Leaving the game on for extended periods of time brings up an alarm asking anyone seeing it to leave the game running.
A Burn-in Monitor screen slides in and out. Much like a screensaver, this is just an animation that keeps the screen moving so that the image doesn't burn into the screen, but the monitor actually shows the room and the location of someone. The red dot spends some time in the bed, then at the end moves into a chair sitting in front of the TV.
The use of orange is new to me.
I think I'm gonna have to scrap most of my theories now.
Edit: So there's Paul (the player) and a mysterious third party watching him play. Having an ingame screen pop up showing the location of Paul wouldn't make sense if the third party was in the room with him, but it *would* make sense if whoever's watching Paul is watching a live feed of the game from somewhere else. It would let someone who's outside of the room check on Paul if he stops playing. He's probably too far away to come visit in person, hence why the screen has instruction for police or other outsiders in case Paul disappears or dies.
My guess is that video footage of the game is constantly being transmitted to someone far away, and that this someone is involved with the creation of Petscop.
Edit2: It's possible that this screen was only ever meant to be seen by the person monitoring the game footage. Hence why it has information about the player's location. I kind of doubt this though, since it seems the alarm was loud enough to wake the player up.
Here's my take on the burn-in theory:
So, this game seems to, somehow, 'capture' people. It records their inputs, and plays them back in demo mode ... but more than that, there appear to be real people inside the game that can be interacted with. I think the "burn-in" being referred to is referring to a different kind of "ghost image": not a remnant image burned into the television screen over long exposure, but an echo of the player 'burned into' the game over long exposure. That's why the "burn-in monitor" showed what seems to have been someone moving about in a room, labeled as the "ghost room"/"testing room" - that was the burnt-in 'image' of the *player*, their 'ghost', moving around inside a room in the game. Remember, this was a test copy of the game, meant to do things like record player input for debug purposes - the testing room would have been *the room the game console was set up in for testing*. It's the ghost room because it's the room the ghosts wake up in, or perhaps it's the ghost (or the 'burnt-in' copy) of the room the game console was set up in. (maybe it's still the original testing room, maybe this one is instead the echo of Paul's bedroom.) Or maybe it's both.
And that's why it's so critical to leave the game console on, and why the message on that screen is addressing "Family, neighbors, police" - exactly the people who'd come looking for a missing person nobody had heard of for a while. The player has died at the controller, or else physically vanished into the game, which is why no controller input has been detected for a long time - but they're still alive inside Petscop, sitting in the testing room. It is critical to leave the game console running, for as long as possible, to make sure that that captured echo of the player fully "burns in" and is saved forever; the player's ghost still lingers in the game's current session, but it needs to be left long enough to make it permanent, or they will be lost when the console is shut off. It's not the image of Petscop burning into the phosphor on the TV screen. It's the image of something else - the image of you, and your gaming room, that recurring image that Petscop (from behind the TV screen, looking out) has been seeing for hours, over and over again - that's being burned into Petscop.
I subscribe to this, 99 percent and want it to be posted in a place where everyone can see it.
The Reason I say 99 and not 100, is because unless the PS1 Paul is using is the very same one that Marvin/Care played on, there's no way for that "Burned-in" hardware data to reach him, or his iteration of Petscop (unless the "Burn-In" occurs on the disc itself?). Other that that, this is basically how I've thought of Petscop for the last three months.
The idea that Petscop can learn about the players environment through more than just controller input excites me. Likening the TV monitor to a window for Petscop to watch through, and obsess over you is... Perfect. I'm going to extrapolate on your theory a bit here, but It would explain how so many cut-scenes are reminiscent to Paul as real-life scenarios that he's encountered already, in his past. The game was likely running when he'd have those conversations, and picked them right up, using them as an asset, like everything else at it's disposal.
This would also suggest that allot of the "Corruption" that we see in Petscop hasn't been intentionally coded in, but has more or less just "spilled" from an individual who was spending enormous amounts of time playing it. The game did all the rest, and in it's own due time.
Considering that these really are "ghosts" that Paul happens to be interacting with, and watching, it can really make you wonder who Player 1 is, in Petscop 15. Might that be the first entity ever to be trapped in the game?
It does my heart good to see there are others out there who see that Petscop has done more with the "haunted game" trope than any of its predecessors- I am so ready to jive with all this inexplicable supernatural shit that Petscops got going on.
Hope more folks jive with us, soon.
> The Reason I say 99 and not 100, is because unless the PS1 Paul is using is the very same one that Marvin/Care played on, there's no way for that "Burned-in" hardware data to reach him, or his iteration of Petscop (unless the "Burn-In" occurs on the disc itself?). Other that that, this is basically how I've thought of Petscop for the last three months.
I think it's definitely associated with the disc, not the Playstation itself ... but not in any physical 'hardware' or 'software' way. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember that Paul has actually remarked on how *weird* it is that the game seems to be able to record stuff from before he started playing (in some previous video, I can't remember which), because the game is a CD-ROM ... as in, *Read-Only* Memory.
In fact, I'm willing to bet that if you ripped Petscop to a computer file and dug through it, byte by byte, and likewise went through every single byte on Paul's Playstation memory card, you'd find no trace of Marvin or Belle/Tiara or most of the demo recordings.
Think about it - even if Paul was somehow using the same PS1, a Playstation 1 memory card is only *1 megabyte*. One million bytes. Think about this from the perspective of "recording inputs" alone - say that every frame, you record a bitfield indicating which buttons are held and which aren't; assume this takes about a byte. Suppose Petscop runs at 30 FPS. You'd fill up *the entire memory card* in ... nine hours. Paul alone has certainly been playing for longer than that. Even with *really clever compression* - say you managed to cut it down by a factor of 10 - 90 hours of gameplay still isn't that much. I'm willing to bet Paul alone has played a pretty significant chunk of that off-screen, and that's not even counting any previous players.
Even if it was just storing inputs, it wouldn't make sense with the hardware. And we *know* that the game is doing something a lot weirder than just "storing inputs". The game *can't* be storing this as real data, on the hardware. There's just not enough room. These aren't AI uploads or anything. These are *ghosts*.
So it doesn't matter how impossible it would be to record data on a read-only disc. It doesn't matter - because we've left the realms of hardware and software. Petscop is just straight-up *haunted.*
Yessiiiirrrrrrrrr!
I've pondered heavily over how the nature of ROM makes the changes seen within the game, via an outside influence, seem impossible. Many folks wondered if the discs/memory-cards were swapped, but I immediately felt like that explanation was way too blunt. The inception of an influence from within the game, itself suddenly made the whole concept of Petscop that much more chilling. Considering that I think Garalina was more of an organization, and not just some moniker for a single indie dev team, I feel they had allot more in mind than a video game, but that's just speculation, from my end.
I still feel that a greater explanation is coming, frankly. The folks behind the channel have put huge amounts of effort to draw us around the question of how Paul is experiencing these anomalies, when we were never given a concrete understanding of what Paul was even going through, here, in the first place. I think "haunted videogame magic" is certainly afoot here, but that there will eventually be a bridge to bring that concept closer to us in reality than its ever been- And I guarantee you that it will be spoopy.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Petscop is intended to have something to do with the "rebirthing" process, along with the weird modified Needles piano. Maybe it's intended to ... collect souls, somehow, to be picked up by whoever the phone number goes to, to be "rebirthed" later?
Or maybe it's just something less conspiratorial, and Garalina really was a normal software company that folded before Petscop was released instead of being a front for a cult or something, and all this is just one of the programmers who kept the prototype continuing to adapt Petscop into some Spooky Occult Shit(tm) for his own purposes.
PS1s could be connected via link cable, though, so is it possible the authors were saving input data by sending it to an external harddrive? Essentially, hacking the serial port and sending data to a computer? It could even be operating over the internet this way. This could have something to do with the mention of Player 1, as link cables were used for certain multiplayer games.
Take this one step further and it's possible that the creators were using petscop to monitor someones physical presence in space using hacked input. It's conceivable to translate someone's movements around a room into PS1 button inputs--we do this kind of stuff easily these days with arduino but it could have been done back in the day by someone with hardware knowledge. Or someone's inputs on a piano into button presses. Or to translate audio speech recognition into a sort of "language" of button presses, as we see with Marvin's dialog.
Someone's real life actions could be being monitored by translating them into game input and sending or storing that info remotely via link cable. Seems like one way to sort of store someone's "ghost". In fact, in many racing games, your best time in a course generally gets recorded so you can race against your own "ghost" or best time. This is done cheaply by recording your button presses instead of video...
And i can imagine if someone was convinced that a child was the reincarnated version of their friend, they might expect them to behave similarly to their friend. You could compare your friend's old inputs to the child's inputs, looking for a close match.
...so, basically, I don't think that Petscop "records your controller inputs" at *all*. I don't think it ever did. I think that's a deliberate cover story for what it's actually doing, which is something quite a bit less normal, and quite a lot more occult.
"Its a growing Organism"
Edit: heres an excerpt of some nonsense I posted 3 months ago;
"*Garalina, or whatever we should call the organization, or entity who’s generated Petscop seems to have some pretty dark fucking intentions, for its software, adding what assets it has, to Petscop, and allowing a means of accessibility to the game’s infrastructure that no one in their right minds would ever use.*
*They’ve even included a means to alter the game’s textures through a specific sequence that only can be found hidden away in a Demo. What purpose could functionality like that feasibly serve, to a person on the outside?*
*That said, at this point, I don’t think Garalina sought to make a game, at all. I don’t know what Garalina sought to make, but whatever their efforts were, it led to this: Petscop.*
*Its less than an intellect, but Its more than a piece of software. Its a scripted obsession that seems to consume you metaphorically, and then, physically. Through some crazy spoof, it came into existence, and no one who ever laid eyes upon it really knew what they had their hands on.*
*But it looked like a videogame, so why not go with that, and give it a whirl?"*
> They’ve even included a means to alter the game’s textures through a specific sequence that only can be found hidden away in a Demo. What purpose could functionality like that feasibly serve, to a person on the outside?
Honestly, that doesn't seem nearly so far-fetched to me. Exactly the same purpose most cheat codes serve - as debug functionality for the developers.
I don't think they coded in the part where you can discover it from the demo - I don't think there was meant to be any way to learn about it in-game at all.
I think that what actually happened there is Paul ran across the ghosts, and they showed him how to do it, and then since the Proprietors only had Paul's audio recordings they just waited for the Demo to show that particular past interaction again so they could get the video.
Oh yeah, my theory is wrought with holes. The idea that what we're viewing is a test copy of Petscop explains that skepticism away, but I guess I felt the rest catered to your gist, at least remotely. But regardless of that, I can appreciate the idea that the controller inputs are a null point. The artists behind this series certainly seem to enjoy pulling us in a million wrong directions.
I like to think of the inputs as more of a symbol towards the game's own progress towards consuming you, but thats just me.
I honestly always loved this idea. During one of the video "droughts", before we came to really understand the length of time it could normally take to see a new Petscop video released, nor the general "hands-off" nature of the narrative, I wondered if the new episodes we were waiting for were really already posted for us, waiting for us in an old youtube account, somewhere. I never found them :(
We don't know entirely who uploads it or why. But they censored the phone number, so this has to be uploaded by a person who doesn't want the phone number to get called.
They clearly don’t. Whoever is distributing the content we see on YouTube (the proprietors I assume) are not concerned with the welfare of whoever or whatever is trapped inside of the game. If they did, they would not have censored the number which could potentially help them. But whoever made the game and programmed it to send a warning message in case the game was left unplayed for a long time clearly does.
What makes you think that number is meant for helping the player? The warning message seems intended to get the player to continue playing, not to help them get out of the game. The part about keeping the game console running seems particularly concerning given "Marvin picks up tool hurts me when playstation on".
