Game Theory ARG

Game Theory ARG
Active since 08-10-2018
It's just an ARG. A Game Theory ARG!
Type	Official
Creator	Game Theory (Matthew Patrick, Stephanie Patrick)
Discovered	08-10-2018

Main Page > List of Investigations > Game Theory ARG

The Game Theory Merch Mystery and an unnamed arg commencing on 29/8/2018 are ARGs created by the Game Theory Team: Matthew Patrick and Stephanie Patrick. The Merch Mystery was created to promote new Game Theory merchandise, so it may be possible that the next ARG is created to promote more products by Game Theory.

The Merch Mystery

On 08/10/2018, MatPat announced on his twitter account that New Merch had been released, and that a puzzle involving the merch was also created. Although the clues necessary to complete the puzzle were hidden in merch, no purchase of said merch was necessary to complete the puzzle.

Some people who purchased the merchandise noticed 1 of 6 spelling errors on their carrier bag that the item was stored in. The 6 spelling errors were all in place of the letter "o" in the word "theory".

The 6 spelling errors could then be rearranged to spell "t#30r%". This would be used later on in the ARG.

The next clue would be hidden in the Game Theory Journal. All of the eyes of the characters in the notebook had letters located within them. When spelled sequentially, they would spell a website name: hasmatpatgonemad.com

This website showed a A 1:00 minute video of MatPat's face with big eyes surrounded by a weird background a rays coming from his head.

Keen eyed investigators saw that Matpat's blinking was actually Morse code, seen below:

- ... . / - .... . --- .-. .. ... - / --. .- -. .-- .- -.-- / -.. --- - / -.-. --- --

This decoded to THE THEORIST GATEWAY DOT COM, and led players to a new website.

Players were greeted with one final 6 character password to put in. Players found the password to be t#30r%, from the merchandise bags. The first 100 players to solve the puzzle received a prize for completing it so quickly (still not released as of 18/09/18).

Unnamed 2nd Game Theory ARG

What is MatPat Hiding?

On September 16, 2018, The Game Theorists YouTube channel released a video titled What is MatPat HIDING?. In it, MatPat did a post-mortem on the Merch Mystery and what his plans for the future are. He also hid 3 clues within the video. 2 were red herrings and 1 was real.

At the 0:08 mark an encrypted message was shown:

Uifsf bsf op Fbtufs Fhht jo ifsf. Hp bxbz.

When decrypted with a ROT25 cipher, players discovered the following message:

There are no Easter Eggs in here. Go away.

At the 12:38 mark a string of numbers with dashes is shown:

23 5 - 23 15 21 12 4 - 14 15 20 - 13 1 11 5 - 9 20 - 20 8 1 20 - 5 1 19 25

When decoded with a letters-numbers cipher, the message was:

we would not make it that easy

Finally, a suspicious looking tag may appear within the video description, titled #UCVNTZJXAuvE3C7SfOsPNgEA. This was found to be a YouTube channel ID, which led players to a YouTube channel titled tenretni olleh.

The channel's banner consisted of a black image with the message "patience is the key" repeated across it.

The channel icon consisted of a red, inverse Game Theory logo, with the text pow zNb Xdd MnH instead of yroeht emag. This may be interpreted as it is, or can be turned upside down to give HuW ppX qNz mob.

Some players also tried going on thetheoristgateway.com again after discovering these clues, and were greeted with this message:

We ju5t wanted to say thank you 2 everyone w4o participated in our firs7 ever Merch Mystery Treasure Hunt. lt was somet4ing fun we wanted 2 test out, and sure, we thought some of you would enjoy it, but W3 had no idea how absolutely deep down the rabbit hole you were willing 2 venture. l mean, HEX conversions? Really?? I am thrilled you all went th3re, and let me tell you that you've made me the proudest Theorist on the planet. This first experience really wa5 just our “toe in the water." Consider it our open b3ta. We’ve read your recommendations for future ARGs and we’re ready to go all out! So my dear friends and fellow T4eorists, get ready, because it’s about to get real.

Timestamp shown through brightness and contrast changes.

Concatenating the numbers gives "524742323534". This can be converted from hex into text, giving the following result:

RGB254

This hinted at altering the image so that each of the RGB values of colour are changed to 254, 1 less than 255. This was also hinted at in the filename, ff is 255 in hex, therefore fe is 254 in hex.

When the image was altered according to these instructions, a timestamp was discovered. The timestamp is dated 29/9/2018 at 00:00:01 PST (08:00:01 UTC).