (Same kind of sureal text that is found on the website). In the chat room, the game HALO 2 came up several times in the conversation.

I think it's still kinda cool that they go to all these lengths to put together an interactive campaign for a game. This one is just a little thin, though. Mentioning the game so early in the "quest" or whatever. Its not quite the same as the AI campaign. But, it would be hard to top that.

They're just trying to create a buzz

It's guerilla marketing [wikipedia.org], plain and simple, just like Sci-Fi's recent attempt with M. Night Shyamalan's new movie. You're reading about it, so it's working.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

This reminds of a pretty cool advertising campaign that was done for the mini series 'V' back in the 80's.

I used to take BART to school in San Francisco and one day in the stations there appeared these generic looking posters of happy family scenes and such with the words 'The Visitors are our friends' written on them. No other information was anywhere on the posters. Nobody knew what they were about but it got everyone talking. Then about a week later there was suddenly big red spray painted V's on all the posters. It was pretty strange at the time and I didn't know what it was about until the series came out about 6 months later. It got me to watch it.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

Some more info here [wikipedia.org] regarding this whole stunt. I wonder about blogspot's policies regarding the use of their services as part of a hoax/advertisement campaign...

Other Forums

You can also read a LOT of information on this website at the unfiction forum dedicated to it [unfiction.com]. Really interesting stuff.

re-inactment of a simpson episode

does anyone remember the simpsons episode, where Lisa finds a skeleton of an angel with wings? It turns out that was just a marketing gimick to attract people to the grand opening. This ilovebees.com is just that.

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

Yes. Just like the game preceeding the A.I. movie release. It's just a shame that the game was so much better than the movie.

Most of the people playing the game know it's a marketing gimmick. It doesn't make it any less fun to solve the puzzles, though.

-Todd

Re:Not Hacked

Then maybe it is a Honeypot.

fileplanet

this advert-article reminds me of how much fileplanet sucks... And to think that when this community started years ago, it was so promising ! They are the RealPlayer equivalent of free downloads. A billion buttons for payed services, and a tiny hidden one somewhere for a free download. I really despise these guys !

Well DUH

OF COURSE it's a promotional stunt. That doesn't mean it can't be fun and engrossing to explore the site and try to figure out what's going on.

Pictures!

Here. [unfiction.com]

On the first screen of ilovebees.com

There's a black square overlaying the ilovebees main page, it says:

HALT - MODULE CORE HEMORRHAGE

Control has been yielded to the SYSTEM PERIL DISTRIBUTED REFLEX.

This medium is classified, and has a STRONG INTRUSIVE INCLINATION.

In 3 days, network throttling will erode.

In 17 days this medium will metastasize.

COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL:
30:13:38:28:985

Make your decisions accordingly.

I'm using IE 6, I don't know if it'll show up on Firefox. Perhaps a preview of what we'll see in Halo 2? (Computer system on the fritz, etc?)

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

The same text shows up in Firefox. The thing about this ploy that is most unrealistic is how the website is not slowing down at all despite the number of slashdotters who must be viewing it now. I'm sure ilovebees.com was set up to handle this kind of traffic.

Confound Delivery

From the writing on the bees' website it looks like an AI construct that had gone into the first stages of rampancy.

Conclusion:
a) The server hosting a page about bees got fed up, spontaneously developed advanced intelligence and went nutty.

b) This marketing is cleverly drawing attention to the fact that Halo 2 will revisit the AI plotline from Bungie's Marathon series (http://marathon.bungie.org/story/).

Note also that similar tactics were used when Halo was early in the works (when it was going to be a Mac game), mysterious e-mails were sent from someone named Cortana, with an e-mail address that could be traced back to workstation 49 (7?) in the bungie offices.

Not the first time for Bungie: Cortana Letters

The Cortana letters. [bungie.org].

The Cortana letters preceeded Halo by several years, originating on Newsgroups and touching on some of the game lore of Marathon.

Re:audio track?

There is something else hidden in it, or at least it sounds like it. There's some kind of "computer" type sound in the back, something along the lines of the sound computers made in the movies of the 70's and 80's....

Suckers

According to this page [netninja.com] (quoted below in italics), "Dana" is trying to remove the defacement.