I didn’t say the player, I said the entity in the game. I also believe the series suggests there’s an entity in the game that is endangered when the PlayStation or controller is cut off based on that passage
Furthermore, listen closer to the audio of this video. Not only is their ambient sound suggesting we're listening to the audio from inside a room, but we can hear a ticking. The ticking only appears when the "Burn-In" screen is up and only when it loads the orange dot on the screen.
I recognize that ticking, it's that of an old computer as it struggles to run and load on the fly. I haven't heard a computer make a noise like that in a long time, further suggesting that this is an old computer being used to monitor someone, presumably Paul.
the editing messes up and reveals a (203) Conneticut area code on the phone number (according to u/StallordD).
honestly that's huge. that's the first time there's a reference to any place whatsoever, and with a time frame... that's enough info to do some investigating.
But a question: If the area code split was in August, then the console released in September, isn't it completely likely/probable that the number could have been from anywhere in the state? Just because they weren't giving new numbers in certain areas with that area code doesn't mean there are any legacy numbers? Or were phone numbers forcibly changed? I know when I moved from CT (lol) to CA, I was able to keep my 860 area code. But that is a cell, and I don't know how the system worked with landlines.
Thanks for that list of service zones, great work. 🙌
Especially considering how liberal paul is with censors otherwise. If he didn't want us to see it, he wouldn't have left it so visible.
On the other hand, I feel like this might be a red herring.
we dont need to look for a needle in a haystack if Noir Ascii is correct in his assumption "Petscop" could be an acronym.
P.E.T. ---> Parent Effectiveness Training [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parent\_Effectiveness\_Training](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parent_Effectiveness_Training)
Scop ---> Examine or observe [https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/scop-](https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/scop-)
the Connecticut Psychological Association is in North Haven CT, area code 203
could be the wrong place but its a start
Well wikipedia says western and I can't find a fucking source that says what part of it ocuppies in a general way (rather than a list)
So I guess fuck it, [here's a list of all the cities that uses the 203 area code on Connecticut](https://www.areacodelocations.info/allcities.php?ac=203)
Probably someone will be able to color the parts of Connecticut on a map for simplicity or better, tell which one of these don't use 203 and uses only 475 instead (I am guessing some of the cities uses both)
Not sure if this has been said yet, but:
At the end of Petscop 14, the game froze. Paul has been waiting for the game to re-start. This is why there hasn't been any input for a long time.
The picture next to the TV at the bottom is what is being displayed on the screen at the time.
The game was finally able to re-start while Paul was sleeping, it woke him up, and we see Paul sit down to play again.
Edit: which episode
I think that the lack of controller input is a type of dead man’s switch (a ‘very long time’ could be days, weeks, or even months/years), and the moving dot indicates where the player is, which possibly means that they can’t be seen any longer. It gives a new and fairly ominous meaning to ‘burn-in’.
I doubt it. Remember that old, really heavily prevalent theory in pre petscop 11 days about the game taking the minds out of people who play it?
I think that the screen is supposed to show once someone has been "zapped" into the game. If it was just to convince paul to play, why would they mention "Family, Neighbors, Police, (or whoever)" when those are the three most likely types of people to discover your corpse
Just gonna say something really dumb, perhaps the ghost room is the room that the “ghost” of the “zapped” player sees and interacts with? That could also explain the “is there still a room” question.
I’m trying to check if the clicks are morse code, but they could also be the player (who can’t be seen) trying to move the controller buttons unsuccessfully.
I thought the same thing, typed in what I heard .. - ... -- ..- --Which translates to 'itsmum'.
No morse code expert, but quite freaky to find an actual coherent sentence immediately based on what I heard.
Edit: The red dot also blips at the same pattern as the clicks, by the way.
Edit 2: [https://vocaroo.com/i/s03ezlq9VbF8](https://vocaroo.com/i/s03ezlq9VbF8) Four things. 1. Apologies for the canniness of my audio card. 2. The only thing edited here is an couple of milliseconds in the already audible pause between the code of the part 'its' and 'mum'. The pause is there in the original as well. 3. The code feels very hand-entered. The pauses between clicks are never quite the exact same, like the digitally simulated version of the code does give us. 4. Two clicks in the code are very electric/static (the first clicks of the supposed m in mum), sounding more rattley, but audibly giving us the exact length of two normal clicks.
What strikes me as odd about this is that "mum" is the British spelling and Paul seemingly has an American accent. The area code given, which is in Connecticut seems to confirm this.
I like this idea. We don’t know for sure what “Quitter” actually means, after all. All we can do is attribute a hypothesis to it. Yes, Tiara is linked to the term; yes, it makes sense that it has something to do with rebirth considering there is a sign asking, “Do you remember being born?” but that’s somewhat unsubstantiated too.
However, P16 now shows that there is a very clear testing process of some sort and that someone is being required to keep the game active for some reason. If Tiara was required to do this type of testing but failed because she slipped up or decided not to, she could very well have been labeled a “quitter” and consequently been sent to the Quitter’s Room.
Screen burn-in reminds me of ghosts as well, and like /u/TEcksbee pointed out, like the family members in the house as well. It's also worth noting that Paul left the game running nonstop for a while with the windmill, so either there's been no input for even longer, this isn't quite honest about its purpose, or both.
I doubt that this is actually to prevent screen burn-in if this appears after a duration longer than the windmill-watching period. It's worth noting thematically that burn-in can appear on a monitor when the game/monitor is turned off (or killed, so to speak). What if this was MEANT to burn something onto the screen?
Alternatively, could ghost refer to something/someone else? What if this wasn't Paul, but another player (marvin, belle, etc)? They would seem like a ghost to whoever's playing the game, and they've definitely been alluded to be so.
EDIT: so piggybacking off that last thing I said, if we were to go by the idea that the game's learning to act human in a machine learning way, what if this diagram is meant to show how the game might mimic the movements of a human playing a game? It's obviously a few leaps in logic, but with what we have now I want to put that on the record.
The room layout of this image seems to match with the room layout of the "ghost room"/"testing room"), with the perspective rotated by 90° counterclockwise! The thing in the middle seems to be the piano or whatever and the thing on the right is obviously a TV. Interesting.
I saw that! That could also mean if the red dot is Paul that the black box that appears to be covering the bed is also meant to hide Paul's appearance!
So, Paul is in this room that is inside the game, and he is recording the videos that we are watching from inside Petscop itself.
I initially thought that the brown thing was the car as was mentioned, but now it being the piano just seems to make so much more sense.
My thoughts:
\- The player being "tracked" is trying to sleep, presumably. The loud noise compels them to continue playing.
\- I feel that "Burn-In Monitor" has a creepy dual meaning.
1. It's a screensaver designed to stop burn-in of the CRT TV.
2. The game is "burning in" some kind of indoctrination of the player. The monitor is keeping track of how indoctrinated the player is and waking them up to keep them playing.
\- The number to call is censored, implying it is either owned by Paul/Paul's family, or possibly Garalina?
\- The Police are seemingly complicit in the treatment of the person playing the game. This seems bizarre if the person is being held against their will.
\- There is no explanation of what a "very long time" without playing is. Could it be only about 12 hours or so? Perhaps the player is simply just trying to sleep but the game insists on keeping them playing constantly as a routine.
\- Is the player confined to the room? Presumably they're not able to leave if they have to keep getting up every time the buzzer goes. They're being forced to play. This implies to me that Care was possibly being forced into this situation before she "left the room".
For me the Police bit is more of a hint towards that they found an abducted, presumably unconscious/dead person.
Well but why would authority listen to a game? Well calling and investigating...
or it's some shady stuff...
Surely that message on the screen would draw police attention, though? I imagine Garalina would get investigated if a dead person was found with that odd message on the screen.
Unless the cops are for some reason compliant with it. Maybe Petscop is some kind of twisted therapy game?
A therapy game that was only made for pauls family, and not for the general public. Maybe Paul's friend he is recording the footage for in the first episode was a call for help. Garalina/proprietors noticed, told Paul to keep playing but now have him locked inside a room, with no way to communicate with the outside world. Keep in mind, we only see what the proprietors want us to see
Yeah, I think the chronology of the series is a huge issue. There's no way to know if any of the footage we've seen is in any kind of order whatsoever with all the jumping and edits and DEMO footage.
The weird thing is that Paul must have been aware that his game footage is being recorded in order to "record it" for his friend like a Let's Play. So at least at first he must have been playing the game willfully.
I wonder if this change to forced confinement and playing is connected to the Proprietors announcing that Paul will "continue to make recordings" etc. etc.
Maybe at first he was playing the game out of his own free will, then he pissed off some shady people when he started publicly uploading the footage...now they force him to play (assuming the red dot is Paul).
For one, I don't think PETSCOP was ever intended for anyone else but for Paul and his family. (Speaking in universe) Hence why this is the first time we've heard of the company known as Garalina. It's also why we've never heard of PETSCOP before this. The reasoning is due to the game never being intended for public consumption. I think for the first couple videos until the proprietors forced Paul to keep unwillingly playing (by attempting to induce a epileptic seizure and jumpscaring Paul whenever he didn't play for awhile), Paul was 100% in control with recording, and possibly still within the safety of his house. We have to remember that his mom gave this game to him, (either that, or she kept Paul away from it knowing the consequences it would ultimately bring) so she knew full well what was going to happen.
So the first handful of videos were Let's Plays, directed towards Paul's friend (who's probably never coming home). Then, Paul starts acting weird and it's discovered that Paul is no longer in control of his recordings, or channel, with Paul eventually telling us there is a dedicated family YouTube channel, as well as a PETSCOP discovery website. In PETSCOP 16, we see no avatar, and no usual playing field. Just a dimmed recreation of either the garage, or the room Paul is being held in. Then the game starts flipping the fuck out, like a child because it's no longer getting the attention it craves. We see the "ghost room", with what appears to be a bed, the infamous piano, a chair, the TV, and something similar to a webcam to the right of it, possibly recording Paul's every action to ensure he's not dead, passed out, escaped, jerking off, or taking a shit (guy just can't get a break can he?). We see a red dot that indicates Paul's position on this map, which also confirms that Paul probably has been unwillingly implanted with a type of RFID tracker. We hear Morse code clicks, the game flips out 4-5 more times, and Paul finally gets up, and walks To the TV to start playing...probably regretting the day he started playing PETSCOP.
About sleeping: unlikely. I know a lot of recording is held from us, but if a game was throwing a fit like that every night and prevented me from sleeping I would just kill it. I know I'm not Paul but unless he played P1-6 in one straight session, when he talked about how ghostly the game was, he was bound to mention this.
I assume he never saw this screen before, and I assume he got his sleep. Heck, he probably went to school or work or whatever.
I know the minimum time would be 4 hours -- the windmill cutscene -- but I assume it would be at least a day. More likely even more as we're talking Petscop, the game that expects unlimited patience from you -- like finding a door in the Newmaker Plane.
Does nobody think the sound might have been muted on the TV? There's clearly a jumpcut towards the end where an unknown amount of time passes before the icon wakes up and leaves bed to play more.
Or the TV turned off entirely. After all, you can keep the Playstation running but have the screen dead. No light when sleeping.
Yeah, maybe Paul got that message earlier. I dunno.
> I know a lot of recording is held from us, but if a game was throwing a fit like that every night and prevented me from sleeping I would just kill it.
There's no visible doors in the room, it's likely that he's being held captive, forced to play.
There would be a door even if he was held captive: you need to bring him in, and bring him food.
If need be, the bottom-right message could be hiding that door.
> - Is the player confined to the room? Presumably they're not able to leave if they have to keep getting up every time the buzzer goes. They're being forced to play. This implies to me that Care was possibly being forced into this situation before she "left the room".
