Xi Reunion
by BONZO, HSM Editor
Editors Note: I would like to give special thanks to Beneloben, Y2David, Patchex, Sprawl7275, SeeImage_inc, x-champ-x, ToRIIQue, Anamri, and superegobry for taking the time to recount their stories, and provide information for this article. Viva La Resistance!
For those new to Home, or even the seasoned user who has spent a couple of years in the platform by now, Xi is almost a myth. We hear about it, we are told stories about what a great game it was, and it seems almost unreal that something like this could have existed in Home. There is almost a fraternity of the Xi alumni. But when you break down what the game really was, it’s not very demanding on the Home platform, particularly as limited as it was at the time.
The more I have engaged in this conversation about what Xi was the more I learn how instrumental Xi was to building the Home community itself. Before UNITY there was once VLR: Viva La Resistance! VLR ended January 12, 2010, several months after Xi ended in 2009, and then that club evolved into UNITY.
VLR, or the Resistance, had a mission, which was to solve Xi – in a way, it became a movement. When asked what they were resisting, VLR members will tell you – Xi.
Anything Xi would throw at them, they were determined to solve. The Resistance had branches in Europe and North America, and that is really what the essence of Xi was. It united the global community of Home, with 60-70 members in the EU region of Home and at least 200 in NA.
What was so special about Xi?
That is the question I have had since the first time I heard of Xi.
The general feeling seems to be, “the potential of what it could be,” and what made many of the players choose to be in Home. Buzz leading to Xi was greater than buzz leading to Xi Continuum, and it was probably largely responsible for building up the excitement for people to be a part of it. According to the veteran players, the teaser video started only a few months after beta, and Xi was the first community game and first original game made for Home, and really the first console virtual world Alternate Reality Game.
Half a million players working together, solving puzzles in Home with clues from the Internet and real life locations. Puzzles were set in multiple countries so you had to rely on the web community to get them. This truly was a bi-regional game involving NA and EU.
Trolls are inevitable in any community effort, and they were involved in Xi and got in the way of progress, shouting puzzle answers, which really frustrated many of the veteran users — because when you work so hard to solve a puzzle there is a sense of accomplishment, and when someone shouts out the answers it diminishes your efforts. Hence why web postings are courteous enough to alert you to spoilers.
The Butterfly puzzles were harder but supplemental; it was the Fragment puzzles which were part of the story and much easier to solve, as they involved a collaborative effort.
The first Xi was free to play. Sony absorbed the cost of the game and execution as a promotion to get people into Home. The sequel, Continuum, is pay for play, but many of Xi’s veterans find it understandable to make it pay for play, whilst others feel it changes the game. Half a million unique players were involved in the first one, and that number will be dramatically shifted by the restriction of cost.
Xi worked in many ways to bring users into Home, and to shape what Home would become. Some of the original Xi players were already in Home, but Home was only a few months old. A lot of the Home users would have left Home early if it were not for Xi.
Xi gave the community life; a lot of people came into Home for Xi and left after it ended and haven’t been back since. In fact, roughly 70% of UNITY’s membership are Xi veterans.
“An ARG on a virtual world was a genius idea, and something brand new; that’s why it worked so well.” – Sprawl7275
Xi probably gave life to the forums as much as it gave life to the Home platform. It even gave life to the club scene in Home. People who played Xi became friends, relied on each other, and worked together. It created friendships, and a community which built clubs and groups. Even after it was over to communities which came together for Xi stayed together. Clubs like VLR continued and began to make their own ARGs in Home, eventually evolving into UNITY. From this mentality sprung up Club of Champions, and the club The All Mighty. After the evolution of VLR into UNITY, came other clubs like Angels & Demons, and LAIR.
The way it seems to have broken down: Xi users got together to solve and play the game, the users created clubs to collaborate, and out of those clubs, leaders rose up who continued to keep the groups together in community involvement after Xi was over, and because of those leaders and communities some of those clubs are still together today.
It is evident Xi Continuum is not going to be the same now. Home itself has changed. Making it pay for play may not get the half a million people it involved before. But that’s the case whenever you charge for something: the Penny Gap steps in.
