unforum

[MConnalley]

embarassed indeed

[thebruce]

Re: Well, I'll be one of the few who did not plan to buy . . .

[grey101]

i doubt it's over it was so fun. i unlocked 2 severs and and fun doing it. the info was very needed and extremely useful. didn't they say the ARG would last until a day after halo's release?

[thebruce]

no, gamespot misquoted an MS rep from Eurogamer. The original said the Halo series would culminate on the 26th of August, Gamespot took that to mean Iris would end on the 26th.

Also, could you shrink your avatar to under 100x100 plz & tnx?

[neveryone]

It was fun.. but not as fun as ILB..

[acvhaero]

it was fun till everyone found out you could get some swag then it all became a race and things just got way to hectic

[Noccy]

Extremly disapointing. This has put me off playing Halo 3 all together.

I guess I'm just going to have to buy a playstation 3 instead.

[Shadowkiller]

The story was fairly interesting, if thin, but they way they went about everything wasn't. I lost interest in the whole thing fairly quickly and only checked the boards to see when a server was onlocked so I can see what was new.

Plus nothing ever seemed to work right so that was a huge turn off as well. it was pretty sad that I couldn't help unlock a server because of some stupid a .Net bug.

[Siege88]

I realize we were probably never meant to read that memo, and it's probably written by the people who proposed and ran the idea so they basically have to say it worked out well, but it was pretty ballsy of them to declare this such a complete success.

I think we basically called this campaign for what it was from the beginning: Microsoft seeing the huge success and fanbase from Ilovebees, deciding they could do it themselves for much cheaper and didn't need 42 or any outside company. The "Viral Marketing Campaign" was flawed on every level, from their preparedness to barely any interaction to many technical problems and miscalculations (one of which sending me wandering around the middle of time square at 1am on a weeknight) - not to mention the failure to realize the concept that the people going out to locations to find kiosks and watch videos were the ones who would be least able to try to enter the keys.

This was really nothing but a slightly blown-up contest (mainly in patience) and I hope no one misses the irony in the fact that Microsoft, while cutting costs by working on this themselves, will probably never understand things enough to check on these or ABO or CI's forums to see what peoples' perceptions of this game really were. In contrast, 42 did an amazing job of keeping their fingers firmly on the collective pulse of ILB players from start to finish, and even altering the game accordingly with only a few very minor hiccups.

There was barely any new information given out about the Halo universe and despite what they say, I don't see any new people going out and buying Halo3 because of this ARG (I doubt anyone who was into ARG's but didn't know about the Halo universe would have stuck around through this thing).


Sorry
/End rant

[Anton P. Nym]

I have to admit a little disappointment with the ending... with it just fizzling out, without a "boom" at the finale. There was a ton of potential in this, but the disparate pieces didn't integrate into a whole; probably an effect of the distributed creative teams. SotA and FCC were badly underexploited, the comic orphaned, and no follow-up from the illustration "solves" to inform players that they had, indeed, solved the puzzles.

I'm not going to say "epic phail", because it wasn't, but it definitely could've used a director type to tie it all together more tightly and make sure the loose ends get incorporated into the knot.

-- Steve hopes the MS folks learn from the experience, so their next viral will be better.

[Lt. CrystalX3D]

Agreed, when you think about it, we really didn't solve or achieve anything. Compare this to ILB where the crewmembers solved the mystery of Melissa's past, helped reincorporate her and the Sleeping Princess back into the same consciousness and get the operator back to her own time. What did we do in this game? Unlocked some servers for the heck of unlocking them with swag as our only motivation? Fail.

[Jordan117]

I think the biggest crime here was the ridiculous number of loose ends. Why create intriguing pieces of fiction like SOTA, the FCC, or Jonas Volman when their only purpose is to lead to the Bounce Path Control page? It would be better if they tied into the backstory somehow, but they are instead completely isolated worlds that have no evident connection to the Halo universe. What were those FCC guys discussing? What does their business have to do with the Flood? What happened to Volman? What did SOTA know? The fact that Microsoft just left all these threads hanging is inexcusable.

As for the swag, it could have been a nice consolation, but was ruined by poor execution -- the hardest-working folks being locked out, the birthday errors, the sloppy mistakes. Considering the amount of money that Microsoft is pouring into the Halo 3 marketing campaign, you'd think that they could have afforded to make Iris much, much better.

[ghostwolf]

Some of the posts about not buying Halo 3 after this campaign MS made kind of disappoints me. Why? Well, because it's silly to not buy the game because someone at MS probably rushed at this idea - which caused it not to work as planned. It could also be the "it may look good on paper but not good when you actually do it" happened.

I know it's your choice to not buy the game, but if you were thinking about buying the game, and then deciding not to buy the game because of this, you might want to rethink it. It's not Bungie's fault, so don't take it out on them. buy the game and you won't be disappointed like you were with IRIS.


<_< Sorry, I'm a Halo fan, and I know the game will be good, if not, awesome. I honestly didn't care for the viral campaign...here's why...

The IRIS thing, I couldn't even play it because every time I tried, it froze my browser. Now, that right there, is epic fail. It also didn't interest me after server 1 was unlocked. I always had a sarcastic "yay" when people were reporting about the other servers being unlocked.

The comics will be better then this. lol.

[Jordan117]

[LordIllidan]