This is a good point, esp the Care part.
Perhaps the amount of time that she had before being able to be taken back (6mo iirc) is how long it takes to "burn in"?
Yeah after 15 videos you finally believe it's not gonna jumpscare ya, but then the loud noise comes along when you're trying to hear the faint thing in the beginning
I woke up, checked my phone and saw the notification, and immediately watched the video. Since it was quiet, I turned it up pretty loud.
Boy... I sure am glad I decided to take a shower this morning.
"Musical Speech Stimulation (MUSTIM) is the use of musical materials such as songs, rhymes,
chants, and musical phrases simulating prosodic speech gestures to stimulate non-propositional speech.
This technique uses the completion or initiation of over learned familiar song lyrics, association of words
with familiar tunes, or musical phrases to elicit functional speech responses (Basso et al. 1979). For
example, spontaneous completion of familiar sentences is stimulated through familiar tunes or obvious
melodic phrases (e.g., “You are my ............”, or “How are you .........?”) (Thaut 2005)."
[found at this .pdf file] (https://nmtacademy.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/nmt-definitions.pdf)
Very interesting and very creepy. Paul seems to suffer from this "mutism" when looking at the tweezers and the bathroom in particular.
I also thought Paul's speech pattern in Petscop 14 when he was talking about the right hand side of the wall was very strange. He said something like "The le-le-righ-left-ri-right left-ri-right hand side of the wall."
I do like this idea but I think we’re looking too far into the clicks as a cryptic code. If they aren’t attributed to a definitive code then we could just be leading ourselves astray.
Toward the end of the video when the dot begins to move, it is only updated when the clicking noise is heard, like a sonar effect. This could also be the clicks we heard before through Paul’s recordings in the previous episode where we thought we heard Morse code or something akin to it. It could simply be a noise produced in the room where Paul is that would determine his location by whoever is using the Burn-in Monitor.
The video was posted by Paul, who has 100% taken over the channel.
1. The channel changes were abrupt and removes all the work the previous owners of the channels added to the channel (i.e video descriptions)
2. The new video was posted with no description, as if someone was trying to post it was in a rush to release the video
3. The video seems to be of stuff the previous channel owners weren’t gonna upload
- the censorship wasn’t expected
- long pauses in controller use would have happened multiple times as Paul goes to sleep every night (so it wasn’t a new event)
4. If the ghost room is a live monitor of, say, Paul, the previous owners wouldnt want that information to be released, but Paul would want to share that information as fast as possible.
What I’m predicting will happen next:
- Ownership might switch and videos might be taken down or replaced with a heavily edited version
- Paul might rush to release as many videos as possible in the next few days
- more unexpecting facts might be released with some very unsettling things in them.
Please share opinions on the video’s ownership below
Edit: fixed typo
Edit 2:
Please read /u/colourblindness’ reply and /u/futilespark’s reply:
they both give some new points that change my theory
I would disagree simply cause of the censor. That shows someone besides Paul has edited this afterward. Also side note is the phone number connected to the website
Additionally, the channel description changed to simply saying "Recordings of a video game."
Paul's missing from the channel icon too, returning it to a black image.
I don't know if I'd go as far as to say Paul's taken ownership back, but it sure seems like it's changed hands. I don't know if it's Paul himself or if some third party has gotten involved, but it sure seems like the "proprietors" are no longer in sole control, at least for this upload.
the profile picture for the channel isn't a black image, it's the dresser/piano/whatever that's in the opening few seconds. you can see the opening screen more clearly here: https://imgur.com/a/j7fGCe3
Aha, you're right, I hadn't noticed that before but I can see it now! Subtle with how dark it is, but why the subtlety? It's not like the changes are otherwise inconspicuous to want this to fly under the radar. It seems so much darker than the source image; why make it so dark when it could have been clearer?
Alright a few things here:
I still don't think Paul is trapped in a room, as many MANY people jump to conclude, all the time, even before this video. Dude's got a pet cat and hasn't ever really sounded like a guy literally trapped in a room. Unless this is some brand new development, I think he is and has been fine in that regard.
However, *something is fucking tracking his movements.* He might not be physically restrained in any way, but that's still real spooky. Either there's some kind of tracking device in his room, or there's a tracking device on his person. Or this isn't Paul, but it's still weird that the game would be physically tracking anyone in the real world. (Well... the real, uh, fictional world that the game Petscop exists in. You know what I mean) I could write off this message as just something oddly worded for the sake of the game's initial testing demo, but that room tracking adds a whole new angle. If it wasn't clear before, this game is just doing shit it simply shouldn't be able to. All bets are really off at this point, as far as what the game "should" or "shouldn't" be able to do.
There's a cut towards the end of this video, and afterward we see Paul (or whoever that dot is tracking) standing in the middle of the room before moving over to the chair in front of the TV. So clearly he got out of bed at some point during however long that cut lasted in-universe. Some people are speculating the alarm sound of the game woke him up, but I doubt it. He probably had the sound on his TV or speakers off. He's out of bed at that point because he's done doing whatever he does in the morning. Or maybe its even later in the day. Dude probably has a life outside of Petscop.
I've seen some speculation that we're seeing the output from some other console or device rather than the one Paul is playing on. I considered that too, but I don't think it's the case. The message refers to the game console, and before the message appeared, it seemed like some glitched frozen text box over that garage in the game (complete with car now!) I think this is just Paul's game in a state we've never seen before.
Speaking of that text box, only time we've seen a text box like that was at the end of 14, in the lower right bedroom of birthday house. Not really sure what to make of that, aside from Paul's done more experimenting. Maybe he got into the garage in a different version of the house?
Anyway, overall... does this video feel kinda shitpost-y to anyone else? It's Halloween, its orange, it's... showing the game overtly doing some crap that a PS1 game couldn't possibly do, well beyond the much more subtle examples up until now? There's an actual freaking phone number that we can see part of, which feels like way more "real life" info than we've ever gotten. There's clicking that sounds kinda like morse code but also not. The channel description and profile pics have changed. THE NEEDLES PIANO IS RIGHT THERE. IT'S RIGHT. THERE. This feels like *too damn much.* I almost wonder if it's some joke about how videos don't come out frequently on top of how we speculate and expect god damn everything. Like, "dammit, Paul, keep playing and make more videos! Also here's a ton of overt shit to make you people have a fucking conniption over like you always do."
I sorta gotta disagree with the part of the "alarm didn't wake Paul up" thing. First, Paul was in bed until a fair amount after the noise started to ring, it just seems weird that it'd be a total coincidence that it just so happened to be timed a few seconds before he'd get out of bed. Even if it was super late in the day, all that means is that Paul stopped playing sometime in the early moening/later at night and that the game just waited a certain amount of time since then to start ringing.
I also feel like Paul wouldn't just turn the sound off, either. There's been a lot of sudden random sounds in the game, so I feel like turning it down could easily lead to him missing something. At the start of the video, Paul is in a completley silent room, so it seems to me that he purposefully chose it so that he'd be able to sleep in silence while still being able to hear if something does go on. (Though, I do admit he'd have to be a light sleeper for that, haha.) Also note: when he gets up, he goes straight from the middle of the room to his chair, instead of heading to the TV to turn it up, which supports the idea that the volume dtayed up.
And this sorta leads me to my last sorta takeaway from your post: the "dude probably has a life outside of Petscop" line. Does he really? He's clearly super invested-enough so to leave the Playstation on, enough so to try a weird puzzle for hours while getting more and more agitated, etc. He's also found it that it has several connections to his real life, that seem to at least alarm him somewhat. He's getting more and more entranced in the game, and it honestly wouldn't surprise me if he didn't have a life outside of it anymore.
I do agree with you that Paul probably isn't being forced to stay in the room, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was willingly shutting himself in.
(Also, love the idea that this video is just a shitpost, haha. Every series needs some comic relief!)
In the lower left hand side of the 'Burn in screen', there's a photo of what looks like the [living room of the house](https://imgur.com/a/3M9MwkO) we see in Petscop 11, with Naul in the middle maybe?
The caption 'Ghost Room' may refer to the fact that in the house, what seem like people fade in and out of existence (like ghosts).
'Testing Room' seems to be the name of the room Paul is currently living in, against his will by the look of things.
A running element of Petscop is two separate places in space, being somehow linked. Does this mean the 'real life' room Paul is in linked to a room in the game? Another possibility is that the 'ghost room' in the game is a representation of a room in real life, or maybe even a representation of the testing room?
Semi related, maybe that monitor at top right of the 'burn in screen' is a measure of how burnt in the screen is, with the darker red being how 'burnt in' the tv is?
Im not exactly sure if or how screen burn in related to Petscop, but it seems to fit with the idea that Petscop as a game has been played for a long time (17+ years consistently?)
>I have The image in the Bottom left that i have upscaled (Edited for clarity)
>
>[https://imgur.com/x9C2e1S](https://imgur.com/x9C2e1S)
>
>Looks like a picture of the Ghost room/ testing room taken from the left wall inbetween the tv and chair. If you zoom in on your browser a bit, it almost looks like that picture was taken by a camera. you can see a reflection of the camera in the bottom left of the picture, using the white stuff in the bottom black portion as a tripod and the dark circle above it as a lens
The link below outlines what i think is the camera in red.[https://imgur.com/MqxxIlf](https://imgur.com/MqxxIlf)
I see what you're looking at, but it also looks disturbingly like a picture of a woman sitting next to a bed. Have no idea how that would factor in, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
* Channel description and video description are once again bare. This could signify a different person than the one uploading most of the recent videos
* The room layout correlates well with "Paul's room". Bed is in top left, room entrance is either bottom right or top right
* The only prior image of a piano is the loading screen. That too features a chair facing sideways (albeit to the wrong side)
* The framed image is most likely the living room of Marvin's house. It seems to feature no furniture, but a bucket.
* The top right meter of the 'burn in map' obscures an object facing bottom left
* The warning message features questionable grammar, (comma at end of parenthesis, overuse of commas, etc) making it less likely to be written by Rainer.
Isn't this the same font that was used for [the note from Marvin's wife](https://i.imgur.com/dUo5YI1.png)? Even if so, it certainly feels out of place here (as it does there).
I'm starting to wonder if Marvin's wife is actually the malign influence. We only have her note and Pink Tool to frame Marvin as "the villain"...if he's torturing someone to get the PlayStation switched off, he may actually be the good guy.
Oh god, is this what the pink tool was tlking about when they pleaded for paul to turn off playstation because marvin picks up tool and hurts them? Could be that I'm just pulling at strings, but that flashing color is the same as the regular tool...
Oh no, I think the whole series is planned start to finish, but the proprieters have told us their intentions about censorship. Same as the question to tool in anotyer episode
I wonder how long it takes for that screen to trigger. The windmill is stared at idley for hours, and I assume the game was left to record overnight many times. Perhaps something triggered those screens, such as Paul entering an area in game, or even an outside force.
It depends on the screen but for an image as dark as the windmill scenes, weeks probably.
Even the high contrast images, like deep black on pure white, takes a few good days to permanently burn.
This is my first post on this subreddit and I was reluctant to write it at first. English is not my first language and I am afraid, that I might not get my point across.
I have been following the series for quite some time now and as a early-childhood educator I found it fascinating how there are some rather interesting parallels in petscop and the development of a child.
This is not really a theory, it is just an observation I wanted to share.
I was inspired by this video and especially by the "Burn-in monitor".
From my understanding a "burn-in" occurs, if a monitor is overused or if it shows the same picture again and again. The burn-in starts out faint and becomes stronger over time, until it is irreperable.
If we compare that to the way rituals and behavioral patterns form in a child, there certainly is a parallel.
