Kathunter's Personal Space

In case you did not know, I am a little obsessive compulsive. When I decide I am interested in something, I bury myself in my room, order in food, and block out everything else in my entire life. Luckily, I had the weekend alone, because I decided to write a story on ilovebees.

I've been thinking about bees
Last week was the final event in San Fran, New York, Chicago and Austin where 3 months of game play culminated in a (yet another) preview event of Halo 2.

I had started with ilovebees in the beginning, but never had the time to dedicate to it, tried to pick it up after PAX but did not have GPS at the time, so I let it go again until Gus IMed me about the "Training Missions" (by the way RvB ep41 is posted).

Being broke, I figured I could sell the story of the SF event, and started tapping my address book. I got lucky first time out, and set out to research the story. Since November 4th's event at the Lowes Metreon I have not lifted my nose from this story. It is midnight on Saturday, and I am listening to the audio for the 3rd time. These guys are fucking genius. I have read through every word of every message, dozens of forums, a gaggle if sites, wikis, audio journals, and I can't get enough. Tomorrow I am doing phone interviews with Dana and various beekeepers, as well joining an IRC chat with the puppetmasters - and I can't get enough.

In case you were born last week, ilovebees is an Alternative Reality Game (ARG) where real world communication, character actors, and multimedia communication come together to bring a game to life (think The Game with Michael Douglas). This particular spectacle was orchestrated by 4ourty2wo, the same creative animals behind the ARG "The Beast" which surrounded the launch of Spielberg's AI. My next move is to find some way to get an interview with them.

...and about Gurls
The bees distraction was welcome after the entire Frag Dolls buzz last week. In case you missed our latest forum splash, it seems a few people did not know we were sponsored by Ubisoft (I am going to make you work for the links if you want them; Google loves me too much), and started a string of negative stories - feeding a string of negative forum postings, feeding my long-seeded desire to have everyone like me. Why won't everyone just like me?

Amazingly enough, I think I have finally extinguished this desire with tequila induced urine over this past week. After enough people calling you an airhead or bimbo the internet gossip starts to harden your skin and you realize it is a complement that anyone even cares. It was best put by 'anyuzer' when he said

Anyways, you girls should actually be congratulating yourselves for everything that has been written about you in the last week, good and bad. And I swear, that’s not being trite. Already, by simply causing a stir for one week, you have had more influence on the ‘gaming community’ than most other corporate sponsored gaming groups could ever dream of, not to mention individuals themselves.
You’ve raised important questions about the gaming culture and the gaming industry, made statements, and have had your name passed between probably a million or more lips. Not bad for a weeks work in my opinion.

I would prefer to be the one answering the questions but I will have to be happy with being the one to pose them for now (but only for now).

An amusing thing about internet gossip this week was that I was surprised to find out I was engaged to seanbaby.

I had to be the one to break the news:
miss eniac: btw, the editor of Game***** reported in his forums that you were engaged to one of the frag dolls
miss eniac: i hate to be the one to break the news
miss eniac: can Jinx and Rhoulette be my brides maids?
miss eniac: Oh, and the wedding will be in all pink and black
miss eniac: you will need to re-die your mohawk

By the end of it all, I was sick of hearing about "what women gamers really want" and ready to jump off the community bridge, until Sean came up with a brilliant comedy take on an article we were using to get free skydiving. The story is somewhere around here.

...but mostly me
And so it is all coming to an end and Sunday is on the way after what has proven to be an important week, and I find myself tying the two events together inside the dialog of the first.

"For a quality experience the girl has to be real."
- Jersey (ilovebees future)