Ricky Grove 00:11
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the And Now for Something Completely Machinima podcast. This is our third podcast in January in which we'll be talking about a film pick. I'm Ricky Grove, your narrator. And this is Phil Rice's pick. Hello, Phil. Tracy Harwood and Damien Valentine are here to talk with us as well. Phil has a very interesting pick one that takes you down the rabbit hole, so to speak. One that I was not aware of and which was highly entertaining. Tell us about it, Phil.

Phil Rice 00:46
Yeah, I found this kind of by accident. I wasn't even on one of my normal hunts or searches for machinima stuff, but somehow scrolling my YouTube, you know, the page that's assembled for you with the algorithm. There was some HalfLife 2 related thing there. And so I watched it. And then over in the column of, you know, related videos was this thing which is, it's titled Interloper Half Life 2's Greatest Unsolved Mystery. And I thought, well, clickbait or not, I'm intrigued. What is it? I've played that game. I know that game. Never heard of this. What is this? Whoa, boy. This film, and it's made by a guy named Anomidae, I hope I'm pronouncing that right. This is a what I'm going to call it like a low budget machinima documentary of sorts. In that there's no it's all on screen text. Almost no voiceover between this and it's sequel, which was just released this past November, as like a follow up, same style. Essentially, this film, told as a documentary shows this player discovering a strange visual artefact. like kind of like almost graffiti on the wall, in an obscure alleyway in one of the levels of HalfLife to discovers it, presumably just by accident, and starts digging into it is because there's apparently rumours around about what this it's a it's a figure of a humanoid figure of some kind. And so he starts peeling the onion on this, including digging into the actual files of the game to look at the texture that's responsible for this image appearing there. And the the texture is the image file is corrupted. What's what is it called? When data is embedded into an image, there's a specific name for that metadata. Metadata. Well, no, this is this is when the data is actually metadata would be like, kind of hitches along for the ride with a with a file. There's spectrometry, or something along those lines, basically, in place of the pixels, in the data of the image itself is embedded data and a lot of times it's imperceptible, well, he noticed some evidence of some kind of corruption along those lines. And so he goes looking through, you know, opens it up in a hex editor to look at the actual data in the corrupted part of the image. And there's a reference to some kind of a server and some commands. And HalfLife has a command console that you can run a command prompt. And so he types it in and it connects to this server. And it starts delivering up in-game demos, which are recordings made within the game. And each time he visits it, it delivers another at random, it will download it and then play it. And yatta yatta yatta this whole mystery starts to unravel as this very weird content starts to make self doubt and I'm watching this just my jaw is in my lap. And I'm just like, what? Because it's this weird thing. It's like who would ever even discover this and who would take the time to put this in rolling one in a million shots that anyone would look at this what's happening? And so I start questioning Am I being hoaxed here is this, like, is this fake? And this is just being put on and but I'll tell you it. It was really, incredibly well made and incredibly convincing, like everything technical, technically wise, that he was showing was plausible. Improbable, but plausible, like, it's okay. I guess I can see how that might work like that. Just this very strange thing and almost a conspiracy theory wrapped within the world, not just of HalfLife 2, but if all the source games if this story is to be believed. Yes. Source games, right, right. And it's only at a certain time period, that this window into this command and getting all this demo data is even open. And some of the demos are incredibly creepy. Like just no more than a couple jumpscares even. And at the end of it, I don't know, I don't I don't tend to do Tracy's level of research. I just watched stuff, and I might read the description. So I have no idea if I've been had here or what, but it is incredibly intriguing. And even if it's a made up thing, brilliant, brilliantly crafted hoax, like an even if it's just intended to be spotted as a hoax. And it's just for entertainment. It's still brilliant. Because it's just so well done. And it's just low tech enough of the delivery to make it seem like that. It's somebody who doesn't normally make videos, threw together this video to show you this weird. You know, I'm a technical geek, kind of guy doing it. It's almost like a persona. Now Tracy mentioned Yeah, Episode, that this guy has been involved in some Source Filmmaker stuff. So it could be that I'm I'm the very willing and eager victim of kind of hoax. Well, he did a second even thinking that I'm delighted. Yes. So tell me.

Ricky Grove 07:17
The interloper to which is the second follow up to this is where I realised that was a hoax.

Phil Rice 07:25
But What gave it away?