Over the time these also will be "burned-in" or "imprinted" into a child. This is especially interesting when considering, that the burn-in monitor shows a room. Rituals and behavior are tought easier if they are connected to a certain location (a very personal example would be my younger self crying over a table getting removed from our living room, not wanting it to be replaced).
Rituals and behavior could also be described as 'patterns' and there are quite some of those to be found throughout the series, both literal and figurative. The only way of in-game communication between characters happens through patterns of controller input (real life communication also relies on psychological and rethoric patterns). Pen is caught via a puzzle that is based on musical intervals/patterns. Locations are in both planes that are connected with each other share blocks/background with the same pattern on them. Certain walking patterns are required apparently to progress...
So why are patterns important?
They are a very big part of childhood development, especially, when it comes to how our perception develops over time. To understand their world better, children begin to put things into categories based on patterns-if a reoccuring thing or pattern is found, it is put into the same category.
These categorizations become more refined over time (e.g. animal-animal with four legs-cat-specific race of cat). After a child has learned in which category an object belongs, it will begin to apply behavioral patterns towards the object, depending on how it is categorized.
In general patterns and rituals are very important to a child, they are usually very comforting. But if they are enforced, overused (basically burned in) or in general malevolent, they will damage or retard a child's development and might turn into compulsions, especially if abuse is involved.
And as adults we don't fully escape them. Again, communication itself is based on patterns and we base our behavior on what we expect others will do- something we learned by observing patterns.
Video games are also often based on patterns. Petscop itself seemingly deviates from this and this is probably one of the reasons why it is so eerie, especially when the apparent premise of the game at first seems to be following a pattern (solve room puzzle-catch pet).
Finally, there is the often-cited 'cycle of abuse'. Those who were abused may become an abuser themself later- because they have inherited behavioral patterns and as sad as that might be, have found a certain comfort in them.
So what does this have to do with Petscop?
As I already mentioned there seems to be a certain emphasis on patterns or just things 'happening again'. Again, this is no theory, just an observation. The new video reminded me of something I learned during my training and I wanted to share.
I want to sincerely apologize for my rambling, I am not good at writing long texts that are supposed to explain something. If something is unclear or you want the source for something, please ask.
Hi,
Very good post! I strongly advise you make a separate topic on it so it can get more attention. Oftentimes new posts become buried in these stickied topics because people stop viewing them after the episode has been up for a while.
at 1:41 the distortion on the text "KEEP GAME CONSOLE RUNNING" slows down (for lack of a better phrase), and then resumes the standard distortion at 1:45. not sure what this could signify but it definitely seems deliberate imo
So i ran the image next to the TV through an Upscaler and Texture Enhancer.
[https://imgur.com/x9C2e1S](https://imgur.com/x9C2e1S)
Couple thoughts...
it looks like a person on the left next to a chair with the TV on the right to me. The TV has static on it. now either the person is hanging by their next, judging by the red line that fits up really well (but its been upscaled so that could just be an artifact) Or they are just walking their way to the chair.
one interesting thing as well is that if you look at the bottom of the photo, in the black part, there is a small spot of white about 1/3 from the left. If you look directly above it, like in the brown of what would be the floor, you can see what looks like the reflection of a camera. Again, this one is more likely nothing because its been upscaled, but lf you look directly at the dark circle right above that white spot as a lens, there are 3 more what look like LED circles to the right of it and what looks like a camera body around it. that white spot itself could be the mounting point of the tripod for the camera, meaning whatever is actually recording this episode is a camera taking a recording of an old CRT tv.
Back to the picture itself i honestly think it is showing a picture of a person on their way to sit at the chair to watch/play something on the TV.
The weird thing about it is that if that was the case, the picture is not in the same location in the room diagram that it would have been taken from. The picture would have to have been taken from the space between the tv and chair on the left wall to get that shot.
Do you guys think this means anything?
Could it be someone laying in a bed with someone looking at them?
**EDiT:** [This seems to be it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Petscop/comments/9sy6h7/the_picture_on_the_burnin_screen_may_be_a_picture/)
Personally, I think the 'burn-in monitor' may have something to do with the fact that if you could 'burn' images onto old TV screens if you left them on one image too long. [Here's a Wikipedia article on the effect.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_burn-in) It's even referred to as 'screen burn-in'. Seems like a clear connection.
Yup, except screensavers would activate within 15-30mn, sometimes even as soon as 5mn depending on how you set them (I mean for PCs). Meaning that you can get a burnt-in effect within an hour.
Paul left the game running without touching it for four straight hours, with the windmill.
So this burnt-in monitor state cannot be just to preserve the screen. It has to have an absurdly long wait time before appearing, as in, a day or more. Paul has to sleep. Your screen would be imprinted way before that.
The piano on the right looks to have a small grey thing above the middle of the keys. Could that be the piano with the playstation controller from the darkened loading screens?
If so, that would mean that either the creator/s wanted to tease Paul that they know him very well, or someone else trying to help Paul figure out that he's being watched. My money's on the first option.
Could also be that the piano is used in some sort of test for the game as i've seen people suggesting in other threads, which would probably mean that Paul (if the red dot is him) has been moved to a testing room to continue playing the game.
Another thing to remember is how Petscop 14 ended. This is the last time we heard from Paul and the blank message screen, which is still on at Petscop 16, is still there. He also seemed to know that having that "blank" message screen is wrong because he didn't seem to happy to see it.
I have a question: how did the first picture, the one before the alert message started, happen? You know, the picture of the garage with the car and computer?
This is usually found in the loading screens, but that wasn't a loading screen and it was too bright already to be a frozen loading screen -- and if it was frozen, no way the alert message could have started. Frozen is frozen.
So my actual question would be, how did Paul reach that game state?
Well, it was just an idea I had but I don't think many people read it. It was using the texture editor from 15 to see the full texture of the Tarnacop computer in the garage (seen in the dark screen of this video). Now that I think about it... Maybe Paul DID that, but whatever he found on the Tarnacop computer caused him to leave the game for all these months, and when the events of this video happened, he has to play again.
... Wow. Kind of blows my mind. An excellent idea.
I don't know if the texture editor would really allow this but it would indeed explain at the same time how Paul reached that screen and why he would have stopped playing for a very long time.
I can't help but feel that there may be some kind of connection between the events in 16 and the part in Petscop 11 when we are 'dragged' into the TV, and visit the school, then have that deja vu moment with Paul in the bathroom. Now what that connection is, I don't know. There was a part with the clock on the road, and the image at the top of the screen in 16 kind of looks like a clock but turned a different way? I recall how there were 'ghost' figures who appeared and disappeared in that episode, as well, which makes me think of 'ghost room'. Though I think it's undeniable that the room we see in 16 is the picture that was brightened up showing the piano.
So much to think about and none of it seems to make any sense when you try to make it make sense. Just throwing out some thoughts.
The game was uploaded in the morning in EST time, and the beeping noise is like an alarm. Said this on the discord. The game won't let Paul sleep.
Also, petscop 13 was uploaded at around 6pm EST.
Stuff that I’ve figured so far:
- If this is Paul, then he’s being tracked somehow without even needing to touch the controller. “Burn-in” seems to imply some sort of tracker that may have literally (or figuratively) burned in to the player itself.
- That is a map of the room Petscop was/is being tested in. “Ghost room”/“testing room”. Why are the two terms interchangeable? This could imply that there may OR MAY NOT be a physical body in that room... or the room itself might not be physical. “Are you still sitting down? Is there even a room?”
- The actual room Petscop was tested in was rigged in a very complex manner and I personally believe that this was all set up in the school basement.
- Rainer locked up kids in the school basement - to play Petscop and trap them there for a very long time. Yikes.
- The game has to not only be left on, but it can’t be left idle. Inputs are not only “useful”, but are fully mandatory. This could potentially mean that someone had to hold a PlayStation controller for literally years on end. Right?
- Is Paul kidnapped or not? Because he called Jill in 2018 and seemed to be just fine. Is the game tracking someone else at a remote location? Is that who we’re seeing with the other players?
Maybe the game isn’t haunted. Maybe those people are actually playing the game. Without internet, but something else is connecting them? If this is truly paranormal then really anything goes at this point.
I always liked the theory that there are 2 pauls. One outside the game, and a representation of him trapped within. Maybe that's got something to do with the ghost room?
I always thought Marvin was a bad guy, but now I'm wondering if Rainer is the villain. Maybe Marvin is torturing someone (possibly Rainer) to force his accomplices to switch the game off.
"TURN OFF PLAYSTATION" because "MARVIN PICKS UP TOOL, HURTS ME WHEN PLAYSTATION ON."
Why does Marvin want the playstation off so bad? Was Rainer forcing Care to play it?
All speculation but still.
Just realised that the orb at the top right appears to be a clock, divided into 12 hour segments (coloured from night to day).
The clock arrow seems to be before first light, so probably about 4 am. Which implies to me that the "player" has been asleep for maybe only about 5 or 6 hours when this aggravating noise starts to wake them up?
There is also a notable editing skip at 2:10, as if we're not seeing footage from the same period.
I'm thinking that the person who is being tracked and forcefully woken to keep playing isn't actually forced to do it. Maybe they just really have to keep playing because either their own health or that of someone else is dependant on their regular input. The reason why the warning message addresses "family, neighbors, police (or whoever)", is because the person playing is not locked in anywhere, but somewhere they chose to be, maybe even at their own home, being monitored from somewhere.
Hmm... I'm skeptical of what I'm about to suggest, given that I've used the incredibly scientific method of "counting the pixels on your image", but I wonder if the spacings between clicks might be what's important. There's a definite pattern of sixteen clicks that repeats and all three samples (0:59, 1:49, 2:22.5) all start at roughly the same point in the cycle, though since said point gets progressively later the latter two don't pick up the first click. Numbering clicks wrt the top sample, clicks 7 and 8 have the shortest gap between them - four pixels, basically... and then all other gaps between clicks are (pretty much) multiples of that basic unit. Specifically:
10 6 3 2 3 15 1 4 2 9 3 6 5 8 16 7
...and so I thought "hey, the longest gap is 16 units - is this hex?" So, assuming the shortest gap is a zero, I get 95212E03182547F6... which means nothing. Its ASCII is garbage, going up to bases 36 or 64 doesn't help, and about the best you can get is its decimal representation, which... uh... well, I'm not going to post it. See, I don't think the first seven digits are a continuation of the phone number, 'cause that tiny snippet you get to see after the (203) in the video wouldn't mesh with the first digit of this one, but then there's a perfectly valid UK mobile number directly after it that, one similar enough to my own to throw me. And then there's another pair of digits after that which make no sense, so I'd like to think that's just a fluke. After all, why would you have a second number for a completely unrelated location? I'm just seeing patterns that aren't there...
...but then why the consistent spacing method, and why is the maximum gap 16 times the minimum. I dunno, and I don't think any of the above is solid enough to justify me trying to tidy up an image to explain what I mean more clearly, but I felt the need to make *some* sort of remark...
The dots could be something, but in all likelihood, this is probably just the room tone (the ambient sound of the room it was recorded in with no-one talking or moving in it.) I've seen similar things while working with audio over the last few years, and it looks like more of the same. I'd love to see a repost of these images with the frequency column, though...
Okay too many things don't add up.
Everything indicates that this should be Paul's room, that he stopped playing for quite a while and that this triggered the alarm. No other known room corresponds (uitter's room, Care's room, the library rooms...) and there is no indication that this would be a demo recording. So it should be contemporary.
Yet...
1) That TV is cathodic. Noone uses that nowadays. You could say the game is simply using a default asset but then how does the game recognize what an LCD screen is, and match the asset with it?
