Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Discussion of the out-of-game, real-world aspects of the Iris Alternate Reality Game.

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Hun7er
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by Hun7er »

my problem with it isn't that its not interactive enough, but that it doesn't seem to be very well done. there is too much that dissolves the suspension of disbelief- constantly entering your birthday, the MGS and XBOX360 logos all over the place, the shoddily done audio, and the photoshop tags still in the image files (star map and the microscope image- open them up in wordpad).

i mean, they should have expected us to poke around all these places and to open up all these images in text editors. there should be a complexity here that existed in ILB that i just don't see.

it seems less like an ARG and more like a "wait until we give you a clue and then look at pictures" experience. the revelations we receive don't seem to enable us to access future content.
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Frogwart
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by Frogwart »

I think Bungie and Microsoft are in a very tricky spot with this.

They want to rev up the hype machine for Halo 3 even more than it is already. An ARG allowed them to do this with Halo 2, but if memory serves (and often anymore, it serves me pudding), the ARG began with over six months to spare before Halo 2's release date (in fact, was Halo 2 even nailed down with a release date when ilovebees began? Correct me on these points if I'm wrong).

With this "event" (let's call it that for the sake of argument), they allowed themselves less than four months to get a certain amount of information out to a very discerning public. I think they were worried that, if the leash was too loose on it, they might not have the time to get out all the info in the way they want to.
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Avateur
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by Avateur »

Yeah, but they're taking "forever" to get more info out. We had countdowns spanning 1-2 days, then a huge countdown spanning a week that froze and magically opened at a BS time, and now nothing until presumably July 1, 5, or 7? Let's assume that something happens on each one of these days. That's great. There's still quite the gap between 1 and 5, and we usually get everything pinned down within 24-48 hours. July 5-7 isn't that bad, but then we have to assume that more of this waiting will occur before more server openings. If they're worried about getting info out on time, why are they burning so much time? :P
3zz
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by 3zz »

I personally think it will be waaaaaay over till Juli 7th. Or at least that will be >A< date (which might be predicessed by another date with an update). Predictable as Bungie can be with their 7's, isnt 7/7/7 too good a date to pass up? Or will they betray their nature and delude us, meaning they dont update on the seventh, while we're all hyped up, but on the eighth, when we're all pissed?
System Failure
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by System Failure »

Only if Bungie had a heart of ice would they do that to us :cry:
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Mariachi
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by Mariachi »

If this were a typical ARG, we would be having to solve something, or figure out a way to get more information. As it stands, we are just waiting patiently for more info to be fed to us. The biggest thing we have to figure out at the moment is which date will they give us more information. No puzzles, no riddles, no hidden messages, nothing. Everything we know so far has been handed to us. Even with the servers, we had to unlock them, but that amounted too was the first 100 people inputing the codes that they gave us. Why couldn't the server have been unlocked with some kind of puzzle or riddle leading us to a passcode? Don't get me wrong, I am loving the new information they are giving us. I am not complaining about this viral campaign at all. All I am saying is that I think this Viral Campaign is not very much like an ARG. I think it really is more of a web drama.
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Frogwart
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by Frogwart »

Mariachi's got a very good point. It's very much a web drama, orchestrated for the careful dispensation of selected information to a willingly captivated audience.

My big question is, after 7/1/7, or 7/5/7, or even 7/7/7, what will happen the remaining eighty days between 7/7/7 and 9/25/7? Rending of flesh and gnashing of teeth? :(
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Avateur
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by Avateur »

The whole thing abruptly stops, driving us all insane until we raid Microsoft and take everyone out! Then, behind the scenes, we continue where they left off, thus making it a real ARG because we had to go on a quest to MS, take out all of the people who got in our way, and now we have to run the thing. What a great ARG! MS has planned everything. :)
AI23
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by AI23 »

To play devil's advocate (not that I actually believe this) there is a none zero chance that there is a puzzle to be solved and no one has solved it yet. Some one at bungie could be utterly brilliant and we're all missing it.
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Re: Calling IRIS an ARG wrong?

Unread post by ODST Epsilon »

Man...I've been saying this since the stuff started popping up on Halo3.com because I knew it was run by Microsoft and not Bungie.

I think this thread is indicative of the problems they're having with this viral campaign/web drama. The people who would be the most likely to solve the problems and further the story if this was a true ARG are becoming frustrated and anxious with all of this. Threads and responses seem to be slowing down and we're running out of theories that seem remotely plausible. We get a new AR post and it essentially went by without fan fare. Sure people were curious as to what it means, but did we see anyone hunting around for Macbeth quotes or frantically converting numbers into coordinates? Definitely not.

One of the main problems is that we're being left completely in the dark at this point. At least with the countdown we saw events happen and had a general idea as to when something was supposed to happen. But once the first server appeared, we tore through the information presented and it became quite apparent that aside from just being nice back story...there wasn't much for us to do. Did anyone really do anything? No, 100 people put in codes and were promised a reward which irked a lot of people because who knows how many of those people were actually following this thing and weren't just looking at it as a one time thing and were asked to put a code in?

Personally, it feels a little insulting that the PR machine has decided that we are not bright enough to actually solve problems that are presented to us. It's insulting that here we can solve something within an hour of discovering it, yet some of the clowns on B.net figure it out a few days later and suddenly we're all on a level playing ground again. I don't want that. I'm sure a lot of other people don't want it either. Who is this thing really geared towards anyways? Is Random Joe who likes Halo 3's MP and talks trash all night going to worry about this? No. It's the fans who had read all the books, looked through theory after theory, analyzed line after line to garner just a shred of information from the Halo universe.

Maybe if MS had gone about this in a better way and had avoided pulling a typical PR stunt I wouldn't be in such a bad mood about all of this but I just can't help but be pissed that we're all at the mercy of some suits in Redmond who are deciding when, where, and how we're going to get this information.
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