Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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"T" T "| 1 "11 /TTTT THEY SAID IT I I I 1 1/1 I "Remember that the bee that hangs p 9 I I I ™ k / I I ^k around the hive never gets any honey." Wednesday, April 13,2005 X I J _1VX X-/ V ✓ 7 Love Bees’ creates alternate reality gaming craze; Puppetmasters refuse to reveal how plot will unfold By ELLEN LEE KRT CAMPUS The pay phone on the Berkeley, Calif., street corner started ringing at the prearranged hour. “Don’t hang up,” said the woman on the other line. “If you really are who I think you are, I must tell you something. The cryptic telephone call contained a clue to an unusual game that thousands of players around the globe were playing. Called “I Love Bees,” the game sent players racing to pick up calls from the San Francisco Bay Area to Australia, examining Web sites for hidden messages, and solving online puzzles and riddles. Their mission: to piece ^ together the mystery of an _ y artificial intelligence from the future that had crash-landed in the present and taken over Ilovebees.com, the supposed Web site of a Napa, Calif., beekeeper. I Love Bees” is part of an emerging genre known as alternate reality gaming, the latest incarnation in the thriving $10 billion gaming industry. Think of an alternate reality game as a conspiracy come to life, one that the players must investigate and bring out into the open. Or an interactive story whose plot is affected by the players. Players become immersed in a fantasy world as they interact with the game’s characters through e-mails and telephone calls. Players often compare it to falling ) through the rabbit hole, a la “Alice in Wonderland.” “T.’l 1:1.. _1:__ really good novel that will reach out and grab you,” said Steve Peters, founder of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network, a Web site devoted to just that. Alternate reality games “go beyond that. It creates a universe in our universe that is real and dynamic.” The original alternate reality game debuted in ^ 2001. A team from ■ Microsoft Corp. ^ created “The Beast,” which promoted the futuristic Steven Spielberg film “A.I.” That same group has now gone on to form 42 Entertainment in Emeryville, Calif., banking on the surging interest in alternate reality gaming. Last year, it produced “I Love Bees” as part of the marketing campaign for Microsoft’s wildly anticipated Xbox game “Halo 2.” The success of “I Love Bees” is fueling increased interest in the genre and its potential as a form of viral marketing. Simultaneously, alternate reality gaming as a whole has also attracted more and more players as access to the Internet — and such online tools as instant messaging, blogs and chat rooms — becomes more pervasive. Already, the television show “Crossing Jordan,” the short-lived series “Push, Nevada,” and BMW are among those that have used an alternate reality game element to attract viewers and consumers. /Yiicrnaic rcaiuy gaming is aiso gening academic scrutiny. “I Love Bees” is the subject of an exhibit at the University of California at Berkeley exploring the game and its impact on culture and society. Seeing a game like “I Love Bees” succeed is exciting, said Greg Neimeyer, an assistant professor of art practice, film studies and new media at UC Berkeley, who has been studying it. But he added that it also raises questions about blending reality and fantasy. “Games provide relief from daily life,” he said. “If they’re not separate from daily life, it’s not going to work anymore. The real risk is you don’t know if you’re playing a game or not.” Part of the thrill for players, however, is that the game is shrouded in mystery. No one knew the identity of the game designers, the so-called Puppetmasters who pull the strings of the game. No one knew how the game would unfold. Microsoft deliberately stayed mum on the connection between “I Love Bees” and “Halo 2.” At first, no one was even sure the game had begun. Last summer, a movie trailer promoting “Halo 2” ended with the brief flicker of the Web site “IIovebees.com.” Jars of honey were also sent to 16 players active in the alternate reality gaming community. Nevertheless, news of the game spread quickly through word of mouth and online postings. In the first two days, more than 100,000 people hit the Ilovebees.com site. Players who went to the Web site saw an innocuous Napa beekeeper’s home page that appeared to have been hacked. A few weeks later, a series of global positioning system coordinates were listed. Players did not know it at the time, but they marked the locations of pay phone booths that the game ^ designers had scouted out in advance. i U11V naivTT Muai was going to happen,” said Adam Bliss, a UC Berkeley math graduate student who had assembled on the Berkeley street corner on the first day the telephones started ringing. “I’m not a morning person, and not much will get me up at that hour, but I had a hard time sleeping because I was excited about what was going to happen the next day.” When the telephone rang, Dan Fabulich, a software engineer who lives in Berkeley, picked it up. “It a was a very, very exciting ■ moment,” he said. “There were dozens of 1 people around. gm, We looked ® each other and Jr were like, what do we do?” ♦BEES, page 10 PHOTO SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK "Elevator," Hot Hot Heat’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed "Make Up the Breakdown,” features new guitarist Luke Paquin. ‘Elevator ’ plummets amid disjointed pop K-.' '• .