Ricky Grove 07:26
I don't know exactly what it was, but he slept, you could see him straining, to come up with more material, more mystery on top of mystery, which led me to feel that he had created this whole thing that he perhaps had discovered something interesting in the image file. And yet, he thought, well, if I expand this, just like clever, clever person who makes a conspiracy out of nothing, they expand it. And then his imagination, and his technical knowledge allowed him to make it plausible, because I was completely drawn in when I watched the first one. The second one that I realised that Well, I think it's a hoax, you know,

Phil Rice 08:10
the normal reaction that I would have to have been taken in by a hoax like that would be anger or embarrassment. No, but with this, like, even as that suspicion started to rise, and then now you, you guys seem to be confirming it with your knowing smiles. I, I am not feeling angry or embarrassed. It's like, I'm admiring the lighting, the performance art here, that it was just, it was just right. Like, it was just sloppy enough to, to think nobody made this. And it was technically accurate enough to be, I guess that could be possible. Of course, if I had the Source engine fired up, I could have probably tried to fire up some of those things and just test them right away was wrong, although I think he fixed that by making it clear that well, this only happens at a certain time. For a very limited window. Was this even possible? So it's like, oh, so I can't even fire it up. I mean, just brilliant. This guy's a genius. So yeah, tell me now, lift the curtain and show me the wizard. What's really going on here?

Ricky Grove 09:30
I think one of the things that he does that is absolutely brilliant, as you say, is that he combines let's play with a documentary Conspiracy Documentary, in such a way that you feel like you are part of a discovery of something that is so strange and creepy that you begin to try to work it out in your mind. Who who did valve put this in there? And if they did, what were they trying to say? How are they? What's nefarious about it? What's what's you know what I mean? It gives you that great pleasure of being part of a secret. And, and he does he had such a straight face. He delivers it for such a while you'd never see his face but he, he does it with such clarity, such sincerity and the... Yeah, yes. And then I discovered this. And then when he actually shows the results of these demos, and any five different types of weirdo demos, which I thought was another genius, stroke of genius, and this is Category Five, you know, right shows a couple of these creepy things. And they are, you're absolutely right. They are generally the genuinely, the creepiest goddamn things you've ever seen, especially if you have the mindset of the conspiracy.

Phil Rice 10:56
And he waited enough into the film to to reveal the really creepy one. Yes. around the windows of that house. Yeah. And I'm, I'm 15 minutes into this thing. And it's like, okay, okay, something is effing going on here. And then Oh, me. Oh, just. Yeah, I'm delighted. It was the best thing had that I've ever experienced is just fantastic.

Ricky Grove 11:23
One of the most creative machinima I've ever seen in the documentary style. Go ahead.

Damien Valentine 11:28
Yeah, it kind of drew me in as well, because I thought, this is unlikely, but just plausible that is this some leftover tests stuff, that Valve put in the game when they were testing elements of the engine out. But they didn't take it out. Because that was pretty much every video game. If you dig into it, you'll find that the the development, co writing the test levels,

Phil Rice 11:50
or hidden areas, or you know, Hall of Mirrors areas you can go into and see outside the levels, like if you know anything about that stuff, that totally adds to the plausibility here,

Damien Valentine 12:00
and some developers deliberately leave in just to see if anyone does find it. Maybe that's what Valve had done.

Phil Rice 12:07
Other game developers have done that. Yeah. I mean, Easter eggs and such. Yeah.

Damien Valentine 12:13
So I didn't know. And I thought, should I Google it and try and find out? Or shall I just enjoyed the mystery. And I did do a quick Google search. But it didn't really, it just kept me coming back to this film. I wasn't really sure if it was a real thing or not. But I thought the way that was done was presented really well. And in a way that it makes you want to know. And you kind of do believe it. But like you said, Phil, when you realise it's not actually real, you're not angry about it. You just enjoy the experience. It's like, it's like a good prank. Like, it makes sense attaining. Even though it's not actually a real thing.

Phil Rice 12:54
Yeah, it was. It was a it was a practical joke. But I didn't leave it feeling like it was at my expense. Yeah,

Ricky Grove 13:01
right. Right. It didn't make you look stupid. No. Yeah.

Tracy Harwood 13:07
Well, yeah. Okay, what do you think what a fabulous couple of films, I really have to say, this guy's craft is amazing. And you guys have just summarised pretty much everything I was going to say. But I'll go through my points, because I did do a little bit of background on this as well, if I