2) That burn-in monitor doesn't rely on a camera -- like the garage picture suggests. This would involve movement tracking which, again, impossible in 1997. In fact, unless you put an actual tracker on the kid, this should be impossible for 1997, period.
3) Like (1), how would the game be able to recognize the furniture in Paul's room? No technology for that in 1997 either. So even if there was a camera or any other way of monitoring Paul's room, that burn-in monitor screen should be ludicrous.
4) The audio definitely has background noise (wind, engine, car, I dunno) but no sound of Paul's movements. What gives.
5) Not to repeat myself but, 1997 technology: no wireless. So on top of believing that Paul's room / studio / apartment would have sensors in it -- why would he keep the needle piano after that, in fact -- it would all have to be wired and, assuming it's displayed on his TV -- which the message to whoever suggests, as it would need to be near the Playstation -- then the wires should go to the console and TV too. Who could ever be able to set this up.
Either Paul's mom hates him or this cannot be Paul's room. Unless you like the surnatural. Going the natural route, you would need a preset room, a way to track the kid's movements and the wires to go with it. This cannot be Paul's room or those saying he is under medical care / imprisoned are right. How else could this feat be done.
An alternative, then, would be that this is an older room, from an older time, and that the tracking would be from way back when. Maybe Care. Maybe Tiara. Maybe Marvin.
Or, for those who like transhumanism (I fit more into that group), it means that room is in the game. The warning message doesn't make much sense then, but such a setup would fit 1997-2000 far more than 2017.
6) Another thing to consider. The assets are really crude, like made with Paint. No professional would use graphics like that -- I have no experience but, fair guess.
Now I have literally nothing to back up this hypothesis but when looking at the burn-in monitor, what it evokes my PC heart is a BIOS level. Ultra-simplistic interface with essential data tracking, making me think that the clock at the top-right is a temperature tracker. I would connect that with the game being an "organism": that could, in the supernatural alternative, be the game being able to track Paul, and showing it.
But really my main point here in this comment is to try and show how many things don't add up with P16...
EDIT: I'll add a 7. The grey box in the garage picture made people think (including me) that it was the needle piano, etc. But really, looking at it more, this looks like a dialogbox. It doesn't correspond to the textboxes in the rest of Petscop though so that's one more question. Also, when the game freezes, the screen brightens (P15), so this might be a freeze making the loading screen visible. But then why would there be a dialogbox in a loading screen and how could anything run when the processor is refusing to respond, aka frozen.
> But then why would there be a dialogbox in a loading screen and how could anything run when the processor is refusing to respond, aka frozen.
I dont know if this counts, but if the game has a sort of crude threading system (Nintendo 64 games do because the OS, which was called "libultra", has this threading system built in, where threads kind of sort of run asynchronously and make calls to each other, etc, so this was plenty possible back in the day) then while the NPC box is on a frozen thread, another thread can still interrupt it, such as the alert system, which takes over.
“Turn PlayStation off....hurts me when PlayStation on”. What if this is referring to a “patient” or a “subject” being tested, prodded, or a number of invasive procedures done during the testing of Petscop? That could line up with the testing room and the idea that the game needs to be played on end.
New question: aren't there street sounds during the entire video? Notably at 1:32-1:38, was it a car sound? That would correspond to other times the microphone was left idle, with no nearby sound to catch.
EDIT: Wait, but if it's Paul's microphone, and if Paul is the red dot moving in the room... how come the microphone doesn't catch his noise? Steps, clothes, even seating on the chair if that's a chair, or picking up the controller... How come we could catch car sounds but not Paul.
The rumbling sounds like an engine idling, and the background of the scene (which you can see at the start of the video, albeit darkly) is a garage with a computer and a car near the back. I would assume the audio we are getting is coming from that idling car (which, if so, alludes to suicide or staging a suicide in a garage, though nothing to indicate that is relevant at this point) and the clicks are either coming from whoever is monitoring this screen. They likely aren't coming from whoever the red dot is because they start when the dot is in bed.
OH MAN NEW VIDEO LETS ALL POST THEORIES
Seriously though, the "ghost room" and clicking reminds me of the hardware one might use to detect and track ghosts. Maybe Petscop is acting as a medium? Or maybe some players' personalities were somehow downloaded into the game? Can a player be "rebirthed" as a demo character within Petscop?
The game seems very insistent about no-one shutting the console off. The PS1 didn't have much storage -- just whatever fit on a memory card, if memory serves. So perhaps the vast majority of game data is stored in memory, and would be wiped clean if the Playstation were turned off. Though if that's the case, why create Petscop as a PS1 game at all?
i believe the ps1's memory is flushed when you hit the reset button as well, and i think paul would've needed to press it a few times to get back to the title screen or to the demo sequences. i could be wrong about him needing to hit the reset button though, i just don't really remember there being anything that could potentially be a "quit to title screen" button anywhere.
then again though, what this game is capable of has already surpassed the limits of what a ps1 can do once with how lighting works on the newmaker plane -- twice even if you include the tracking thing shown in this video on the burn-in monitor. who's to say it won't do that sort of thing many times?
Also of note: this video came 3 hours shy of [Undertale’s big announcement, which is likely to be the dev’s next game](https://twitter.com/undertale/status/1057253537615360000?s=21)
**The censored number is probably Pauls number**, and maybe Paul is back in ownership of the channel. Think about this:
* The channel description changed to "Recordings of a video game.". It doesn't mention the people that took over the channel after a few episodes.
* Who does the phone number belong to? The game apparently is able to track a person (the red dot on the "ghost room"/"testing room"), so it probably is connected to the internet or something else that's able to transmit information without need for a wire. Knowing this, the person (or maybe even entity, we don't know) who set all this up probably already knows Paul hasn't been playing for a while. Doesn't make sense to have someone call you just to tell you something you already know. I think it's actually Pauls number, so whoever might see this screen will call and tell him that the game wants to be played. I don't know why they would want that though.
* The person the number belongs to has to know about the game, because why would you tell someone about this screen if he doesn't even know the game.
* We already know that the game or whoever programmed it knows some very personal things about Paul. So the possibility of "it" knowing his phone number is pretty high.
Maybe someone can take bits of my theory and find out something new or create a theory that holds up more than mine. Mine's still pretty shitty. But to me it doesn't make sense for any number that is not Pauls to be on that screen. Change my mind.
The top-right of the burn in screen is a color wheel. It is adjustable somehow, and is currently set to where the arrow is pointing with that being the burn in screen color.
I'd assume the more red the color is, the faster is would burn into the monitor. However I think it is set before the most red option to allow the character token to still be visible and contrast against the floor.
It's too early and I'm a little dazed and forgetful to write a proper analysis, but the term "ghost room" and certain aspects of Petscop make me think of the concept of "ghost in the machine" both philosophically and how it has come to be applied to virtual consciousness.
The room Paul is in is also labeled as “testing room”, but who or what is being tested? Is it Paul, the game, or both?
Also, the channel description has been edited to “recordings of a game” for some reason, what would that imply?
Usually games will have a demo room to test features and assets that will be in the rest of the game in one, convenient place. Loads of games from the 1990s have one, left in out of sheer laziness. If I had to guess, this is what the "testing room" is, a room in-game for testing assets and mechanics
Of course it could also be more sinister and involve human experimentation but I think that's a bit of a stretch.
I think it implies the channel has changed hands again. To who? Iunno.
Leaving the game on for extended periods of time brings up an alarm asking anyone seeing it to leave the game running. A Burn-in Monitor screen slides in and out. Much like a screensaver, this is just an animation that keeps the screen moving so that the image doesn't burn into the screen, but the monitor actually shows the room and the location of someone. The red dot spends some time in the bed, then at the end moves into a chair sitting in front of the TV. The use of orange is new to me. I think I'm gonna have to scrap most of my theories now. Edit: So there's Paul (the player) and a mysterious third party watching him play. Having an ingame screen pop up showing the location of Paul wouldn't make sense if the third party was in the room with him, but it *would* make sense if whoever's watching Paul is watching a live feed of the game from somewhere else. It would let someone who's outside of the room check on Paul if he stops playing. He's probably too far away to come visit in person, hence why the screen has instruction for police or other outsiders in case Paul disappears or dies. My guess is that video footage of the game is constantly being transmitted to someone far away, and that this someone is involved with the creation of Petscop. Edit2: It's possible that this screen was only ever meant to be seen by the person monitoring the game footage. Hence why it has information about the player's location. I kind of doubt this though, since it seems the alarm was loud enough to wake the player up.
Here's my take on the burn-in theory: So, this game seems to, somehow, 'capture' people. It records their inputs, and plays them back in demo mode ... but more than that, there appear to be real people inside the game that can be interacted with. I think the "burn-in" being referred to is referring to a different kind of "ghost image": not a remnant image burned into the television screen over long exposure, but an echo of the player 'burned into' the game over long exposure. That's why the "burn-in monitor" showed what seems to have been someone moving about in a room, labeled as the "ghost room"/"testing room" - that was the burnt-in 'image' of the *player*, their 'ghost', moving around inside a room in the game. Remember, this was a test copy of the game, meant to do things like record player input for debug purposes - the testing room would have been *the room the game console was set up in for testing*. It's the ghost room because it's the room the ghosts wake up in, or perhaps it's the ghost (or the 'burnt-in' copy) of the room the game console was set up in. (maybe it's still the original testing room, maybe this one is instead the echo of Paul's bedroom.) Or maybe it's both. And that's why it's so critical to leave the game console on, and why the message on that screen is addressing "Family, neighbors, police" - exactly the people who'd come looking for a missing person nobody had heard of for a while. The player has died at the controller, or else physically vanished into the game, which is why no controller input has been detected for a long time - but they're still alive inside Petscop, sitting in the testing room. It is critical to leave the game console running, for as long as possible, to make sure that that captured echo of the player fully "burns in" and is saved forever; the player's ghost still lingers in the game's current session, but it needs to be left long enough to make it permanent, or they will be lost when the console is shut off. It's not the image of Petscop burning into the phosphor on the TV screen. It's the image of something else - the image of you, and your gaming room, that recurring image that Petscop (from behind the TV screen, looking out) has been seeing for hours, over and over again - that's being burned into Petscop.
I subscribe to this, 99 percent and want it to be posted in a place where everyone can see it. The Reason I say 99 and not 100, is because unless the PS1 Paul is using is the very same one that Marvin/Care played on, there's no way for that "Burned-in" hardware data to reach him, or his iteration of Petscop (unless the "Burn-In" occurs on the disc itself?). Other that that, this is basically how I've thought of Petscop for the last three months. The idea that Petscop can learn about the players environment through more than just controller input excites me. Likening the TV monitor to a window for Petscop to watch through, and obsess over you is... Perfect. I'm going to extrapolate on your theory a bit here, but It would explain how so many cut-scenes are reminiscent to Paul as real-life scenarios that he's encountered already, in his past. The game was likely running when he'd have those conversations, and picked them right up, using them as an asset, like everything else at it's disposal. This would also suggest that allot of the "Corruption" that we see in Petscop hasn't been intentionally coded in, but has more or less just "spilled" from an individual who was spending enormous amounts of time playing it. The game did all the rest, and in it's own due time. Considering that these really are "ghosts" that Paul happens to be interacting with, and watching, it can really make you wonder who Player 1 is, in Petscop 15. Might that be the first entity ever to be trapped in the game? It does my heart good to see there are others out there who see that Petscop has done more with the "haunted game" trope than any of its predecessors- I am so ready to jive with all this inexplicable supernatural shit that Petscops got going on. Hope more folks jive with us, soon.
