XBox Series X launch ties into Microsoft gamer dream-inspired campaign

The Xbox team at Microsoft monitored the dreams of five gamers and used this inspiration to create a pair of custom Nikes, augmented reality filters, and a short movie. 

The latest installation of the “Made From Dreams” used the Hypnodyne sleep tracker. First, five people played a XBox Series X game before going to sleep and then wore the tracker during guided dreams. Then five artists took these dreams and built new creations to bring these ideas to physical life.

Academy Award-winner Taika Waititi wrote the short film “Lucid Odyssey” featuring streamer MoonLiteWolf, also known as Krystal Holmes. The film tells the story of MoonLiteWolf’s experience and the dreams she had after playing Xbox. In the short film, she explores a magical forest with a glowing bunny creature, meets a “galaxy whale” made out of constellations, and attends a concert in space where Master Chief was deejaying an EDM version of the Halo Monk Chant. MoonLiteWolf stars in the film as herself and the narration is from the actual audio recorded during the dream study.

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Cleveland Browns wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. also was part of the project. His dreams turned into a new custom Xbox controller and custom Nike AF1 shoes. Fans will have the chance to win a pair of OBJ’s custom Nike AF1 shoes and custom Xbox Wireless controller by retweeting the Xbox sweepstakes tweet starting Friday, Dec. 11 through Thursday, Dec. 24. Beckham dreamed that he controlled big, fiery stars in outer space by moving his hands. This inspired the blazing stars both on the controller and on the inside of his shoes. 

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Artist Quentin Deronzier created a series of digital art inspired by the video game player Stallion83’s dreams, which include summoning a fleet of ships during a Viking battle, a nod to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

Johanna Jaskowska created augmented reality social filters so fans could relive game-themed experiences out of gamer Emericagirl24’s dreams. In one dream, Emericagirl24 visited a futuristic store with cyborgs shopping for different body modification accessories which was most likely inspired by playing the new game Cyberpunk 2077 before sleeping.

BlindGamerSteve is visually impaired and his reaction to his contribution to the “Made From Dreams” campaign was, “That’s exactly what it looks like in my head!” Big Orange used his dreams to create an immersive 3D audio adventure story. The story retells Steve’s dreams of exploring Europa and fighting creatures using Stasis, an elemental power in Destiny 2: Beyond Light, the game he played before sleeping.

This was done using the Targeted Dream Incubation technique based on research described in the special issue on Dream Engineering published in the journal, Consciousness and Cognition. 

As the MIT Media Lab describes it, before sleeping an individual chooses a theme such as an animal for a place and then during sleep, sounds associated with this theme are used to remind the person of the theme at specific times and suspend the person in early sleep stages so that he or she can still hear the sound during dreams.

Targeted dreaming is “a method focused on a specific state of sleep and specific stimuli to change dreams in a certain way.” The Xbox project used the Hypnodyne device for this project. This headband is designed for sleep research with a small box that rests on the forehead and includes an electrode patch.

This content series continues the Power Your Dreams campaign, a project that Xbox launched in October 2020 to illustrate the potential of what it means for gamers to dream and reach new goals together. 

The Xbox Series X has 12 teraflops of GPU power and features frame rates of up to 120 frames per second, hardware-accelerated Direct X raytracking, variable rate shading, and Quick Resume. With this feature, players can resume a game exactly where they left off. The new Series X launched in November with 40 new games playable at launch. The consoles have been sold out across various retailers as many people try to snag Christmas gifts. 

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