Damien Valentine 13:25
think we all knew that you were

Tracy Harwood 13:28
background, I really enjoy that. So you know, obviously, what you got here is lots of throwback to 90s and early 2000s on the gaming forums. And that kind of, although I don't think the typeface is the same actually. But that interface sort of style is bang on what you would have kind of got in that era, if you like with quite a lot of really good references to things like dem files, and, and Fraps and whatnot, because all of those were sort of things that you're associated with, with early game stuff when they write. But I have to say, I think this is perhaps one of the most interesting game based machinima stories I've seen, ever. And that's because it's so embedded within the communities of gamers and gameplay and kind of gamer geek life as well as the games themselves. And it's not just one game, but a few games. Because they're all connected through the through the underpinning engine on which they've been made, which is Source. So it's, it is kind of nostalgic, but it's also very explainable and it stands up as a film on its own I think, and I really really enjoyed the conspiracy theory approach and because it you know, in places it actually made me jump, which was which was bizarre because what the hell it was just text right a few things that you couldn't act really make out really on the, on the screen. But the longer that sort of story went on, the less I realised I actually understood what was going on. And, and it was just super creepy, the fact that he even shares a couple of files of, you know, from his Google Drive on on the second video that he's released. And, you know, these, I didn't actually click the file, but you know, it's definitely a Google link that he's, he's sharing. And he says, These are a couple of interesting demo files, which, you know, which he's trying to sort of say, well, you know, you can have a look at this stuff. But be careful, because these files are unstable. And then he sort of says, let me know, if you figure anything out when you're watching them, and you think, Oh, I'm not sure I want to click on that. Because what am I going to invoke on my machine, I'm able to do that on his machine. So you've kind of got this sort of ghosty thing going on, which is super weird,

Phil Rice 16:03
wasn't it? Like, at one point, he said, after I tried to play this demo file, this game stopped launching properly. So

Tracy Harwood 16:17
I thought what was really clever here was that he was he, he made reference to the community members. So he was, you know, he was not only showing you his, what his take on this was, but he was also sort of saying, you know, and and folks have contributed to this. So it's kind of like, really interesting, the way that he's drawn people in whether or not he actually has, I think it was really compelling that that idea was embedded within it. So it's kind of interesting for a number of reasons. And then, when I looked at all the comments, there were lots of folks saying how much they actually loved it on, you know, in terms of how much it would have meant to them in the early days, in terms of, you know, how people made connections between things way back when it also kind of implying that they don't say much now, but actually, I think that kind of conspiracy thing is a bigger thing now than it was back then. I think. So that's another thing that's sort of seemed to come out of the forum, this sort of conspiracy idea. And then, you know, that point about the five, what would you call demo? Yeah, yeah, that he's sort of referred to in this kind of alternate reality that he's created, I thought was really intriguing. And I wasn't sure that I actually understood what he was referring to. But it you know, but I think that really added to the mystery of it, because I kind of thought, well, is that a thing? You know, are these are these real sort of, you know, categories, and that was that was going through my head in the, in the first one. But in the second one, he tries to explain what those categories were, there's that sort of classification system actually is. And I thought, Well, if that's a real thing, I'm gonna look that up. Needless to say, I couldn't find anything about that sort of five level of classification

Ricky Grove 18:21
course, because you created it. Well, I

Tracy Harwood 18:23
didn't I, you know, I was still kind of drawn in and convinced. And it kind of, but I tell you what was going through my mind, because I was looking at it. And I was thinking, you know, the way this guy is doing all that command, command line stuff, I wonder if he's actually been on the creative team. And he's actually a, you know, a guy that is used to coding and can do all this sort of stuff, himself, you know, the actual writing of the code and whatnot. And I wonder if that's the case, whether these classification, you know, this sort of system comes from the fact that, you know, maybe these game developers have descriptions for different types of files that are created when they're testing games out, you know, so I kind of concluded that maybe it was a thing that he was just sort of drawing drawing on. And then I found something else about these sort of five levels, which I also thought was found was quite interesting. Now, it's this is kind of purely hypothetical. Have you heard of something called the Kardashev scale? Nothing's okay. Right. Well, okay, so the Kardashev scale, was developed by astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in the 1960s. And it measures civilization by its ability to harness energy for maintaining itself primarily through technological advancement. Kardavshev's theory have been used for some time in proposing different types of super civilizations beyond Earth, notably in the context of those civilizations attempting to transmit information to Earth. And it's actually kind of fairly common trope in games is things trying to make connection with earth kind of thing. It's kind of kind of fairly common. So I kind of concluded that that might be where this plot is going. The fact that, you know, maybe something, you know, something in this sort of vein, and he's, he's kind of drawing on that, but of course, you have absolutely no idea. So I just thought I'd add into the, into the sort of, you know, ideas that seemed to be going on there. But, you know, obviously, it's really, you know, he's got tonnes of followers of the, you know, hooked on this storyline, which, which, which is really authentic, I think, in what it's doing. But not only that, on his, on his Twitter feed, he's also got a bunch of graffiti postings of the Interloper, which people have created and sort of posted to him. And what I think I particularly liked about his description of what he's doing and why it's a story, in my view, is that somewhere, I saw that he's described it as a highly experimental series, which he's using to figure out a story outcome, which is some sort of, you know, grand tale that he wants to tell. And he's, and basically, the process of putting these videos videos up is him figuring out what the story is. And that if that is the case, but what I think this is, is something that's a really interesting example of somebody using machinima as a creative journey, as well as trying to sort of figure out what a story is. And frankly, I'm looking forward to see what he what he what he does next to try and bring all these different threads that he's got together. Because to me, you know, this kept me absolutely riveted to the screen for what, well over half an hour, which was bizarre considering what the content is, right. So absolutely. Fantastic. Pick Phil, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you.

