Halo 3: When ARGs Go… Almost Right?

So, ARGNet is still the place to go to learn about bizarre cross-media Alternate Reality Games, and it has a particularly interesting new piece up analyzing the creation and slight unraveling of the Halo 3 ARG, or “spiral marketing campaign”, as it seems to be better dubbed.
Rather than going full-out this time, some of the mysterious elements to the marketing for the game were explained in an internal Microsoft article posted on the Unfiction forums. As ARGN notes: “The article reveals that Iris was developed by “more than 50 people from 20 Microsoft teams [who] contributed time, coding expertise, and industry contacts.” The attempt was ultimately to provide a grand marketing scheme incurring little cost while attaining “critical mass” — defined in the article as getting “interview requests from The Wall Street Journal”.”
However, it’s clear that the ARG-ers were a little skeptical, given the class act the ARG had […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (simonc) and software by Elliott Back