I Love Bees
You might remember it as ilovebees
The archive has not found a surviving copy.
2004·Early web, before YouTube·nostalgic
A game played across websites, emails and public telephones, which turned out to be advertising for the video game Halo 2.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- ilovebees
- Spread in
- 2004
- Began as
- Something you played
- Where it started
- ilovebees.com
- Format
- Phenomenon
- Made by
- 42 Entertainment, commissioned by Microsoft
- Taken from
- Promotion for Halo 2
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A Halo 2 trailer flashed a website address for a moment. The site appeared to be an ordinary page about beekeeping that something had broken into. As players solved what was wrong with it, the game gave out GPS coordinates of payphones — real payphones, in real places — which would ring at an appointed time and play a fragment of an audio drama to whoever answered.
It won a shelf of awards and made 42 Entertainment the reference studio for the genre. Every ARG since is measured against it, and its structure — distributed puzzles, collective solving, a story delivered in fragments to strangers who have to cooperate — is now the standard grammar of internet mystery, from Cicada 3301 to the puzzle campaigns record labels run.
Why it matteredWhat changed
Players were given 210 map co-ordinates and times, went to the payphones there, and answered when they rang. Nine thousand people took part in person.
LegacyWhat it left behind
- It won the innovation prize at the Game Developers Choice Awards and a Webby.1
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This began as something you played rather than watched. Originally published on ilovebees.com.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as something you played rather than watched. Originally published on ilovebees.com.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things