IAmNotGoats Admin for the GameDetective group said it best when talking to Kotaku about ARGs:
An ARG is the only type of game where you’re never really sure if you’re still playing or not.
I have a feeling that everyone in the group is hoping that this isn’t the end of the cryptic Eye Sigil ARG. If you haven’t been watching this unfold- or reading our previous coverage -here’s the short version. There was/is a secret hiding in various indie games on Steam all surrounding this picture:
Each instance of this image came with a puzzle piece, twenty-five in total. The pieces formed this grid but the people over on the GameDetectives group couldn’t figure out what it meant until recently.
The final clue came when one sleuth overlayed the above image overtop a word soup found in Firewatch‘s latest update.
According to the GameDetective, the sigil was found on board with a journal next to it. In that journal, there was a series of italicized letters that spelled out “firewatchgamecomdataclientjpg” which is a real link directing you to the original word soup image.
If you take the letters in every node you get this: “number one/elmourouj.” This is actually the login for a site owned by Frog Fractions dev Jim Crawford. Once they had access to the site the group was greeted with video of Crawford and another indie game dev eating Star Wars themed soup. Kotaku says that back in 2014 when the Frog Fraction 2 Kickstarter started its own Frog Fractions ARG. That ARG is still ongoing, but it hasn’t gotten the same recognition as the Eye Sigil.
Most people on the detective groups believe that the entire ARG was just part of the original Frog Fractions 2 ARG. Considering the amount of effort put into the ARG as a whole it feels like a let down that it led to just some video.
Which brings me back to my opening sentence: how do we know that we are not still playing?