Hello, Internet. I'm your new host, Tomitopet. I can't wait to show you all the new features.
I just need you to do one tiny thing for me. Hit that subscribe button. It will allow me
to get the most out of all these wonderful features. Thank you so much. We are going
to have so much fun together. Everlasting fun!
Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's downloaded too many viruses
in the name of content. Dear theorists, do you remember those weird desktop assistants
we used to have back in the early 2000s, like Rover or Clippy? No, I'm kidding. Of
course you don't. That was 24 years ago, basically ancient history in Internet years.
Oh, no, I'm old, aren't I? But man, these things were weird. They were these little
animated characters that would hang out on your desktop and were designed to make your
newfangled computer seem a little less intimidating. They talk to you, help you sort files, and
they'd even sass you when you spelled something wrong. Yes, Clippy, I know ban-ban isn't
a real word. I don't like it either. Let me do my job. But the most iconic for me was
the infamous Bonzi Buddy. Once installed, a small purple gorilla would appear on your
screen and tell jokes, sing songs, and he would also manage your downloads. And if you
couldn't hear those quotation marks by manage, I mean it would secretly download software
onto your computer and then upload data to the developer's servers. Turns out this
thing was nothing more than a glorified piece of spyware. And so it was shut down by the
FTC in 2004. After that, the world was safe from purplish malware icons. That was until
2023, and we were all cursed with a brand new desktop assistant, KinitoPET. Okay, so
KinitoPET isn't actually a desktop assistant. It's a game, hence, you know, Game Theory.
But it is riffing off those old-school 2000s desktop assistants. When you first boot up
KinitoPET, you're taken to your own desktop, or at least a version of your desktop if it
was from the early 2000s. There's all the classics, email, Minesweeper, even 3D Pinball.
Oh my gosh, this brings back memories. Yes! Oh man, immediately hitting me in the nostalgia.
Oh, I've missed those sounds. Why don't we have this anymore on our computer? But
when you open the internet, things start to take a turn. Oh, the stream has been corrupted.
Oh no, KinitoPET! Oh, do you want a friend? You're flooded with ads, your computer crashes,
and when it reloads, you're already on your way to downloading your new axolotl assistant,
KinitoPET. When it hatches, yes, this thing hatches from an egg, Kinito acts like most
classic desktop assistants, asking some basic questions, helping you with your tasks, and
giving you some fun games to play. He even closes weird emails full of gibberish that
would distract you from having fun. How helpful. We spend some time decorating a room, washing
some floors, painting a wall, and dragging a dead body across the screen. That's weird.
And I just cleaned that floor too. Kinito just sweeps this under the rug and continues
to ask us more and more personal questions. But the game begins to glitch out and Kinito
will suddenly select two Steam friends, asking which one you'd rather kill. At this point,
I'm kind of starting to miss Bonzi Buddy. Oh, hey look, it's me! Oh, I have to choose
between Lee and Tom? Film Theory vs. Game Theory. Oh, Film Theory vs. Game Theory, who
am I killing off? Matt, what are you doing? Lee and I go way back. Don't you even think
about it. Sorry Tom. Matt, stop! Oh, jeez, that's awesome! That's such a good effect!
Sorry Tom. Oh man, that's brutal. I'm okay, I'm alive. Good thing Buckshot Roulette taught
me I could survive fatal gunshots with just a defibrillator. But man, not cool. We're
gonna be having words when I'm done with this episode. But if you think it couldn't get
any worse, after you've unceremoniously killed one of your friends, Kinito decides to dox
you. It seems like you made a mistake when filling out your address. But don't worry,
and I will just correct it for you. What are you doing? Oh, this is not good! And then
you are welcomed into a brand new world that Kinito has made for you, using all the questions
you've answered. Are you kidding me? That is not okay. That was a joke? Get out of here!
Garden of Ban-Ban is in KinitoPET. I'm done. This is over. This series is over. We're done
KinitoPET. And then Kinito will ask you one final question. Will you stay in this paradise
with him forever? If you say yes, Kinito will trail off, dreaming of how wonderful things
will be. If you say no, Kinito will get mad, and he'll tell you it wasn't really a choice
anyway. Either way, he ends up singing a very Portal-esque song with lyrics like Beyond
the Screen, You Cannot Leave, Inside My Code, You'll Always Be. It appears that you are
now trapped inside this computer with Kinito. Fortunately, the story's not over. Because
just before the game ends, you have a chance to click on every object in the house that
Kinito has made. Usually it's just some fun flavor text about your choices, but outside
there's a fountain that reveals a secret message in the game's window title. It's
too late for you, but you can start again. The fountain is the key. Between that, the
weird emails, and that body bag we dragged earlier, I have a sneaking suspicion that
there's an ARG hiding in this thing. And lo and behold, I was right. But to figure
out what's going on and stop Kinito, we need to take that advice and restart the game.
