Exon: Delusion of Equilibrium

The document presents a Research-through-Design case study of EXON – Delusion of Equilibrium, a cult-themed game built on the Roblox platform and designed to examine the formation of hybrid online-offline communities. Its central argument is that EXON functions as a liminal, procedurally rhetorical space for studying communitas, belonging, ritual, and control in digital environments. The theoretical groundwork draws on net.art's development from 1994 to 1999 and on sociological and anthropological frameworks, including the work of Turner, Collins, and Castells, which define vitality, temporality, and collective identity as the key parameters for analysis. Roblox is positioned as a socio-technical ecosystem capable of supporting such hybrid communities.

The empirical core rests on a single event, Milano Digital Week 2025, where 103 participants engaged with the game over three hours. Observational findings indicate that children, comprising 48% of participants, were the most engaged group, while only 37% of sessions reached completion, largely due to multiplayer constraints and waiting times. Fifty-six percent of players used in-game chat, and participants frequently shifted to verbal communication during puzzles, suggesting that cooperation extended beyond the screen. Earlier observational work across three institutional events, involving more than ten participant records, reported age-stratified patterns in which younger players were more exploratory and adults more reflective, with completion rates linked to whether players received narrative context.

The authors conclude that EXON operates as a relational ecosystem and a generative device for hybrid community formation, in which social dynamics and boundary-testing behaviors are integral to its research question. They acknowledge, however, that the findings are qualitative and drawn from one principal event, which limits generalizability. The work thus contributes a methodological model for using playable systems as instruments of social inquiry while signaling the need for broader, comparative studies.