4 ms·
Smells like an ARG / marketing campaign. Their "want to talk" email is "truthorconsequences@", they have two "blog posts" and a list of vaguely related press pi
by willidiots 2y ago
Smells like an ARG / marketing campaign. Their "want to talk" email is "truthorconsequences@", they have two "blog posts" and a list of vaguely related press pieces (none of which mention them), their logo is clearly a derivative of the "other" Black Mesa's.
- Thieve 2y agoThere's a countdown at the bottom of the page too. Which definitely makes me think it's an arg.
- willidiots 2y agoAhh good catch - counting down to midnight on October 1.
- tivert 2y agoAlso the logo is literally exactly the Black Mesa logo from Half Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Research_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Research_Facility), except inside a badge/chevron shame instead of a circle. Either this is something Valve is running, or I bet whoever made this will get a copyright take-down soon.
- greenpizza13 2y agoThe class for the container of the countdown is "lambda-incident." Below that there is hidden text which says "Thanks Nothing Master ;)" and the following JS code which is heavily obfuscated and updates the countdown container: function _0x1a2b(_0x5c2d) { function _0x3b4e() { const _0x6f1b = new Date()['getTime'](), _0x7d3a = Math['floor']((_0x5c2d - _0x6f1b) / 0x3e8), _0x8b7f = document['querySelector']('.\x6c\x61\x6d\x62\x64\x61\x2d\x69\x6e\x63\x69\x64\x65\x6e\x74\x20\x64\x69\x76\x20\x70'); _0x8b7f['textContent'] = _0x7d3a > 0x0 ? '' + _0x7d3a : '\x54\x68\x61\x74\x27\x73\x20\x69\x74\x2e'; _0x7d3a > 0x0 && setTimeout(_0x3b4e, 0x3e8); } _0x3b4e(); } function _0x4c2f(_0x7f1b, _0x3d7e, _0x5b6d, _0x2f7a, _0x1e9c, _0x4b2a) { return new Date(_0x7f1b + ' ' + _0x3d7e + ', ' + _0x5b6d + ' ' + _0x2f7a + ':' + _0x1e9c + ':' + _0x4b2a)['getTime'](); } const _0x5c2d = _0x4c2f('\x53\x65\x70\x74\x65\x6d\x62\x65\x72', 0x1e, 0x7e8, 0x17, 0x3b, 0x3b); _0x1a2b(_0x5c2d); But all this really does is count down to October 1st, as stated.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- i_am_jl 2y agoLikely. Valve has a new game in closed-ish beta right now.
- ehsankia 2y agoBut that game isn't Half-Life related.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoThat’s just what they want you to think!
- Lammy 2y agoThey're waiting for you, Gordon — in the test chamberrr
- keyle 2y agoI must have missed the meme/memo, could you define "ARG"?
- Lammy 2y agoAlternative Reality Game, like ilovebees or NIN's Year Zero. Basically an ad campaign with audience participation.
- delecti 2y agoAlternate Reality Game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
- RGamma 2y agoAlternative Reality Game. See the (kinda epic) Portal 2 ARG https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Portal_ARG https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Portal_ARG. First came to know about it completely uninitiated through the Potato Sack Pack.
- nothal 2y agoI think it's certainly an effective marketing campaign. I don't think it's an ARG. Too many things pass the smell test (referencing real companies, reposting real announcements from random accounts, etc). I bet you the countdown is when they come out of stealth. They're not going to use Black Mesa for their business (they're probably even called something else internally). It's all just a ploy to drum up attention.
- jessriedel 2y agoMaybe, but some counterpoints: 1. They specifically say it's not: "As many of you correctly assessed, we're actually a real company in the Boston area. We're working hard to assure and secure vaccine and other biological manufacturing production." 2. A company focused on paperwork compliance sounds pretty realistic and not the sort of sexy work like you'd expect for fictitious company in a marketing campaign. I think in the game Black Mesa did scary bio research -- very sexy -- not compliance, although tbc I don't know the Half Life universe well.
- necubi 2y agoAlso from LinkedIn it seems very legit? Like this is their CEO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesfracchia/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesfracchia/. Profile has been around for a long time, lots of corroborating info elsewhere on the web (like https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200625005037/en/Dotmatics-Acquires-BioBright-to-Accelerate-Laboratory-Data-Automation-for-the-Lab-of-the-Future https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200625005037/en/Dot...).
- ironhaven 2y agoBlack Mesa in the game was more high energy physics/interdimensional travel not anything medical like on the website. Both topics could be under the “mad science” label
- jessriedel 2y agoAh, thanks for the correction
- CommieBobDole 2y agoOn your second point, Aperture Science was originally founded to manufacture shower curtains for the military and we all know how that worked out.
- ChainOfFools 2y agoI've never heard anything to confirm this, but I've always assumed that this was a reference to the history of Ball Aerospace, with its improbable origin and evolution from a company that made glass jars and lids for grandma's rhubarb preserves.
- murderfs 2y agoOn the other hand, the about us page lists an apparently real person as the founder, and there are links to a talk by him at a real conference: https://www.youtube.com/live/mRmjKZVkYgw?t=15681s https://www.youtube.com/live/mRmjKZVkYgw?t=15681s They've owned the domain since 2022, and changed it to explicitly say that it's not part of an ARG in June 2023: https://web.archive.org/web/20230630002958/https://blackmesa.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230630002958/https://blackmesa...
- xvedejas 2y ago"Truth or Consequences" is a place in New Mexico, so at least on theme.