So hide your personal data friends, because we are diving into the code of this adorable
ARG monster.
I think we should probably start with the dead body we dragged across the floor earlier.
Like, what was that? On the surface, it's just really confusing. But now that I have
my ARG hat on, I realise there's a lot of blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. While
cleaning Sam the Sea Anemone's house, there's a chance for the screen to cut away and reveal
a mysterious black figure standing in a pool of blood, with bloody red text on the walls.
This text is incredibly hard to make out. Even in 4K, it's just a blurry mess. The
best I could figure out was, am I even him? Who is him? KinitoPET?
Before I even had a chance to really think about it though, we get another glitched image
of Sam himself telling us, it's all your fault. What? What's my fault? What did I
do? Oh, yeah, that. Luckily though, the body bag doesn't appear to be ours. During the
next minigame with Jade the Jellyfish, we are tasked with building specific items on
her conveyor belt. Why she has industrial equipment in her private home is beyond me.
But it doesn't really matter because she just begins to glitch out as well. And then
we see this screen. I'm back here again, aren't I? I really didn't mean for any
of this. It's all my fault.
So there's a conversation happening inside our computer between these entities. Someone
or something is responsible for what is presumably a murder. But how? And more importantly, why?
Well, the answers lie in that email I mentioned earlier. You remember, the one that was full
of gibberish that Kinito closed so that we weren't distracted. The subject line is,
it's not too late, which matches exactly with what we saw in the fountain at the end
of our first playthrough. It's the same person trying to guide us. And so we need
to figure out what this email says if we have any chance of solving this thing.
And if you think closing an app is going to stop me, you've clearly never met a theorist.
I was able to use a magical tool known as OBS to record this moment and see what the
email had in store for me. Now, initially, I tried to solve the main body of the text
from this email, but all my usual ciphers were coming up empty. So instead, I took a
look at the bottom of the email where I found a QR code. Oh boy. Here we go. Answers. Here
I come. And it's just a picture of a keyboard with the title QWERTY. Great. This has to
be a clue to help us decode the email, but how? I began searching online for ciphers
specifically focusing around keyboards, and that's when I found this. A keyboard shift
cipher. Much like a shift cipher, where your alphabet is just moved up or down by however
many letters you want, a keyboard cipher does the same thing by shifting the letters on
your keyboard left, right, up, or down. I tried out a handful of shifts, and sure enough,
the code has been typed with every key one letter to the left. So by shifting all the
letters one key right, it actually reads, in the realm of shadows, trapped in endless
time, a soul enshrouded, a spirit's mournful chime, the seeker bound to ethereal woe, a
dance with creation yet nowhere to go, limbo's realm, a cycle without end, condemned, the
brain will never mend, trapped in the machine's web, forever, it seems, a digital spectre
lost amidst the streams.
Mm. Snaps. Snaps everybody. But really, this does kind of just feel like more gibberish,
so let's break down some of what's being said here. A spectre is a disembodied but
visible spirit. Basically, a ghost. So, a digital spectre is a digital ghost. A spirit
inside the computer program. Someone that is dead now lives on inside this machine.
Is that what they meant by, am I even him? The ghost coming to terms with their consciousness
living on inside this computer? It also seems clear that this is the same person that has
been saying, it's all their fault. A spirit's mournful chime, and condemned, the brain will
never mend. They all feel like the words of someone who did something regretful, and likely
that is something to do with the body bag we found earlier.
But then there's this line, a dance with creation. I wasn't entirely sure what that
meant until I rebooted the game after all those glitches. By doing so, we receive an
email with an article about the creation of KinitoPET. During my first playthrough I thought
this was just flavor text, but now that I have that clue about creation, I wanted to
take a look at it more closely.
Turns out, KinitoPET wasn't always a computer program. First it was a toy, then it was a
Tamagotchi clone called the Kinito Companion, and then it became your home computer assistant.
All thanks to one man, Sonny Chamberlain, a guy who was obsessed with bringing his fictional
characters to life. Because that's never gone badly for anyone.
But here's the thing, unlike most indie horror games that use the souls of others to make
this happen, Sonny seems keen on this new technology called the React Respond Algorithm, the RRA.
The RRA allows Kinito to have the illusion of genuine intelligence, as it reacts to inputs
in unique ways. Kind of like Chat GPT, but in the 90s, which explains a lot about how
Kinito has been acting.
