MARATHON ARG
When a storied company like Bungie decides to drop the next installment in a landmark video game franchise, one that is seeped in lore and built on a complex narrative beloved by the gaming community, you don’t simply release the trailer. You give the fans what they deserve, an ARG worthy of their insatiable hunger for solving mysteries.
Halo 2’s “I Love Bees” remains the benchmark for success when it comes to ARG’s. It must be complex enough to challenge an already whip-smart fan community supercharged by social media, but at the same time it can’t be so impossible that outside intervention is required. In short, it requires something just shy of predicting the future.
If you can accomplish that, you earn the respect of one of the most loyal fanbases to ever exist. The kind of fans who reestablish your hope for humanity by working together across timezones and social media platforms and even creating a 95 page google document to solve a puzzle.
After several days in a bunker, the clues were solved and the lore was unlocked. And we managed to gain a little bit of press attention.
Made @ Mother LA with Joey Johnson (CD), Shelby Tamura (CD), Henry White (AD), Jed Cohen (ECD)