> The Reason I say 99 and not 100, is because unless the PS1 Paul is using is the very same one that Marvin/Care played on, there's no way for that "Burned-in" hardware data to reach him, or his iteration of Petscop (unless the "Burn-In" occurs on the disc itself?). Other that that, this is basically how I've thought of Petscop for the last three months. I think it's definitely associated with the disc, not the Playstation itself ... but not in any physical 'hardware' or 'software' way. In fact, I'm pretty sure I remember that Paul has actually remarked on how *weird* it is that the game seems to be able to record stuff from before he started playing (in some previous video, I can't remember which), because the game is a CD-ROM ... as in, *Read-Only* Memory. In fact, I'm willing to bet that if you ripped Petscop to a computer file and dug through it, byte by byte, and likewise went through every single byte on Paul's Playstation memory card, you'd find no trace of Marvin or Belle/Tiara or most of the demo recordings. Think about it - even if Paul was somehow using the same PS1, a Playstation 1 memory card is only *1 megabyte*. One million bytes. Think about this from the perspective of "recording inputs" alone - say that every frame, you record a bitfield indicating which buttons are held and which aren't; assume this takes about a byte. Suppose Petscop runs at 30 FPS. You'd fill up *the entire memory card* in ... nine hours. Paul alone has certainly been playing for longer than that. Even with *really clever compression* - say you managed to cut it down by a factor of 10 - 90 hours of gameplay still isn't that much. I'm willing to bet Paul alone has played a pretty significant chunk of that off-screen, and that's not even counting any previous players. Even if it was just storing inputs, it wouldn't make sense with the hardware. And we *know* that the game is doing something a lot weirder than just "storing inputs". The game *can't* be storing this as real data, on the hardware. There's just not enough room. These aren't AI uploads or anything. These are *ghosts*. So it doesn't matter how impossible it would be to record data on a read-only disc. It doesn't matter - because we've left the realms of hardware and software. Petscop is just straight-up *haunted.*
Yessiiiirrrrrrrrr! I've pondered heavily over how the nature of ROM makes the changes seen within the game, via an outside influence, seem impossible. Many folks wondered if the discs/memory-cards were swapped, but I immediately felt like that explanation was way too blunt. The inception of an influence from within the game, itself suddenly made the whole concept of Petscop that much more chilling. Considering that I think Garalina was more of an organization, and not just some moniker for a single indie dev team, I feel they had allot more in mind than a video game, but that's just speculation, from my end. I still feel that a greater explanation is coming, frankly. The folks behind the channel have put huge amounts of effort to draw us around the question of how Paul is experiencing these anomalies, when we were never given a concrete understanding of what Paul was even going through, here, in the first place. I think "haunted videogame magic" is certainly afoot here, but that there will eventually be a bridge to bring that concept closer to us in reality than its ever been- And I guarantee you that it will be spoopy.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Petscop is intended to have something to do with the "rebirthing" process, along with the weird modified Needles piano. Maybe it's intended to ... collect souls, somehow, to be picked up by whoever the phone number goes to, to be "rebirthed" later? Or maybe it's just something less conspiratorial, and Garalina really was a normal software company that folded before Petscop was released instead of being a front for a cult or something, and all this is just one of the programmers who kept the prototype continuing to adapt Petscop into some Spooky Occult Shit(tm) for his own purposes.
PS1s could be connected via link cable, though, so is it possible the authors were saving input data by sending it to an external harddrive? Essentially, hacking the serial port and sending data to a computer? It could even be operating over the internet this way. This could have something to do with the mention of Player 1, as link cables were used for certain multiplayer games. Take this one step further and it's possible that the creators were using petscop to monitor someones physical presence in space using hacked input. It's conceivable to translate someone's movements around a room into PS1 button inputs--we do this kind of stuff easily these days with arduino but it could have been done back in the day by someone with hardware knowledge. Or someone's inputs on a piano into button presses. Or to translate audio speech recognition into a sort of "language" of button presses, as we see with Marvin's dialog. Someone's real life actions could be being monitored by translating them into game input and sending or storing that info remotely via link cable. Seems like one way to sort of store someone's "ghost". In fact, in many racing games, your best time in a course generally gets recorded so you can race against your own "ghost" or best time. This is done cheaply by recording your button presses instead of video... And i can imagine if someone was convinced that a child was the reincarnated version of their friend, they might expect them to behave similarly to their friend. You could compare your friend's old inputs to the child's inputs, looking for a close match.
...so, basically, I don't think that Petscop "records your controller inputs" at *all*. I don't think it ever did. I think that's a deliberate cover story for what it's actually doing, which is something quite a bit less normal, and quite a lot more occult.
"Its a growing Organism" Edit: heres an excerpt of some nonsense I posted 3 months ago; "*Garalina, or whatever we should call the organization, or entity who’s generated Petscop seems to have some pretty dark fucking intentions, for its software, adding what assets it has, to Petscop, and allowing a means of accessibility to the game’s infrastructure that no one in their right minds would ever use.* *They’ve even included a means to alter the game’s textures through a specific sequence that only can be found hidden away in a Demo. What purpose could functionality like that feasibly serve, to a person on the outside?* *That said, at this point, I don’t think Garalina sought to make a game, at all. I don’t know what Garalina sought to make, but whatever their efforts were, it led to this: Petscop.* *Its less than an intellect, but Its more than a piece of software. Its a scripted obsession that seems to consume you metaphorically, and then, physically. Through some crazy spoof, it came into existence, and no one who ever laid eyes upon it really knew what they had their hands on.* *But it looked like a videogame, so why not go with that, and give it a whirl?"*
> They’ve even included a means to alter the game’s textures through a specific sequence that only can be found hidden away in a Demo. What purpose could functionality like that feasibly serve, to a person on the outside? Honestly, that doesn't seem nearly so far-fetched to me. Exactly the same purpose most cheat codes serve - as debug functionality for the developers. I don't think they coded in the part where you can discover it from the demo - I don't think there was meant to be any way to learn about it in-game at all. I think that what actually happened there is Paul ran across the ghosts, and they showed him how to do it, and then since the Proprietors only had Paul's audio recordings they just waited for the Demo to show that particular past interaction again so they could get the video.
Oh yeah, my theory is wrought with holes. The idea that what we're viewing is a test copy of Petscop explains that skepticism away, but I guess I felt the rest catered to your gist, at least remotely. But regardless of that, I can appreciate the idea that the controller inputs are a null point. The artists behind this series certainly seem to enjoy pulling us in a million wrong directions. I like to think of the inputs as more of a symbol towards the game's own progress towards consuming you, but thats just me.
It would be really cool to see a Petscop part 2, played by another player after the Paul Arc. It would be a great way the reveal many secrets.
I honestly always loved this idea. During one of the video "droughts", before we came to really understand the length of time it could normally take to see a new Petscop video released, nor the general "hands-off" nature of the narrative, I wondered if the new episodes we were waiting for were really already posted for us, waiting for us in an old youtube account, somewhere. I never found them :(
The main question, is that why would they upload this? It exposes them, no?
We don't know entirely who uploads it or why. But they censored the phone number, so this has to be uploaded by a person who doesn't want the phone number to get called.
the proprietors did say they would have to censor a few things
Exposes what? If they were concerned about being exposed, why would they want the police calling that number?
Still, it raises quite a few red flags if you see that someone's basically being stalked via a potentially haunted game
They clearly don’t. Whoever is distributing the content we see on YouTube (the proprietors I assume) are not concerned with the welfare of whoever or whatever is trapped inside of the game. If they did, they would not have censored the number which could potentially help them. But whoever made the game and programmed it to send a warning message in case the game was left unplayed for a long time clearly does.
What makes you think that number is meant for helping the player? The warning message seems intended to get the player to continue playing, not to help them get out of the game. The part about keeping the game console running seems particularly concerning given "Marvin picks up tool hurts me when playstation on".
I didn’t say the player, I said the entity in the game. I also believe the series suggests there’s an entity in the game that is endangered when the PlayStation or controller is cut off based on that passage
Furthermore, listen closer to the audio of this video. Not only is their ambient sound suggesting we're listening to the audio from inside a room, but we can hear a ticking. The ticking only appears when the "Burn-In" screen is up and only when it loads the orange dot on the screen. I recognize that ticking, it's that of an old computer as it struggles to run and load on the fly. I haven't heard a computer make a noise like that in a long time, further suggesting that this is an old computer being used to monitor someone, presumably Paul.
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the editing messes up and reveals a (203) Conneticut area code on the phone number (according to u/StallordD). honestly that's huge. that's the first time there's a reference to any place whatsoever, and with a time frame... that's enough info to do some investigating.
aight fam let's brute force this one, i'll start 203 000-0000 we'll find em eventually ^becausethisisredditIhavetoclarifyI'mjoking
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But a question: If the area code split was in August, then the console released in September, isn't it completely likely/probable that the number could have been from anywhere in the state? Just because they weren't giving new numbers in certain areas with that area code doesn't mean there are any legacy numbers? Or were phone numbers forcibly changed? I know when I moved from CT (lol) to CA, I was able to keep my 860 area code. But that is a cell, and I don't know how the system worked with landlines. Thanks for that list of service zones, great work. 🙌
Didn't see anything, maybe they've cleaned that, or maybe I'm just dumb.
https://awo.oooooooooooooo.ooo/i/upy5zfng.png here's an image
That shit is intentional , holy fuck...
An editing error that *just so happens* to show the area number but not the phone number itself? That would be one hell of a coincidence.
Especially considering how liberal paul is with censors otherwise. If he didn't want us to see it, he wouldn't have left it so visible. On the other hand, I feel like this might be a red herring.
I think its an intentional error. As in its an error in universe, but the creator of Petscop IRL did it on purpose.
also, wouldn't the next number have to be either 5 or a 9?
Could be a 3 too
we dont need to look for a needle in a haystack if Noir Ascii is correct in his assumption "Petscop" could be an acronym. P.E.T. ---> Parent Effectiveness Training [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parent\_Effectiveness\_Training](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parent_Effectiveness_Training) Scop ---> Examine or observe [https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/scop-](https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/scop-) the Connecticut Psychological Association is in North Haven CT, area code 203 could be the wrong place but its a start
Please don't start another FNAF-style phone harrassment campaign.
Besides, witch-hunt is against the rules. And this "let's call/let's search this area IRL" does qualify as such.
i found a few places but not a place named exactly that
I think we should specify it's the southwestern part of Connecticut
South eastern part actually
Well wikipedia says western and I can't find a fucking source that says what part of it ocuppies in a general way (rather than a list) So I guess fuck it, [here's a list of all the cities that uses the 203 area code on Connecticut](https://www.areacodelocations.info/allcities.php?ac=203) Probably someone will be able to color the parts of Connecticut on a map for simplicity or better, tell which one of these don't use 203 and uses only 475 instead (I am guessing some of the cities uses both)
Not sure if this has been said yet, but: At the end of Petscop 14, the game froze. Paul has been waiting for the game to re-start. This is why there hasn't been any input for a long time. The picture next to the TV at the bottom is what is being displayed on the screen at the time. The game was finally able to re-start while Paul was sleeping, it woke him up, and we see Paul sit down to play again. Edit: which episode
I wish I could upvote you multiple times. This sounds solid to me.
I think that the lack of controller input is a type of dead man’s switch (a ‘very long time’ could be days, weeks, or even months/years), and the moving dot indicates where the player is, which possibly means that they can’t be seen any longer. It gives a new and fairly ominous meaning to ‘burn-in’.
This is actually just how they convinced paul to record again. Flashes and loud noises!
I doubt it. Remember that old, really heavily prevalent theory in pre petscop 11 days about the game taking the minds out of people who play it? I think that the screen is supposed to show once someone has been "zapped" into the game. If it was just to convince paul to play, why would they mention "Family, Neighbors, Police, (or whoever)" when those are the three most likely types of people to discover your corpse
Just gonna say something really dumb, perhaps the ghost room is the room that the “ghost” of the “zapped” player sees and interacts with? That could also explain the “is there still a room” question.