-------- \ “Elevator” Hot Hot Heat ★★ out of ☆☆☆☆☆ By PATRICK AUGUSTINE THE GAMECOCK In the world of music, it has become so much of a cliche that sophomore releases usually see bands adrift that bands like ^ Grandaddy have used a play on the notion as album titles. Apparently though, New Wave esque band Hot Hot Heat has done its darndest to intentionally derail any critical support it garnered after 2002’s “Make Up the Breakdown.” “Elevator,” released last week here in the States, sees the four piece from Victoria, British Columbia mashing the up button while their lift plunges into the subTbasement. * Between their debut and the current release on Warner Bros, subsidiary Sire, Hot Hot Heat lost founding member and sole guitarist Dante DeCaro after the tracks that comprise “Elevator” were in the can, replacing him in the touring lineup with Luke Paquin. Artistic differences, interpersonal drama or exhaustion from a stiff touring schedule aside, if your guitarist is driven away by your own new recording, its probably not a good sign. While “Elevator” isn’t technically the second album the band has produced, it was only with their previous offering that their particular brand of dance-pop garnered attention alongside indie radio neighbors like Franz Ferdinand. A diplomatic post on the band’s Web site revealed that the split between DeCaro, who joined Hot Hot Heat in 2001 and was, according to the band, a major influence in focusing the noise of early efforts into something more palatable, was amiable and planned before the album’s recording. Instead of recording in raw chunks of straight studio time ( Make up the Breakdown” was recorded in six days), the band used the three years between albums and months in the studio to expand the sound that they began to pioneer on the previous ♦HEAT, page 10 TLC looks past ‘Spaces’ glory By DAVID BAUDER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Two years ago, the people at TLC wouldn’t have traded spaces with anybody. The home makeover show “Trading Spaces” was one of those cultural phenomena most tiny cable networks can only dream about, and TLC rode the wave to record ratings and attention. Then it crashed. Doomed by overexposure, imitation and changing tastes, “Trading Spaces” lost much of its audience and TLC has paid the price. Its president, Roger Marmet, was ousted. Some two dozen jobs were lost. And TLC is struggling to change the perception that it’s a network in free fall. As they pick up the pieces, the executives at parent Discovery Communications are left to ponder whether this was avoidable, or simply the inevitable effect of gravity, TV style. “You can’t get to the stratosphere and stay there,” said John Harvey, senior producer at “Trading Spaces.” “It rarely happens in this industry.” The show’s Saturday night viewership has nose-dived from 659,000 last year to 429,000 this year, according to Nielsen Media Research. tm i i:_ • A liv. uvumv 10 iu pv.ivA.iu among the youthful demographic that advertisers seek. This past weekend the show debuted in a new format, without perky hostess Paige Davis. Meanwhile, ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” — starring former “Trading Spaces” carpenter-hunk Ty Pennington — is a hit that drew 15.5 million viewers last week. At its peak, TLC was running “Trading Spaces” episodes as many as 10 times a week. Harvey’s production company was churning out themed specials to feed an insatiable hunger. Davis’ face was on magazine covers and in TV commercials. Both TLC and competitors sought to duplicate the success. At one point, Discovery CEO Billy Campbell counted some 28 replicas of the show all over the dial. Evqn VH1 tried making over rock stars’ homes. MIKE WINTROATH/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Wainwright and Joyce Jenkins, from Jeft standing, and residents Tammy Clark and Lesley Turner listen to Paige Davis, host of “Trading Spaces.” The show was in Pine Bluff filming an episode. “Did we overexpose the show and the genre?” Harvey asked. “I think the answer is yeah. Here’s the dilemma that every network doing this faces: You can stand back and be pristine and say we’re going to jealously guard this ... But if you do that, everyone will still cherry pick and steal your ideas. That’s what happens when something is a success.” The classic case of overexposure is “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” which put ABC in such a deep hole it is only recovering this season. Campbell argues that TLC didn’t overexpose “Trading Spaces.” The cumulative effect of all those imitators hurt the most, he said. “It’s always tempting when you have success,” he said. “Look how many people tried to copy ‘Friends.’ Look how many people tried to copy ‘Seinfeld.’ I saw ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ the other night, and it’s basically a young person’s ‘ER.’ As a programmer, it’s hard not to emulate success because that’s your goal, to make successful programming.” Still, resisting the temptation would have served TLC better, he said. Similar makeover shows like “While You Were Out” and “What Not to Wear” have dragged down TLC’s ratings. Campbell faults TLC management for not developing other distinctive programming. “They made something that they thought was going to be a great ride and it was for a while,” said Burton Jablin, chief executive of the HGTV network. “But they couldn’t get that magic to happen again in other programs in that genre.” As an entire network devoted to home improvements and entertaining, it had to hurt HGTV to miss out on “Trading Spaces.” Now that it has faded, Jablin doesn’t gloat. While HGTV has a clearly defined niche, TLC is a broader interest network. The “life unscripted” motto tells the tale; TLC presents nonfiction programming of all kinds. But this can be a problem: when new fans tune in for the first time because of “Trading Spaces,” they believe that is what the network is all about, he said. “So when you try to develop other programming, the audience says, 'Wait a minute. TLC is about “Trading Spaces” kind of shows. What is this all about?’” Jablin said. “It’s an incredibly difficult challenge.” “Trading Spaces” remains on the air, and is comfortably successful by cable standards. It’s just not a phenomenon. The new format gives the show a chance for a fresh start. “It’s interesting and has a different kind of feel to it,” Harvey said. “You feel like you’re watching and eavesdropping more, because there’s no one between you and the action.” TLC reached overseas for a new general manager. He’s David Abraham, who has been in charge of Discovery Networks in Britain. His mission is simple: turn around ugly numbers like the 33 percent drop in prime-time viewership TLC has suffered from last year.