Jess

Jess alongside the Xi logo

Jess was a central live-action character present within the original game of Xi, which was released on March 23, 2009 on PlayStation Home and lasted until June 10, 2009. Xi served as an event which blurred the lines between "fake" in-game events and "real" investigative endeavors which required collaboration from users all over the globe. The plot centered around looking for Jess, the inventor of the mysterious Xi, which a pair of rival tech corporations were fighting for. With Jess on the run for much of the investigation, the end of Xi featured a twist ending which revealed that the whole thing had been a fake training exercise, and Jess's real allegiance was to a mysterious organization looking to recruit elite investigators "to help protect and shape the future".

Jess would reappear in Xi: Continuum, which was released on December 23, 2012 on PlayStation Home as a sequel to the original Xi and lasted through February 8, 2013. The plot of Xi: Continuum had to do with stopping a bomber from destroying the Continuum and PlayStation Home as a whole. Jess served as an invaluable assistant to players during this period.

When PSHome was finally shut down in March 2015, the farewell video said in the description: "Music video from Jess's apartment in Playstation Home. Performed "in home" by Paul Ballard ".

## Pointing Ninja & Hundegni connections

The Pointing Ninja ARG within Xi took place roughly from 2010 through the close of Home in March 2015. There were no blantant connections between the plots of main games and any of the Pointing Ninja material. However, some tantalizing similarities exist:

* Arrows of Heaven's goal was to recruit elite investigators, seemingly similar to Jess's unnamed group.
* In the original Xi, players earned butterflies by doing particularly hard quests . The quest named "Jess's Level" involved completing a stage in LittleBigPlanet called "Papillon Alpha"-- meaning, the alpha (first/cheif) butterfly. Butterfly symbolism was common in the language of Arrows of Heaven members such as UnhingedShadow and, most importantly, OperationPN.
* Interestingly, LUCID tweeted "MARPESIA CORESIA" to @Hundegni -- this species of butterfly (which actually now goes by a different Latin name) was the reward for opening a safe in Jess's apartment in the original Xi.
* PSHome socialite guardianhawk promised Dominic insider information about the Pointing Ninja mystery; one of his claims was that "the way to the path of the ninja is through the web of deceit Jess was tangled within". However, as he never provided any proof of his claims, his statements were generally disregarded.
* One of the wrong answers in the personality quiz (apparently a group effort between UnhingedShadow , ajingnitniop , and Dehart67 ) would have resulted in "Arrows of Heaven vs. Shadow of Jess". This is the only mention of Jess by confirmed Pointing Ninja characters.
* The PN video uses the same song as the "official" PSHome farewell video, which was said to have been made in Jess's apartment.
* The first video with Jess is stylistically and thematically very similar to the Hundegni videos ("the boundaries between the real and virtual world are blurring", "open your eyes") .One of the incorrect answers for NullVoid's quiz suggested that "The Shadow of Jess" was a rival of Arrows of Heaven.Message from Home user guardianhawk to Dominic implicating Jess in the Pointing Ninja mystery.Message from Home user guardianhawk to Dominic implicating Jess in the Pointing Ninja mystery (cont.).