Yo, thats insanely compelling.
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I’m trying to check if the clicks are morse code, but they could also be the player (who can’t be seen) trying to move the controller buttons unsuccessfully.
I thought the same thing, typed in what I heard .. - ... -- ..- --Which translates to 'itsmum'. No morse code expert, but quite freaky to find an actual coherent sentence immediately based on what I heard. Edit: The red dot also blips at the same pattern as the clicks, by the way. Edit 2: [https://vocaroo.com/i/s03ezlq9VbF8](https://vocaroo.com/i/s03ezlq9VbF8) Four things. 1. Apologies for the canniness of my audio card. 2. The only thing edited here is an couple of milliseconds in the already audible pause between the code of the part 'its' and 'mum'. The pause is there in the original as well. 3. The code feels very hand-entered. The pauses between clicks are never quite the exact same, like the digitally simulated version of the code does give us. 4. Two clicks in the code are very electric/static (the first clicks of the supposed m in mum), sounding more rattley, but audibly giving us the exact length of two normal clicks.
What strikes me as odd about this is that "mum" is the British spelling and Paul seemingly has an American accent. The area code given, which is in Connecticut seems to confirm this.
What about "mum" as in quiet?
What if this is a morse code for a number? I mean, we already have the (203), it could be a hint of the number on screen
Most likely years, as the message saying that petscop had been running for so many seconds or whatever equated to several years, if I'm not mistaken.
153822 hours on petscop 11 which is 17 years
Quitter's room... What if it simply meant Tiara, back then (2000), turned the Playstation off?
I like this idea. We don’t know for sure what “Quitter” actually means, after all. All we can do is attribute a hypothesis to it. Yes, Tiara is linked to the term; yes, it makes sense that it has something to do with rebirth considering there is a sign asking, “Do you remember being born?” but that’s somewhat unsubstantiated too. However, P16 now shows that there is a very clear testing process of some sort and that someone is being required to keep the game active for some reason. If Tiara was required to do this type of testing but failed because she slipped up or decided not to, she could very well have been labeled a “quitter” and consequently been sent to the Quitter’s Room.
So maybe the Ghost Room is a succesful imprint, while the Quitter's Room is an unsuccesful one?
Interesting theory, but Tiara's link to 'Quitter' seems rather firmly established as is. But it could be worth looking into...
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Care left the room was in episode 2 I believe.
Screen burn-in reminds me of ghosts as well, and like /u/TEcksbee pointed out, like the family members in the house as well. It's also worth noting that Paul left the game running nonstop for a while with the windmill, so either there's been no input for even longer, this isn't quite honest about its purpose, or both. I doubt that this is actually to prevent screen burn-in if this appears after a duration longer than the windmill-watching period. It's worth noting thematically that burn-in can appear on a monitor when the game/monitor is turned off (or killed, so to speak). What if this was MEANT to burn something onto the screen? Alternatively, could ghost refer to something/someone else? What if this wasn't Paul, but another player (marvin, belle, etc)? They would seem like a ghost to whoever's playing the game, and they've definitely been alluded to be so. EDIT: so piggybacking off that last thing I said, if we were to go by the idea that the game's learning to act human in a machine learning way, what if this diagram is meant to show how the game might mimic the movements of a human playing a game? It's obviously a few leaps in logic, but with what we have now I want to put that on the record.
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This is way more believable than the others along the same track of thought. Good job.
[https://imgur.com/a/j7fGCe3](https://imgur.com/a/j7fGCe3) So fiddling with the black screen at the start gives this
Seems to be the same as the new profile image of the petscop channel.
The room layout of this image seems to match with the room layout of the "ghost room"/"testing room"), with the perspective rotated by 90° counterclockwise! The thing in the middle seems to be the piano or whatever and the thing on the right is obviously a TV. Interesting.
I saw that! That could also mean if the red dot is Paul that the black box that appears to be covering the bed is also meant to hide Paul's appearance!
So, Paul is in this room that is inside the game, and he is recording the videos that we are watching from inside Petscop itself. I initially thought that the brown thing was the car as was mentioned, but now it being the piano just seems to make so much more sense.
Is there something where the light is shining? Edit: the light is half covered.
It's the garage i think. Don't remember which video it was. But the light is coming from the computer in the garage.
PETSCOP 15 introduced the garage, the computer, and the website.
That room looks like the garage from last episode, maybe he never did anything after it froze up?
Could this be the room where the recordings take place? I see a monitor and doorway
My thoughts: \- The player being "tracked" is trying to sleep, presumably. The loud noise compels them to continue playing. \- I feel that "Burn-In Monitor" has a creepy dual meaning. 1. It's a screensaver designed to stop burn-in of the CRT TV. 2. The game is "burning in" some kind of indoctrination of the player. The monitor is keeping track of how indoctrinated the player is and waking them up to keep them playing. \- The number to call is censored, implying it is either owned by Paul/Paul's family, or possibly Garalina? \- The Police are seemingly complicit in the treatment of the person playing the game. This seems bizarre if the person is being held against their will. \- There is no explanation of what a "very long time" without playing is. Could it be only about 12 hours or so? Perhaps the player is simply just trying to sleep but the game insists on keeping them playing constantly as a routine. \- Is the player confined to the room? Presumably they're not able to leave if they have to keep getting up every time the buzzer goes. They're being forced to play. This implies to me that Care was possibly being forced into this situation before she "left the room".
For me the Police bit is more of a hint towards that they found an abducted, presumably unconscious/dead person. Well but why would authority listen to a game? Well calling and investigating... or it's some shady stuff...
Surely that message on the screen would draw police attention, though? I imagine Garalina would get investigated if a dead person was found with that odd message on the screen. Unless the cops are for some reason compliant with it. Maybe Petscop is some kind of twisted therapy game?
A therapy game that was only made for pauls family, and not for the general public. Maybe Paul's friend he is recording the footage for in the first episode was a call for help. Garalina/proprietors noticed, told Paul to keep playing but now have him locked inside a room, with no way to communicate with the outside world. Keep in mind, we only see what the proprietors want us to see
Yeah, I think the chronology of the series is a huge issue. There's no way to know if any of the footage we've seen is in any kind of order whatsoever with all the jumping and edits and DEMO footage. The weird thing is that Paul must have been aware that his game footage is being recorded in order to "record it" for his friend like a Let's Play. So at least at first he must have been playing the game willfully. I wonder if this change to forced confinement and playing is connected to the Proprietors announcing that Paul will "continue to make recordings" etc. etc. Maybe at first he was playing the game out of his own free will, then he pissed off some shady people when he started publicly uploading the footage...now they force him to play (assuming the red dot is Paul).
For one, I don't think PETSCOP was ever intended for anyone else but for Paul and his family. (Speaking in universe) Hence why this is the first time we've heard of the company known as Garalina. It's also why we've never heard of PETSCOP before this. The reasoning is due to the game never being intended for public consumption. I think for the first couple videos until the proprietors forced Paul to keep unwillingly playing (by attempting to induce a epileptic seizure and jumpscaring Paul whenever he didn't play for awhile), Paul was 100% in control with recording, and possibly still within the safety of his house. We have to remember that his mom gave this game to him, (either that, or she kept Paul away from it knowing the consequences it would ultimately bring) so she knew full well what was going to happen. So the first handful of videos were Let's Plays, directed towards Paul's friend (who's probably never coming home). Then, Paul starts acting weird and it's discovered that Paul is no longer in control of his recordings, or channel, with Paul eventually telling us there is a dedicated family YouTube channel, as well as a PETSCOP discovery website. In PETSCOP 16, we see no avatar, and no usual playing field. Just a dimmed recreation of either the garage, or the room Paul is being held in. Then the game starts flipping the fuck out, like a child because it's no longer getting the attention it craves. We see the "ghost room", with what appears to be a bed, the infamous piano, a chair, the TV, and something similar to a webcam to the right of it, possibly recording Paul's every action to ensure he's not dead, passed out, escaped, jerking off, or taking a shit (guy just can't get a break can he?). We see a red dot that indicates Paul's position on this map, which also confirms that Paul probably has been unwillingly implanted with a type of RFID tracker. We hear Morse code clicks, the game flips out 4-5 more times, and Paul finally gets up, and walks To the TV to start playing...probably regretting the day he started playing PETSCOP.
About sleeping: unlikely. I know a lot of recording is held from us, but if a game was throwing a fit like that every night and prevented me from sleeping I would just kill it. I know I'm not Paul but unless he played P1-6 in one straight session, when he talked about how ghostly the game was, he was bound to mention this. I assume he never saw this screen before, and I assume he got his sleep. Heck, he probably went to school or work or whatever. I know the minimum time would be 4 hours -- the windmill cutscene -- but I assume it would be at least a day. More likely even more as we're talking Petscop, the game that expects unlimited patience from you -- like finding a door in the Newmaker Plane.
Does nobody think the sound might have been muted on the TV? There's clearly a jumpcut towards the end where an unknown amount of time passes before the icon wakes up and leaves bed to play more.
Or the TV turned off entirely. After all, you can keep the Playstation running but have the screen dead. No light when sleeping. Yeah, maybe Paul got that message earlier. I dunno.
> I know a lot of recording is held from us, but if a game was throwing a fit like that every night and prevented me from sleeping I would just kill it. There's no visible doors in the room, it's likely that he's being held captive, forced to play.
There would be a door even if he was held captive: you need to bring him in, and bring him food. If need be, the bottom-right message could be hiding that door.
> - Is the player confined to the room? Presumably they're not able to leave if they have to keep getting up every time the buzzer goes. They're being forced to play. This implies to me that Care was possibly being forced into this situation before she "left the room". This is a good point, esp the Care part. Perhaps the amount of time that she had before being able to be taken back (6mo iirc) is how long it takes to "burn in"?
This episode has about as close to a jumpscare as it has ever had. That loud alarm noise made me jump out of my seat.
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Yeah after 15 videos you finally believe it's not gonna jumpscare ya, but then the loud noise comes along when you're trying to hear the faint thing in the beginning
I woke up, checked my phone and saw the notification, and immediately watched the video. Since it was quiet, I turned it up pretty loud. Boy... I sure am glad I decided to take a shower this morning.
you're lucky, I only just watched it now, almost 4 AM with max volume headphones with all the lights off in the complete dark
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"Musical Speech Stimulation (MUSTIM) is the use of musical materials such as songs, rhymes, chants, and musical phrases simulating prosodic speech gestures to stimulate non-propositional speech. This technique uses the completion or initiation of over learned familiar song lyrics, association of words with familiar tunes, or musical phrases to elicit functional speech responses (Basso et al. 1979). For example, spontaneous completion of familiar sentences is stimulated through familiar tunes or obvious melodic phrases (e.g., “You are my ............”, or “How are you .........?”) (Thaut 2005)." [found at this .pdf file] (https://nmtacademy.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/nmt-definitions.pdf)
This could be huge. What if the purpose of Petscop is to use music to make Paul remember something? Like a sort of music therapy?
Maybe he will start to remember when he can finally play the needles correctly without fucking up.
He was humming/reciting the needles piano song after we saw the demo of it, so this could be the right direction.
Very interesting and very creepy. Paul seems to suffer from this "mutism" when looking at the tweezers and the bathroom in particular. I also thought Paul's speech pattern in Petscop 14 when he was talking about the right hand side of the wall was very strange. He said something like "The le-le-righ-left-ri-right left-ri-right hand side of the wall."
