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.
The 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:
Alternative Reality Game. See the (kinda epic) Portal 2 ARG https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Portal_ARG. First came to know about it completely uninitiated through the Potato Sack Pack.
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.
I'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.
Black 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
I 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.
I've just started my Nth play through. I think my favourite bit is the subtitles on the scientist that says "they're waiting for you in the test chamber"
Sadly not really. It's really impressive what they turned Zen into, but it does drag on. I don't think there's much after that, and the final fight does have some spectacle that you should see.
I enjoyed most of it except the moments it turned my GPU into a leaf blower for no reason. I’d look at the floor and my computer began melting and then I’d look ahead into the level and it would settle down.
I swear the game is trying to create an IRL resonance cascade in my house.
Seems like a bad idea for a company to name itself after the villain/location of one of the most popular games in history. Was Cyberdyne Systems taken?
Yeah, Cyberdyne Inc is a japanese company. Their main product line is the "Hybrid Assistive Limb" (HAL) exoskeleton, a powered exoskeleton mobility suit targeted at keeping the elderly in their jobs for longer.
Sure, but getting a bunch of apparently real people to edit their LinkedIn profiles to list this as their fake full-time job (in place of whatever real job they presumably have) seems like too much work for a prank
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. As much as we would be honored to be part of any Valve game - we do not work in this sector at all. We are not secretly working on Half Life 3, Project White Sands (whatever that is/may be) or any other Valve title - we're just nerds working to secure the global bioeconomy.
I don’t understand how folks are missing the article with the head crab photo while talking about logos and javascript.
> We love the Half Life community. In the last couple of days we've received a ton of messages of support and curiosity about Black Mesa. It's heartening to see that the internet can still be a place where people send inquisitive messages while staying respectful - thank you. Thank you as well to those who sent the thousands of fake inquiries on our website, they made us laugh. We loved seeing the creative messages.
> 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. As much as we would be honored to be part of any Valve game - we do not work in this sector at all. We are not secretly working on Half Life 3, Project White Sands (whatever that is/may be) or any other Valve title - we're just nerds working to secure the global bioeconomy.
> We <3 all of you, you've made us laugh quite a bit this week at a time where we needed it.
We might put up a couple fun challenges and send the first solvers some swag. That is Black Mesa - the Boston biotech company swag.
> Our love,
> The Black Mesa team.
> PS: Gabe, call us. You know where we are.
Seems cringey as hell if they just decided to squat on the name and then pleasantly invite Gabe to call them as if that’s cool
I think it's not so much "missing" it as it is dismissing it as a red-herring. ARGs often have fake-outs. And the site's code/logo lean hard enough into the fictional Black Mesa lore that people are skeptical of it.