Xi was a Home game, but it involved a lot of activity outside of Home, solving the puzzles, finding the clues on the forums and web sites, and then inputting them in Home. It involved a lot of reading, and everything gathered outside of Home was brought in by its users to collaborate with the rest of the group. There were spaces in Home purely for solving puzzles. The Xi museum itself was at first known as the Alumni Hub for Xi, before it was brought back as the museum. There are also the three AlphaZones, the White Hall, and Party at Jess’s Apartment which returned as a personal space.
Xi Continuum has a following even among the reward collectors. One of the recurring questions in the lobby everyone gets to access in Continuum is, “What can you win here?”
Rewards weren’t important back then, Home was very new and the community didn’t know what it wanted. Reward hunters were already around but reward hunting wasn’t really the objective, and certainly not the monster of a motivator it has become today.
Xi speculation was rife about what it would lead to. Many of the original Xi players thought for a time it would lead to a region-free Home, which of course never happened. As a matter of fact, without Xi, many people wouldn’t have known there were multiple regions. The concept of regions was still new, and although many of Home users knew of the regions and the forbidden region-hopping was happening already, there seemed to have been an increase with Xi.
For many of the Home veterans who participated in Xi, it has been the most memorable experience in Home. Months of teasing for a few months of gaming, but what they walked away from was what the community of Home could be when it had something pushing them together.
The community was only possible because the game itself was fun, but it was a motivator for gathering and interacting socially and working together regardless of where in the world you lived. It truly united people. The people drew you back in, because before Xi there was nothing at the time to draw you in. Some of the clues appeared and disappeared, and if you didn’t get to them while they were around you had to rely on others to continue with the puzzle. It seems it was impossible to be left behind unless you absolutely didn’t reach out to anyone.
Arguably, there is a difference between the pre-Xi Home user and post-Xi Home user. The major communities that have stuck it out and continue to exist seem to be largely composed of veterans, and it seems that fewer successful communities are comprised of newer users.
When asked if the experience of Continuum will be the same, a veteran of Home and Xi stated, “Home has changed, and Xi isn’t the same, so I’m taking it as a new experience rather than trying to recapture the same one. We don’t feel that same level of community involvement anymore.”
For those who experienced Xi the first time around, Continuum feels like it was about time it came, and it should have come in sooner. But what Xi Continuum is or will be is still too early to comment on.
The Xi Alumni
There is a level of disappointment about the sequel coming at a price. A few users who left after Xi was over have made their way back into Home. The sentiment seems to be that Xi was once for the entire community and now it is for the paying community. The commercialization has changed Xi for many veteran users.
“It took too long,” one user said. “Free would have brought in more users. Because Xi was free, people could play it on multiple accounts, and now they can’t.”
This is the legacy of Sony subsidizing the first one: right or wrong, it has become a symbol of a bygone Home. Since little was done ahead of time by Sony to change that expectation, it is natural that some will be disappointed, even as they understand that nDreams needs to make money.
Personally, as a Home user with a few years under his belt, Xi is a Home experience I missed out on. It remains mythical to some degree about what a communal experience it was, and I’ve looked forward to Continuum, but from what I have learned and heard of the original Xi, I can sense there is a difference with Continuum. However, it remains an experience I look forward to absorbing for myself firsthand, to see how it unravels.
December 20th, 2012 by BONZO | 5 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
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great article Bonzo!!
Great article, Brock! I think you captured the feeling, of the original Xi and the expectations of the Continuum, really well!
It can’t be easy to understand the effect that Xi had on the community, when you didn’t experience is yourself -- So Kudos to you sir! Very nicely done!
We still have more than a month worth of Xi 2 ahead of us! Who knows what all it will bring.
oopsie I meant Bonxo!
LOL @ Miss Ana, and yes they had it right, Great work, Bonzo that is well written… kudos
Bonxo, thanks fer interviewing us and really enjoyed the read. With this new Xi and seing old Xi players get back it and teaming up to solve some of the puzzles, etc. It does bring back some good things. As for the new pricing as before it was free for everyone, thou personally I do find it justified considering the new personal space that expands in a very nice way and of course the fun that goes with it. Do want to say thanks to nDreams for bringing it back and do hope we do great so we keep seeing more of this. PSHome sure has grown since the last Xi and as it brought many of us in The Resistance (VLR) who played Xi together that got us more involved into Home back in 2009, this new Xi brings back some of the same passion from those who were into it the first time, and that is the beauty of it. Looking forward to more and lets brainstorm this game all the way.