Ricky Grove 22:22
Yeah, one of the best machinima films I've ever seen. Really, really extraordinary. Now, to tell you this, I can't give you the actual specifics of why I think it's a hoax. But I think in reflecting I think there are two things that lead me to that. One is, there are literally hundreds of 1000s of players who have access to free tools that can let you find an image file that you used in the game and look at its code, its hex at using a hex editor find out what the actual code is, how is it that he's the only person who's ever looked at this and discovered that? That because graphics files, especially graffiti are fair game for anybody. And in that area of HalfLife? That's a very horror specific area. I can't remember the name of it. But everybody would be looking at that file. So why is

Phil Rice 23:25
he mean that it's plausible that he would be maybe the first but not the only right. To have looked at it? Yeah, it would be all over Reddit. And you know, exactly every analysis. No good point

Ricky Grove 23:38
in this. And then the second one was in the, the second the sequel to it. You could see him straining a bit to come up with new connections. You could see a mulling it over you know, and that made me think because he didn't have the same confidence that he had in the first one. And that made me think, Ah, he's showing his hand. He's showing his hand. So I think the combination of those two things made me think that it's a hoax. A genius hoax, but nevertheless, a hoax. Yeah, maybe

Phil Rice 24:17
even, maybe even not a hoax, whose primary purpose is to fool. You know what I'm saying? That I'm torn between, okay. It's not a hoax in the sense of like, you know, Bernie Madoff or something he's not. He's not out to do something as a hoax. But it's a performance. Creative. Yeah. Performance. It's essentially, I mean, you know, who wasn't that said that all fiction writers are essentially just good liars. In essence, that's true. You're telling something that didn't happen? Yeah, who you're trying to do so convincingly and plausibly, and it's just that his medium of choice here isn't words on the written page. It's, it's this. And so it's yeah, it's one of those things where Yeah, it doesn't make me stand back and go, you know, want to point out and go You liar. It's one that makes me want to stand back and go You liar.

Ricky Grove 25:22
Thumbs up. Yeah.

Phil Rice 25:25
How did I yeah, it's just great stuff. Really? I'm glad you guys enjoyed it.

Ricky Grove 25:31
Perfect timing also for our conspiracy focused culture right now.

Tracy Harwood 25:35
Absolutely.

Damien Valentine 25:37
Phil, what you just reminded me of is the infamous War of the Worlds radio play that was broadcast. Reading on the radio. Sure. Yeah. And you know, everyone, who aren't familiar with it is an audio. He's reading the first person perspective of the War the Worlds as if it was happening around him. Yeah, it was a screenplay based on War of the Worlds right. Yeah. Right. And so people listening, believed the Earth was actually under attack by aliens. And he was a real journalist, covering what he was seeing and letting people know.

Phil Rice 26:11
Yeah. I don't think that it was his intent to defraud the public. No, I don't think it was. I think he was a consummate and genius entertainer. Yeah. And just wanted to deliver an experience, which I think I think,

Damien Valentine 26:28
as well,

Phil Rice 26:28
why did he succeed?

Ricky Grove 26:31
That's a good analogy, because that's exactly. I think the intent of the creator. In this case, he's doing a performance in which create consciously creating something that not only appeals to the paranoid, conspiracy type person, but the general audience because you begin to share this concept of mystery. What's this mystery? Who are these people? Why is this put together and the way it is? And what's so creepy about it? What's the motive? You your own imagination gets involved in a way that normally doesn't happen with the other films that we've shown in the last couple of weeks. Absolutely. Great. Phil, just a fantastic pick. You get the award right out of the gate for the best film of the month. God dammit? So if you have any thoughts about this, Are we wrong? Is it true or not? Are hoax? Contact us at talk at Completely Machinima.com Don't forget our news is on the blog as well. We're putting technology related machinima related news there. Tracy has been handling that for the rest of his have been contributing. So thank you all for your your thoughts and your interest. Be sure you watch this great documentary, film or documentary film depending on your opinion. And we'll be back next week with our last film of the month. Thanks, everyone. Bye bye.