 Throughout the course of development Bungie released four " developer documentaries " that explained the processes behind creating parts of the game . A large @-@ scale multiplayer beta test was played on Xbox Live with more than 800 000 members of the public being able to take part and experience the game for themselves . Beginning in June 2007 , an alternate reality game called Iris involved players in slowly revealing background information for the game . The actual release was met with worldwide launch parties . 
