On Monday 23rd March, at 2pm GMT, we finally launched Xi. It’s an unusual game – the kind sometimes called an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) – and we’ve been quietly working away at it for a very long time. It’s a relief to finally talk about it. Before I go on, I should say that there will be no clues or spoilers here. It’s a game filled with suspense and secrets and I wouldn’t want to ruin the fun.

But one of the flaws of ARGs in the past is that they’ve been too secretive. In an attempt to maintain an air of mystery, they’ve left people completely in the dark. That’s why we’re being a bit more open about Xi than other studios might have been.

At the Edinburgh Interactive Festival last year, in a panel session about ARGs (chaired by Patrick), the festival chairman and former chairman/CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Chris Deering asked, “These games always sound great – but why do I never hear about them until they’re over?”

The answer is that many previous games have stuck to the rather outdated mantra that ‘This Is Not A Game’ – the idea that somehow the story you’re following is real and the characters/zombies/nuclear crises you’re dealing with are 100% genuine.

I think people are more savvy than that. They’ve seen viral marketing before, they’ve played games before, and they know when someone’s trying to pull the wool over their eyes. But they also love fiction. They love to suspend their disbelief and will get emotionally immersed in a good story as long as you’re upfront with them. People are smart enough to tell the difference between reality and an alternate reality. Why try so hard to fool them?

So we are very openly saying that Xi is a game. It’s an adventure that people can explore and enjoy using a games console. While it might seem that we’re losing a little of the mystique by announcing Xi so publicly, we want the world to know about it. Tell your friends. Tell strangers. Blog it. Tweet it. We want the world to play.

David Varela – Producer, Xi

featureimage: