In the real world, it was twelve noon, the perfect time for lunch.
An office drone had picked up his takeout and unpacked it so it was ready to eat, but he had not started eating right away, because he was looking for today's digital side dish.
His finger swiped through video after video on his phone. Content fatigue made him lose interest in most recommendations after a single glance.
But soon, a somewhat interesting title caught his eye:
"That time I cracked a beta game's Easter egg and got an activation code from the devs"
Wait, wasn't this title a little too light novel?
The office drone held his plastic spoon in his mouth, thought for a moment, then opened the video creator's profile first. He discovered that this was a complete newcomer.
Good, no existing fan base whatsoever. That rules out a sponsored video first of all. Looks like the content should be fairly objective.
With that thought, the office drone decided to watch this video over lunch.
He tapped play, interested to see just which game was pulling off stunts like this.
"A few days ago, I saw this game on the homepage of the XX gaming platform. It only had a few promotional images, yet it ranked twentieth on the new games chart.
"I know everyone watching this is bound to think of two possibilities: either they paid for it, or it was a bug. But actually, it was neither. Let me explain..."
Looking at the game called World of Disorder, the office drone felt sure he had seen its cover somewhere before. After thinking it over, he suddenly realized that he had indeed seen this image while browsing the new games chart over the past few days.
No, that was not all. He kept feeling as though he had heard that name at work.
The office drone paused the video. After racking his brains, he suddenly remembered-wasn't this the bugged game that had been plaguing the team next door for days?!
To think I'd see it on a video site. Looks like this thing isn't a scam...
The office drone suddenly recalled seeing this game while relaxing at home.
Unfortunately, neither the name nor the castle-style cover was his thing, so he had not even clicked on it, missing his chance to discover the bug.
The newcomer making the video continued recounting his experience:
"I discovered that the game's homepage had a lot of little details. From the map design that updated in real time to the entry editing, you could see the development team's vision of creating a harmonious atmosphere together with the players. But normally, that would have been the end of it, because fundamentally, this was still a game whose servers weren't even open. People were there to play a game, not stare at a homepage.
"But..."
The video's background music suddenly turned suspenseful, and the office drone felt his heartbeat quicken a little.
With that atmosphere building, the voice continued:
"I noticed that this animation always played when entering the game's homepage. Rather than calling this design of switching back and forth between filters unusual, I'd call it somewhat unnecessary. Now, let's slow this animation down...
"After extracting these three colors, we apply the corresponding filters over the background image behind the game's homepage, giving us these three incomplete pictures...
"I'm sure you can guess what I'll do next. Since these three pictures have distinctive torn edges, why not try piecing them together? That gives us this image...
"Again, we import the image into the software, then adjust the saturation to get a clearer image. I'm sure anyone with a little artistic accomplishment knows that this is clearly a modified tracing of the famous painting The Creation of Adam, only with the two main figures replaced by a one-eyed man and a... let's call it a 'treant.'
"At this point, you'll notice that if we interpret this one-eyed man and treant as Odin and the World Tree, things make a lot more sense, because... this game's developer is 'Odin Game Studio.' So it seems perfectly reasonable for the developer-no, the developer god-to include a flattering picture of himself, right?
"This looks like a little Easter egg the development team left for everyone, but does it end here?
"Of course not!"
The video's background music suddenly swept away its earlier suspense and became rousing and spirited:
"I don't know much about Norse mythology either, but as a tech guy, I can overlay images!
"If we overlay this Easter egg painting with the original The Creation of Adam, we find an extra black silhouette in the corner of the painting. What is it?
"The answer is Odin's raven. But Odin has two ravens in mythology, so we can't tell which one it is yet.
"Now, if we keep enlarging this bird that flashed past, we'll find that the feathers on its outstretched wings have noticeably uneven lengths. If we treat the long feathers as long signals and the short feathers as short signals, we get this sequence of code.
"Comparing it against the standard code chart gives us 'Huginn,' meaning 'Huginn,' one of Odin's ravens."
By this point, the office drone in front of the screen had long since forgotten to chew. All he could think was that he had missed out on a hundred million...
He liked solving puzzles too, and he also worked in computing. He could already sense that this video was about to blow up. Right now, he simply regretted not clicking into the game's homepage and taking a closer look.
Sure enough, opportunities always favor the prepared...
After that moment of reflection, the video continued playing:
"Although we knew the raven's name, we had absolutely no idea what to do next.
"Now, let's return to that game compendium I mentioned at the start of the video, the wiki jointly created by the devs and the players.
"The two compendium entries numbered 00001 and 00002 were written by the player 'Muninn,' an official alt account.
"We can see that this subpage's URL contains Muninn's name, the string 'Muninn.'
"Now, let's replace it with 'Huginn,' then press Enter... bam! We've arrived at a new, hidden subpage.
"There's nothing on this page except a sleeping squirrel... when we move the mouse over it, the cursor turns into a wooden mallet.
"If we keep hitting this squirrel on the head with the mallet, we'll wake it up. Then it'll very unhappily give us a pine cone before going back to sleep.
"Finally, clicking this pine cone makes a random string of characters pop up, which is the game activation code mentioned in the video's title.
"That's the entire process of cracking the Easter egg. As for why I haven't blurred the activation code... by the time you see this video, I'll have successfully activated it. Hehe~
"I'm a new creator, and I hope you enjoyed the video. This game looks interesting, at least, and I've already plunged straight down the rabbit hole. May we meet in this fantasy world. Bye~"
Holy shit, that's awesome... After finishing the video, the office drone's head was filled with all the details of the Easter egg hunt.
Objectively speaking, none of these things were difficult to do. It was like a strand of yarn: once you caught the loose end, you could keep pulling out new content.
But anyone who had attempted similar puzzles knew that the hardest part was always finding that first loose end.
And now, the person who had found it was the video's creator, not him.
"Sigh."
The office drone sighed, planning to give this game a go after getting home from work that evening and see if he could dig up anything new.
Just then, he suddenly felt someone pat his shoulder. He turned his head and asked with a smile:
"Cui Yuan? Eaten yet?"
"About to. What are you watching?"
"Oh, nothing. A video solving a game's Easter egg... want to grab something to eat together tonight?"
"Next time. Today... there's a new game in the library I want to try."