If you use WHOIS to look up the domain registration for ilovebees.com it has the following information:

Margaret Effendi ([e-mail]) 2370 Market Street #510 San Francisco CA 94114-1575 Phone: [phone]

Calling the phone gets you a voicemail "Hi, this is Dana, please leave a message." but the mailbox is full. From this I would assume the address also belongs to Dana.

--- The domain name ilovebees.com was registered on June 14, 2004, the same day as the first post in Dana's blog. The domain is registered until June 14, 2009.

However, the tags tell another story.

Before the closing /HTML tag, there is a FONT tag with the attribute "CLASS=dana_white", which applies to what is supposedly the "regular" site text.

However, in the piece of HTML inserted after the final /HTML tag which produces the black square overlay, there is a FONT tag with the attribute "CLASS=dana_big".

Would a real defacement have taken the time to begin their class names with "dana_" as in the rest of the document?

Probably not.

This, combined with the domain registration taking place the same day as the first post in Dana's blog, leads me to the conclusion that the whole thing is a set-up.

However, the authors of this elaborate set-up (as in the movie The Game) have left those of us that are smart enough to figure out that this is bullshit a little easter egg:
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="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">

Re:Suckers

If you use WHOIS to look up the domain registration for ilovebees.com it has the following information: Margaret Effendi ([e-mail]) 2370 Market Street #510 San Francisco CA 94114-1575 Phone: [phone] I live in San Francisco and used to live at that address. It is the Fox Plaze apartments. a 28 story building" and the 8th floors and below are devoted to commercial offices. The lease rates are quite high and most of the offices are filled by affluent companies. I'm tempted to go over to #510 and see what ofice is there. I'd bet my DVD drive that it's a marketing company {g}

Halo lore and myth

Looks like someone (ie Bungie) is staging a rampancy. Rampacy is what happened to the AI's in the Marathon game. Ie they broke lose from the safeguards imposed on them and went wild. The new black box looks very very similar to the console info in the original Marathon games when Durandel went wild. Bungie has a highly evolved back story for their universe very similar to Larry Nivens known space universe. Niven also wrote the book Ringworld, in which more then a little bit of Halo cribs from. Halo = ringworld. If I remember correctly back from the original marathon back story we are right about the time the first AI went rampant, on earth. I think it was an accidentle ai not created by man but from the interconnectedness of computers. AI's have always featured prominantly in Bungie games as plot conveyers, and info distributers. Here is partial list of Marathon backstory, that also ties into Bungies first fps title "Pathways into Darkness"
AI history [geeklair.net]
It is imcomplete but does give some more info. Bungie has admitted that Halo fits in the Marathon/Pathways universe but until now has not tied it together. Many insignias and parts of the game are stolen from Marathon. A good discussion on Marathon/Halo connections [bungie.org]
I have always been a Marathon fan as I have mention in previouse posts, as many game play feature predated many pc fps titles for a few years. Unreal Tourny did not invent king of the hill, tag, or kill the man with the ball. These had been around on Marathon for a few years. Bungie also allowed people to mod the games and gave tools out to make maps change graphics, and physics way before people started modding games on pc's. It is unfortunate that one of the most ground breaking FPS titles was on the MAC and gets so little recognition. I still lode up marathon games sometimes and reveal in the map design and story. I feel as well as most people that have played the marathon series that Half-life's story line and maps pale in comparison to what Bunigie did on 1995-1999.

Just my rant...

metacortechs.com and The Matrix

I just wanted to chip in about a similar "mystery". Starting October 1st, metacortechs.com (Metacortex was the company Neo worked for in the first movie) unveiled a series of ever-increasing fan-made (this was confirmed at a later point) plots which other fans discovered by using the clues scattered around the sites or even making use of good, old-fashioned brute force hacking.

Check out this guide [uiowa.edu]; there's a pretty massive amount of information regarding this and it was great fun to see its development.

Old hat for long time Bungie fans

Those of us who have been with Bungie since the old days when they were a Mac only shop will recognize this as the classic strange humor of the Bungie team. Anyone who has played the Marathon trillogy will recognize the ramblings of a rampant AI which fills the site in several places.

So this isn't a truely hacked site, but one they have made up to look that way.