Halo ARG causes 300+ calls to unwitting college student
It's all fun and games until someone gets 300 cell phone calls in a matter of days. That's what your mom might say about the story of Michael VanderZand, an innocent bystander whose cell phone got accidentally drawn into an alternate reality game promoting Halo 3.
It all started when ARG followers came across what looked like a cell phone number template in the Xbox Live motto for a mysterious Bungie.net user called Adjutant Reflex. The number led followers to VanderZand's cell phone which, coincidentally, had a Red vs. Blue audio clip as his voice mail message. The message set off alarm bells for callers, and the number was soon being passed around message boards and ARG sites all over the 'net.
In actuality, VanderZand is just a Halo fan and a business and marketing student from Michigan who has nothing to do with the game (Or is that just what he wants us to think? No. It's true). In an interview with Hushed Casket, VanderZand seemed mostly bemused, especially with some of the more nervous callers. "Most of you wouldn't even respond when you got a live person on the phone. ... How do you expect to get anywhere if you don't even have the balls to respond?" he asked. We bet these same people don't even have the guts to ask Jenny for a good time when they call 867-5309.