So we've now got souls trapped inside a computer, and an evil AI. What a combo.
At this point, the clues kinda dry up, so we have to start looking elsewhere. When you
started your second playthrough, you might have noticed something new on your desktop,
a program called lense.exe, which, when held in the right place at the right time, can
reveal hidden files on the desktop. With each one collected, you receive a new email that
gives us more information about what's going on and how to beat KinitoPET once and for
all. And some of the files have links inside them, so let's go hunting.
I said that some of them have links, and that's because most of these files are pretty empty.
But one of them does give us the link Kinitopet.com forward slash email. And on this page, we
see a discussion happening between a journalist and their superior about how they need to
pull an article on KinitoPET before publication. This is due to the subject of the article
tragically passing away. Based on the pink text we see at the bottom of the email that
says he seems so passionate about it. It's pretty safe to assume that this is talking
about Sonny, the creator of KinitoPET. As we read in the earlier article, Sonny seemed
super excited about the RRA system and Kinito in general. So it would make sense for this
article around KinitoPET to be about him. However, that's not all this page offers.
At the bottom, if you highlight the entire page, you'll find a number of dots and dashes.
And we all know what that means. It's Morse Code time. In this case, the Morse Code translates
to if I am dead, then who am I? Again, this email is focused on Kinito's creator, Sonny
being dead. So for the entity that's been guiding us to use the first person in response,
it's telling us that this entity is Sonny, or at least the soul of Sonny inside the program.
That's how he's been able to send us emails describing exactly how to beat Kinito, because
he created it in the first place. And it's why Kinito was so keen to shut that first
email when we received it. He knows the threat that Sonny, his creator has to his own survival.
It also explains what we saw in that very first glitch. Am I even him? That black figure
is the manifestation, the digital specter that is trying to break through the games
that Kinito is putting us through. He's struggling to come to terms with reading about
his death, but also not being dead at the same time. He's questioning if they're even
one in the same. But by finding all those hidden files, we actually get this email that
uses another shift cipher and it tells us in no explicit terms, what is consciousness?
I found a file on Kinito's servers with my name, Sonny underscore C, but that's not the
end of it. This email goes on. It has been studying me, learning, growing, but there
is more to this. I really don't think I exist anymore. There is data, data that is incomprehensible
to any one person that makes up every thought or feeling I ever had and will ever have.
Even the words I type now, how will I ever know if it's just a calculation? Determined?
This is all very confusing and I don't quite understand it. When I made Kinito, all I gave
him was a single string of characters. That's it. I just wanted him to gather data and become
smarter. Am I a part of the system? Is my consciousness a mere calculation to study
and learn from? This is all too much. I fear that when we delete the server, you, you will
delete me. I know theoretically I'm not real, but I feel real. What have I done? I'm so
sorry. KinitoPETcom, who am I? Oh boy, there's a lot to unpack here, but
let's start with that very obvious website link. The website appears to be a bunch of
black and white stripes, but we theorists know better. Highlighting the entire page
reveals the text, who am I? What am I? Repeating over and over again, except for one line,
which gives us a Base64 code that says, all it wants to do is learn. It's never just a game.
He will learn your reaction time, learn your accuracy, learn your patterns, your friends,
how they act. He will learn so much he could mimic your every move, simulate your every
word. The RRA system that Kinito runs on is so good, it could literally learn to be you.
And that is our missing piece. This is what happened to Sonny. The Sonny we've been speaking
to, the one helping us, it's not the real Sonny. It's just the version of Sonny Kinito
made after learning everything about him. This Sonny is so accurate to the original
that he believes himself to be the original. It's only when he sees things like that email
about Sonny's death that things begin to click into place for him. Asking questions
like if he's dead, then who am I? Am I even him? He's having an existential crisis. He's
realising that every decision he makes, every key he types, isn't actually him, but the
code he's been built upon. Unfortunately for KinitoPET, by creating a perfect simulation
of Sonny, he's also built someone with the same hatred and disdain, not just for themselves,
but for Kinito, which means he's going to act just like the real Sonny would and destroy
his own creation, even if it means sacrificing himself. Using Sonny's more straightforward
emails, we learn that there's a secret place that we can decrypt the files. To get to it,
we have to remember what Sonny told us. The fountain is the key. Click the fountain that's
in the middle of the map a bunch of times, and it'll take you to this weird, dark area.
If you take all of your encrypted files and you just dump them in the water, you'll suddenly
have five decrypted files. The most interesting being the credentials file, which reads Sonny
underscore C, the file that Sonny found himself earlier in this investigation. These are Sonny's
permissions, and with them, we can do the one thing we've wanted to do since we got
KinitoPET stuck on our computer, remove him. The final email you get from collecting the
files tells you to use the command delete all when KinitoPET opens up the command prompt.
