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This topic has moved here: Subject: Authenticity of the "Bees"-"Bungie" Connection
  • Subject: Authenticity of the "Bees"-"Bungie" Connection
Subject: Authenticity of the "Bees"-"Bungie" Connection

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There's been some question about whether or not these "I Love Bees" messages are from Bungie. A few fingers have gone pointing to former staff, or Wideload, or (flatteringly) to me as authour of the Enkidu Terminals.

It's good to be skeptical in these circumstances. It's good not to let yourselves be stampeded. After examining the facts, however, I've come to the conclusion that these are from Bungie. Now, let me tell you why and see if you agree.

The key item of evidence is that the URL is included in the theatrical trailer. Think through the chain of who had access to the trailer... Bungie did the renders and passed them on to the Ant Farm, the film production company that generated the trailer. Ant Farm probably forwards a copy directly to MSN. MSN serves it out. It gets snaffled up by several other sites and mirrored.

It's only in the very end of the chain that there's any access by somebody whose home address isn't known by Microsoft Legal. If we can eliminate that link, and ensure that the copies we're seeing are the same as the ones that went into the theatres, then there's NO WAY that an outside party could be involved. I haven't seen this in the theatre, but the next time I go I'll be checking to see if that web address morphs up on the big screen too.

If it does, and the trailer hasn't been pulled, there's just no way that this could have been done by an outside party.

That's why I think these are the real thing.

Now, it'd be simple enough for Frankie or Sketch to come out and say, "Yup, that's us." I don't think they will, for the simple reason that the gnawing uncertainty adds drama to the whole presentation. (That's partly why I kept my name off the Terminals until the end.) I wouldn't put it past them to simply say nothing, and leave us hanging on the vinegar-soaked tenterhooks now embedded in our flesh like the discarded stingers of so many dying bees...

As one of the "suspects", I felt a responsibility to the Bungie fan community to put this out in plain sight. I hereby declare that I had NOTHING to do with ilovebees.com; hopefully the evidence I cited throughout this post is proof enough that it's The Real Stuff.

Now let's get digging into the mysteries of the text; I for one am eager to experience what the Marathon folks got to go through in 1999 when the famous Cortana Letters came out.

-- Steve wishes us all happy sleuthing!

  • 07.23.2004 6:40 PM PDT