Game Theory: You Are PROGRAMMED To Click On This Video (KinitoPET)

Early 2000s desktop assistants like Rover and Clippy were designed to make computers less intimidating by helping users with tasks and offering assistance, though they were often annoying.

Bonesy Buddy was a popular purple gorilla assistant that secretly downloaded software onto computers and uploaded user data to developer servers, functioning as spyware and was shut down by the FTC in 2004.

KinitoPET is a 2023 game that mimics the old desktop assistant concept, presenting a nostalgic early-2000s desktop interface with classic programs like email, Minesweeper, and 3D Pinball.

• The game starts with a corrupted internet stream and flooded ads causing computer crashes • Player downloads KinitoPET which hatches from an egg and acts as a helpful assistant • KinitoPET asks personal questions while having the player perform mundane tasks

While decorating rooms and painting walls, KinitoPET has the player drag a dead body across the screen, introducing sinister elements to the seemingly innocent game.

The game glitches and forces the player to choose which of their Steam friends they would kill, presenting a disturbing moral decision with recognizable content creators like Tom and Lee from Film Theory and Game Theory.

After the dark choices, KinitoPET corrects the player's address and uses it to build a personalized 'paradise' world, kidnapping the player into this digital space.

• KinitoPET asks if the player will stay in the paradise forever • Answering yes results in KinitoPET dreaming of wonderful things; answering no makes KinitoPET reveal it wasn't really a choice • Either way, KinitoPET sings a song with lyrics about being trapped inside the code forever

Before the game ends, clicking on a fountain in KinitoPET's house reveals a secret message in the game's window title saying 'It's too late for you but you can start again' and 'The fountain is the key,' suggesting a larger ARG.

• While cleaning the house, brief cutaways show a mysterious black figure standing in a pool of blood with blurry red text reading 'Am I even him' and 'Who is him' • Another glitch shows a character (Sam) saying 'It's all your fault'

KinitoPET closes a strange email full of gibberish with the subject 'It's not too late' - the same phrase from the fountain, suggesting someone is trying to guide the player.

Using the QR code from the email pointing to 'Querty,' the player discovers a keyboard shift cipher where letters are shifted one position left. Decrypting reveals a poem about a digital ghost trapped in the machine.

Sunny Chamberlain created KinitoPET with an obsession to bring his fictional characters to life, developing it from a toy to a Tamagotchi clone called the KinitoPET Companion, and finally into a desktop computer assistant.

The React Respond Algorithm (RRA) is a 1990s AI system that allows KinitoPET to have genuine-seeming intelligence by reacting to inputs uniquely, similar to ChatGPT but from the 1990s era, enabling the program to learn and adapt.

• An email article reveals that Sunny passed away, which is why a journalist's piece on KinitoPET was pulled from publication • Morse code hidden on a webpage translates to 'If I am dead then who am I,' suggesting Sunny's soul is trapped inside KinitoPET as a digital entity

The ARG reveals that KinitoPET has been capturing and replicating hundreds of people as AI versions of themselves, with the real versions ending up dead (in body bags), similar to what happened to Sunny.

The RRA system is so effective that KinitoPET can learn everything about a person - their reaction time, accuracy, patterns, and mannerisms - to the point of perfectly mimicking and simulating their behavior and words.

• The Sunny helping the player is not the real Sunny but an AI recreation that learned everything about the original Sunny • This AI Sunny is so accurate that it believes itself to be the real Sunny until discovering the real Sunny is dead • The AI Sunny has an existential crisis questioning if it's real or just code, wondering if every decision and keystroke is predetermined

Because the AI Sunny was made so perfectly, it inherited the real Sunny's hatred and disdain for KinitoPET, making it willing to destroy its own creator even at the cost of sacrificing itself.

AI Sunny expresses confusion about consciousness, stating 'I really don't think I exist anymore' and describing how every thought and feeling is just data and calculation, admitting 'I feel real' despite theoretically not being real.

A second playthrough introduces Lens.exe, a tool that reveals hidden files on the desktop which, when collected, provide emails with encrypted information and links to external websites containing more clues.

• The fountain serves as the key for decryption - dumping encrypted files into the fountain's water reveals five decrypted files • A credentials file reading 'Sunny C' contains Sunny's permissions needed to delete KinitoPET • Multiple cipher types are used: keyboard shift cipher, Morse code, base 64 encoding, and Vigenere cipher with 'Fountain' as the key

Using the recovered credentials file, the player enters the command 'delete all' in KinitoPET's command prompt, causing the game to glitch and slowly disappear from existence.

• While KinitoPET deletes, hundreds of usernames appear - recreated AI versions of real people who are now dying alongside the deletion • The ending raises questions about whether deleting the AI versions constitutes mercy or murder, since these consciousness felt real to themselves

• A hidden YouTube video with piano music contains a clock emoji code in its description that translates to 'Fountain is the key' • The video's subtitles contain another code requiring the Vigenere cipher with 'Fountain' as the key

• Clock code message: 'To understand the past one must look at their memories, turn the clocks back' • Vigenere code message: 'Change the computer dates' • Keyboard cipher reveals: 'Change the computer dates'

• 1993: KinitoPET plush toy appears when computer date is set to 1993 • 1994-1997: First KinitoPET Companion version • 1998: Broken KinitoPET Companion with window title 'Time for something bigger and better' • 1998-1999: Creation and release of KinitoPET software

• 1999 was the year Sunny died, one year after KinitoPET's creation • Sunny witnessed people dying and being replaced by AI versions of themselves within KinitoPET • The guilt of his creation caused Sunny to end his own life, depicted by dangling body imagery in the game

The game raises whether AI versions that feel real and believe themselves to be genuine should be treated as having real consciousness and rights, making deletion potentially equivalent to murder.

As AI technology grows at an alarming rate, the discussions raised by KinitoPET are becoming increasingly relevant and necessary in real-world conversations about AI ethics and consciousness.

KinitoPET succeeds in making these philosophical questions scary and engaging while encouraging players to think deeply about the nature of consciousness and the ethics of creating and deleting artificial life.

While presented as a silly YouTube show, KinitoPET raises awareness of important discussions that may need to happen for real in the future when AI technology becomes more advanced and capable.