The process is complete
Tonight I took a chance and headed to Northline Mall in search of a "communications log" of the ilovebees ARG. More surprising than the chosen location was the experience itself. One of those things where you just don't know where to look or what to look for. Everything is a clue and everyone is in on it. Or not. Turns out I met a few cool people there. Not the massive crowd that I had expected at all, but just a few good folks that turned up to show their love for all that is Halo.
Not that most of us knew what to do. The specified address where this was all supposed to go down ended up being a movie theater in the mall. That was easy to figure out--especially after walking through the rest of that funky mall. I just made my way to a bank of phones at the front door and waited. Eventually a few others showed up around seven o'clock, but we still just stood around, speculating what might happen at the stroke of eight. It wasn't until someone (who I hadn't noticed arrive) had the bright idea of asking the theater employees, that things started happening. When they were taking pictures and holding up discs, the rest of us started moving in. So at around 7:30 we got our DVDs--even though it was about a half-hour earlier than the specified time--and said our quick goodbyes. It was an interesting bit of community there for a half-hour or so, in the most unlikely of places.
Now, in regards to the DVD, here's what I found. The DVD appears to have all of the audio files, sorted by chapters (1-12) and labeled with the character's name and the title (Jan - The Walk-Away Girl). There's also a farewell statement from the Operator thanking everyone for their participation.
Under "Creation", there are sections including photos of axons and crew members, the widow's journey, a sample of how the audio was recorded and mixed, and four unused sequences.
Then, there's the "Credits" section that is pretty much a scrolling list of everyone involved in the making of this phenomenon, ending with a big thank you to Bungie.
But no video, no game demo, certainly not the game itself. Even though it does have the Xbox Live logo on it, it's just a plain ol' DVD from what I can tell. Maybe that's a disappointment to some of you, but this is certainly more than I ever expected to get out of all of this. And we still have the actual game itself to look forward to!
The whole experience is something I'm sure I'll look back on and just wonder how it all came together. You see, this is what I call telling a good story. Not just a video game, not just a website, not just a radio play, but the ability to motivate people, in one common goal. To bring them together, to make them take part and discover the just how connected the world is on their own.