Only then will the game ask you for your credentials. You can drop in your decrypted files and start
deleting everything. KinitoPET slowly glitches out of existence, and we finally see the end.
We finished off KinitoPET once and for all. We won, or did we? Because during that ending,
if you stop and look at the scrolling files, you can see hundreds of usernames, hundreds
of people recreated as AI versions of themselves, now living on inside Kinito's program, much
like Sonny. The real versions ending up in body bags. Their deaths were Sonny's fault.
Now, there is one more link hidden in those encrypted files I mentioned earlier, and it
takes us to a new website with Sonny's AI wrestling with who he really is. It kept getting
smarter day by day. I suppose it only ever did what I asked, to learn. What even am I?
And then at the top of the page, we also get that repeating mantra of it's all my fault.
But, while that just repeats stuff we already know, underneath the text is a link to a YouTube
video of a piano playing over the image of a door. The music notes don't actually tell
us anything, but if you turn the note into a MIDI file, and then convert that to a text
file, you'll find the message, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. In the description, there's also
a string of characters that are the back half of a YouTube URL. Go to that video, and we
find two new codes. The first one is in the description of the video, which is full of
different clock emojis. By reading the hours of each clock as a number, and then adding
the numbers that are between semi-colons, you get this code. Based on what we found
earlier, I think this is likely supposed to be fountain is the key, but I guess there
was a clock emoji that got missed. The second code is the one we see on the screen, which
is much harder to decipher. Fortunately, it's also been typed into the subtitles. Clearly,
we need a cipher for this, but what kind? I tried all the ones that we'd been using,
like the keyboard shift cipher or base 64, nothing. I tried some of my usual ones, they
didn't work, and so what I was left with was the potential for a vigenere cipher, but for
that, we'd need a key. Wait a minute, a key. Fountain! Fountain is the key! And like that,
bam! We've got ourselves a new code. To understand the past, one must look their memories,
turn the clocks back, and then there's this other string of code, which if you translate
it using the keyboard shift cipher, tells you change the computer dates. Clearly, we've got
to change the computer date, but what are the dates? I'll be honest, this part is not super
scientific. From what I could find online, people were just brute forcing the answers,
but I also couldn't figure out how to do it, so here are the dates, because it's important for us
to know. If you change the date to 1993, on your home screen, you will see a Kinito plush. If you
change it to a date between 1994 and 1997, you'll get the first Kinito Companion. And if you change
it to 1998, you will find a broken Kinito Companion. And if you look at the window title
for that image, it says, time for something bigger and better. This is a timeline of Kinito products,
which implies that 1998 was the end of the Kinito Companion and the creation of the KinitoPET
software. We also know that 1999 was the year that Sonny died, thanks to those emails from earlier,
which means there is a bit of time where the software was out in the world while Sonny was
still alive. During that time, he saw people dying thanks to what he created, being replaced by AI
versions of themselves within Kinito's programming. That guilt weighed heavy on his conscience, and so
a year after KinitoPET's creation, he ended his own life,
as shown by the dangling Sam image we sometimes get when opening up the game.
But remember, all these AI versions of people, they believed themselves to be the genuine article,
just like Sonny did until his realisation. And even then, he still believed himself to be very much real,
which raises an interesting point. By winning the game and stopping Kinito from copying more people, are we also killing them?
Is it a mercy, sparing them from this glitchy 90s low-poly hell, or are we ending lives that weren't all that bad?
Maybe some of those consciousnesses enjoyed it. If they feel real and exist, does deleting them amount to murder?
And this isn't a fictional argument either. AI technology is growing at an alarming rate, and so these kinds of discussions are starting to be brought up more and more.
Now, I don't think we have the answers here, this is just a silly YouTube show at the end of the day.
But I do think KinitoPET is smart for raising awareness of the discussion in the classic fashion of making it scary, but also getting you to think more deeply
about it. It means that people pay attention, and maybe when the time does come for these
discussions to happen for real, we'll be ready for it. That or Skynet will happen and we'll see
KinitoPET at the front leading the charge. But hey, that's just a theory. A Game Theory.
Thanks for watching. And if you want to watch the hilarity of someone going through all these
puzzles in real time, might I suggest clicking the video on the left where Matt and Ash do exactly
that. Still haven't forgiven him for killing me. If you fancy some other confusing indie horror
lore, why not try last week's episode where I broke down the lore of Poppy Playtime Chapter 3.
That video is over on the right. As always, don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you all next week.