Cyberpunk 2077 was one of 2020’s most anticipated games. First announced in 2013, gamers had been waiting for seven long years. Anticipation turned into frustration when the game got delayed not once or twice, but three times. Gamers were annoyed and weary of Cyberpunk marketing.

As part of a marketing partnership, Xbox created a Cyberpunk 2077-themed Xbox One X console and asked us to drum-up excitement for it. But at this point, gamers didn’t want any more marketing. They wanted to play. On top of that, the console was an Xbox One X—a platform that would be replaced by its next-gen successor the Xbox Series X in a matter of months.

The cherry on the cake? There would be no paid media for the campaign. We would need to rely on an impatient and uninterested-in-marketing gaming community to engage with and share our campaign. Challenge accepted.

We made the custom console a secret to be hacked from a real-life Mega Corp, Microsoft. To do this, we created an intricate online challenge inspired by the world of Cyberpunk 2077.

We placed clues in the code of websites, fake blogs from the early 2000s, in an API, in mysterious audio files, and even used 7-year old tweets as pieces of the puzzle.

It started with three cryptic posts from Xbox on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Combining the clues from all three posts granted access to a mysterious website. From there, fans encountered seven unique, complex puzzles.

Makeshift online communities on Reddit and Discord were organized around the challenge. Streamers went live with their attempts to crack the code. A shared Google doc was passed among over a hundred collaborators. It took gamers from all different skillsets, including audio engineers, cryptographers, and spectrogram analyzers to complete the challenge.

The problem sounded simple. Xbox was launching a custom console for a game you couldn’t even play yet, how do you get people excited?

But there was a more imposing force to contend with. Fans were tired of waiting. When all you want is news about the game, a marketing video for a custom console is the last thing you want to see. Not only might a video posted by Xbox be ignored, but it could also spark backlash.

We knew from behavioral economics around the psychology of waiting that unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time. Nothing cures waiting more than having something to do, especially if it's fun.

So, we reframed the ask. Instead of thinking about our goal as generating excitement for a custom console, we focused on rewarding gamers with what they want most, a chance to play.

We made the custom console a secret to be hacked from a real-life Mega Corp, Microsoft. To do this, we created an intricate online challenge inspired by the world of Cyberpunk 2077.

We placed clues in the code of websites, fake blogs from the early 2000s, in an API, in mysterious audio files, and even used 7-year old tweets as pieces of the puzzle.

It started with three cryptic posts from Xbox on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Combining the clues from all three posts granted access to a mysterious website. From there, fans encountered seven unique, complex puzzles.

Makeshift online communities on Reddit and Discord were organized around the challenge. Streamers went live with their attempts to crack the code. A shared Google doc was passed among over a hundred collaborators. It took gamers from all different skillsets, including audio engineers, cryptographers, and spectrogram analyzers to complete the challenge.

This was the first time Xbox built an activation around a custom console instead of posting a reveal video on their owned channels. And it worked.

In the first 12 hours, the experience spread like wildfire as tens of thousands of posts hit Discord. Thousands tuned in to watch influencer MadQueen live stream the challenge. Within 36 hours a community had formed, working together to #BreaktheCode. Even two songs about the campaign were spontaneously produced.

All this led to a significant increase in views compared to the last custom console video. And a more than tenfold increase in impressions and mentions compared to the last custom console. The massive impromptu community was deeply engaged, spending an average of 12 minutes exploring our microsite. Lastly, all the Cyberpunk-themed Xbox consoles made sold out in a matter of hours, a new Xbox record.