After the hangover of the Xbox Showcase, all the unknowns have finally been revealed; and the biggest mystery of all came in the form of a t-shirt. Phil Spencer He came out at the end of the conference with one that had the cover of a jewel of the nineties in the PC world: Hexenthe work of RavenSoftware. With Spencer these things can never be taken as mere curiosity, since they always have some kind of meaning. Unfortunately, this time It has not been one as concrete as we would like, and it is that, before the insistent questions of fellow journalists, Spencer commented: “I was not trying to pre-announce it. I just wanted to acknowledge the importance of some games in our portfolio.”
But here is the interesting part. Hexen, technically, is not a Microsoft portfolio game. At least not yet. The IP belongs to Activision, who is the one who acquired it together with the Raven Software studio at the time. Therefore, it currently belongs to Activision-Blizzard. That is why it is so important. The fact that Spencer is wearing this t-shirt I don’t think it just reveals his love for this kind of games, like when he wore one of the Commodore 64 Jumpman. It’s also a declaration of intentmute and silent, on the Activision-Blizzard acquisition.
But… why Hexen?
For me, the message it sends is quite clear. There is life beyond Call of Duty on that purchase. This Spencer already demonstrated when on one occasion he spoke of this acquisition. He commented that he had seen the list of IPs that belonged to the brand and that they were stored in a drawer without any use, and that he was excited about the possibility of rescuing them from oblivion. Games as disparate as blur, King’s Quest (all the adventures of Mountain rangein general), Pitfall, Soldier of Fortune, singularity… and Hexen.
So I think what this shirt is really telling us, even though Spencer can’t say it outright at the moment until the purchase is finalized, is that within the Catalogue from Activision-Blizzard have a whole host of licenses to experiment with to create and rescue many games that still mean a lot to some gamers. Even those who completely don’t care about Call of Duty. And that when the purchase is made, they can start working with them.
Hexen, in fact, was a small shock back in the 90s. He was one of the direct heirs of Doom, which took the action in other directions. It was born as a spin-off of Heretic to transform the gameplay towards a more melee style and with greater attention to magical abilities and the possibility of choosing up to three different classes.
Despite the fact that his commitment to fantasy differentiated him from the battles on Mars in Doom, the truth is that his style of action was very similar, with large arenas in which you could not stop moving to avoid the attacks of the enemies while you did own. Something that with id Software’s Doom reboot we’ve already seen adapted to modern times with great success. Under the Xbox umbrella, an IP like this could follow the same formula or even modify it so that it has a greater identity and a different mechanical core. It is, basically, what Raven herself did when she created Heretic II, transforming the brand into a third-person action and exploration game (and that someone would now call “The Dark Souls of the time”).
Ultimately, I think Spencer’s “hidden” message goes beyond Hexen himself. It is, somehow, even through a shirt, convey to the player that they have a whole GamePass to fill year after year, and that a good injection of IPs stored in a drawer may not be of any use to Activision, which in recent years was only concerned with maximizing profit with its best-known IPs, but they are undoubtedly very succulent and loved by many players. As I said in my article about the large number of RPGs that Xbox is preparing, the plan remains the same: fill your subscription service with content and hours of gameplay.