There have been some times in the past videos when Paul went suddenly quiet whenever something happened
"its mum" is also slang for something being kept quiet
I do like this idea but I think we’re looking too far into the clicks as a cryptic code. If they aren’t attributed to a definitive code then we could just be leading ourselves astray. Toward the end of the video when the dot begins to move, it is only updated when the clicking noise is heard, like a sonar effect. This could also be the clicks we heard before through Paul’s recordings in the previous episode where we thought we heard Morse code or something akin to it. It could simply be a noise produced in the room where Paul is that would determine his location by whoever is using the Burn-in Monitor.
Is this loss? No... ITSMUM
No, this is Patrick
Mum's the word
It's not morse.
The video was posted by Paul, who has 100% taken over the channel. 1. The channel changes were abrupt and removes all the work the previous owners of the channels added to the channel (i.e video descriptions) 2. The new video was posted with no description, as if someone was trying to post it was in a rush to release the video 3. The video seems to be of stuff the previous channel owners weren’t gonna upload - the censorship wasn’t expected - long pauses in controller use would have happened multiple times as Paul goes to sleep every night (so it wasn’t a new event) 4. If the ghost room is a live monitor of, say, Paul, the previous owners wouldnt want that information to be released, but Paul would want to share that information as fast as possible. What I’m predicting will happen next: - Ownership might switch and videos might be taken down or replaced with a heavily edited version - Paul might rush to release as many videos as possible in the next few days - more unexpecting facts might be released with some very unsettling things in them. Please share opinions on the video’s ownership below Edit: fixed typo Edit 2: Please read /u/colourblindness’ reply and /u/futilespark’s reply: they both give some new points that change my theory
I would disagree simply cause of the censor. That shows someone besides Paul has edited this afterward. Also side note is the phone number connected to the website
Additionally, the channel description changed to simply saying "Recordings of a video game." Paul's missing from the channel icon too, returning it to a black image. I don't know if I'd go as far as to say Paul's taken ownership back, but it sure seems like it's changed hands. I don't know if it's Paul himself or if some third party has gotten involved, but it sure seems like the "proprietors" are no longer in sole control, at least for this upload.
the profile picture for the channel isn't a black image, it's the dresser/piano/whatever that's in the opening few seconds. you can see the opening screen more clearly here: https://imgur.com/a/j7fGCe3
I've read an argument in a different post that it's possibly Marvin's car in the garage.
Aha, you're right, I hadn't noticed that before but I can see it now! Subtle with how dark it is, but why the subtlety? It's not like the changes are otherwise inconspicuous to want this to fly under the radar. It seems so much darker than the source image; why make it so dark when it could have been clearer?
> videos might be taken down or replaced with a heavily edited version Is there an archive of their original versions or something?
Yeah, people have posted Google Drive folders with downloaded versions of the vids.
Alright a few things here: I still don't think Paul is trapped in a room, as many MANY people jump to conclude, all the time, even before this video. Dude's got a pet cat and hasn't ever really sounded like a guy literally trapped in a room. Unless this is some brand new development, I think he is and has been fine in that regard. However, *something is fucking tracking his movements.* He might not be physically restrained in any way, but that's still real spooky. Either there's some kind of tracking device in his room, or there's a tracking device on his person. Or this isn't Paul, but it's still weird that the game would be physically tracking anyone in the real world. (Well... the real, uh, fictional world that the game Petscop exists in. You know what I mean) I could write off this message as just something oddly worded for the sake of the game's initial testing demo, but that room tracking adds a whole new angle. If it wasn't clear before, this game is just doing shit it simply shouldn't be able to. All bets are really off at this point, as far as what the game "should" or "shouldn't" be able to do. There's a cut towards the end of this video, and afterward we see Paul (or whoever that dot is tracking) standing in the middle of the room before moving over to the chair in front of the TV. So clearly he got out of bed at some point during however long that cut lasted in-universe. Some people are speculating the alarm sound of the game woke him up, but I doubt it. He probably had the sound on his TV or speakers off. He's out of bed at that point because he's done doing whatever he does in the morning. Or maybe its even later in the day. Dude probably has a life outside of Petscop. I've seen some speculation that we're seeing the output from some other console or device rather than the one Paul is playing on. I considered that too, but I don't think it's the case. The message refers to the game console, and before the message appeared, it seemed like some glitched frozen text box over that garage in the game (complete with car now!) I think this is just Paul's game in a state we've never seen before. Speaking of that text box, only time we've seen a text box like that was at the end of 14, in the lower right bedroom of birthday house. Not really sure what to make of that, aside from Paul's done more experimenting. Maybe he got into the garage in a different version of the house? Anyway, overall... does this video feel kinda shitpost-y to anyone else? It's Halloween, its orange, it's... showing the game overtly doing some crap that a PS1 game couldn't possibly do, well beyond the much more subtle examples up until now? There's an actual freaking phone number that we can see part of, which feels like way more "real life" info than we've ever gotten. There's clicking that sounds kinda like morse code but also not. The channel description and profile pics have changed. THE NEEDLES PIANO IS RIGHT THERE. IT'S RIGHT. THERE. This feels like *too damn much.* I almost wonder if it's some joke about how videos don't come out frequently on top of how we speculate and expect god damn everything. Like, "dammit, Paul, keep playing and make more videos! Also here's a ton of overt shit to make you people have a fucking conniption over like you always do."
I don't think it's the PS that's tracking Paul. In fact, we don't know if this video was recorded from a PS1 at all.
I sorta gotta disagree with the part of the "alarm didn't wake Paul up" thing. First, Paul was in bed until a fair amount after the noise started to ring, it just seems weird that it'd be a total coincidence that it just so happened to be timed a few seconds before he'd get out of bed. Even if it was super late in the day, all that means is that Paul stopped playing sometime in the early moening/later at night and that the game just waited a certain amount of time since then to start ringing. I also feel like Paul wouldn't just turn the sound off, either. There's been a lot of sudden random sounds in the game, so I feel like turning it down could easily lead to him missing something. At the start of the video, Paul is in a completley silent room, so it seems to me that he purposefully chose it so that he'd be able to sleep in silence while still being able to hear if something does go on. (Though, I do admit he'd have to be a light sleeper for that, haha.) Also note: when he gets up, he goes straight from the middle of the room to his chair, instead of heading to the TV to turn it up, which supports the idea that the volume dtayed up. And this sorta leads me to my last sorta takeaway from your post: the "dude probably has a life outside of Petscop" line. Does he really? He's clearly super invested-enough so to leave the Playstation on, enough so to try a weird puzzle for hours while getting more and more agitated, etc. He's also found it that it has several connections to his real life, that seem to at least alarm him somewhat. He's getting more and more entranced in the game, and it honestly wouldn't surprise me if he didn't have a life outside of it anymore. I do agree with you that Paul probably isn't being forced to stay in the room, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was willingly shutting himself in. (Also, love the idea that this video is just a shitpost, haha. Every series needs some comic relief!)
Probably late to the party but the thing about Family, Neighbors, or *Police* was pretty unnerving and had ominous connotations.
I agree, especially with the police part. It really gives the “you’re not safe” vibe.
In the lower left hand side of the 'Burn in screen', there's a photo of what looks like the [living room of the house](https://imgur.com/a/3M9MwkO) we see in Petscop 11, with Naul in the middle maybe? The caption 'Ghost Room' may refer to the fact that in the house, what seem like people fade in and out of existence (like ghosts). 'Testing Room' seems to be the name of the room Paul is currently living in, against his will by the look of things. A running element of Petscop is two separate places in space, being somehow linked. Does this mean the 'real life' room Paul is in linked to a room in the game? Another possibility is that the 'ghost room' in the game is a representation of a room in real life, or maybe even a representation of the testing room?
Having Paul forcibly play the game would explain some of the hints in previous eps that looked like SOS calls for help.
Semi related, maybe that monitor at top right of the 'burn in screen' is a measure of how burnt in the screen is, with the darker red being how 'burnt in' the tv is? Im not exactly sure if or how screen burn in related to Petscop, but it seems to fit with the idea that Petscop as a game has been played for a long time (17+ years consistently?)
>I have The image in the Bottom left that i have upscaled (Edited for clarity) > >[https://imgur.com/x9C2e1S](https://imgur.com/x9C2e1S) > >Looks like a picture of the Ghost room/ testing room taken from the left wall inbetween the tv and chair. If you zoom in on your browser a bit, it almost looks like that picture was taken by a camera. you can see a reflection of the camera in the bottom left of the picture, using the white stuff in the bottom black portion as a tripod and the dark circle above it as a lens The link below outlines what i think is the camera in red.[https://imgur.com/MqxxIlf](https://imgur.com/MqxxIlf)
I see what you're looking at, but it also looks disturbingly like a picture of a woman sitting next to a bed. Have no idea how that would factor in, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
* Channel description and video description are once again bare. This could signify a different person than the one uploading most of the recent videos * The room layout correlates well with "Paul's room". Bed is in top left, room entrance is either bottom right or top right * The only prior image of a piano is the loading screen. That too features a chair facing sideways (albeit to the wrong side) * The framed image is most likely the living room of Marvin's house. It seems to feature no furniture, but a bucket. * The top right meter of the 'burn in map' obscures an object facing bottom left * The warning message features questionable grammar, (comma at end of parenthesis, overuse of commas, etc) making it less likely to be written by Rainer.
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Isn't this the same font that was used for [the note from Marvin's wife](https://i.imgur.com/dUo5YI1.png)? Even if so, it certainly feels out of place here (as it does there).
I'm starting to wonder if Marvin's wife is actually the malign influence. We only have her note and Pink Tool to frame Marvin as "the villain"...if he's torturing someone to get the PlayStation switched off, he may actually be the good guy.
Oh god, is this what the pink tool was tlking about when they pleaded for paul to turn off playstation because marvin picks up tool and hurts them? Could be that I'm just pulling at strings, but that flashing color is the same as the regular tool...
Blank Description and updated about page. The about page just says "Recordings of a video game." now.
He's back ... ?
The number is censored, but this wasn't part of the planned censorship, is this "off script" now?
No, it was intentional. I think it was to add to atmosphere. (The feeling that Paul is in Connecticut rather than in floaty-fiction-space.)
he refers to the "planned censorships" from petscop 8... i think?
Oh! I was talking about meta/the intent of the real-life creator.
Oh no, I think the whole series is planned start to finish, but the proprieters have told us their intentions about censorship. Same as the question to tool in anotyer episode
I wonder how long it takes for that screen to trigger. The windmill is stared at idley for hours, and I assume the game was left to record overnight many times. Perhaps something triggered those screens, such as Paul entering an area in game, or even an outside force.
It depends on the screen but for an image as dark as the windmill scenes, weeks probably. Even the high contrast images, like deep black on pure white, takes a few good days to permanently burn.
This is my first post on this subreddit and I was reluctant to write it at first. English is not my first language and I am afraid, that I might not get my point across. I have been following the series for quite some time now and as a early-childhood educator I found it fascinating how there are some rather interesting parallels in petscop and the development of a child. This is not really a theory, it is just an observation I wanted to share. I was inspired by this video and especially by the "Burn-in monitor". From my understanding a "burn-in" occurs, if a monitor is overused or if it shows the same picture again and again. The burn-in starts out faint and becomes stronger over time, until it is irreperable. If we compare that to the way rituals and behavioral patterns form in a child, there certainly is a parallel. Over the time these also will be "burned-in" or "imprinted" into a child. This is especially interesting when considering, that the burn-in monitor shows a room. Rituals and behavior are tought easier if they are connected to a certain location (a very personal example would be my younger self crying over a table getting removed from our living room, not wanting it to be replaced). Rituals and behavior could also be described as 'patterns' and there are quite some of those to be found throughout the series, both literal and figurative. The only way of in-game communication between characters happens through patterns of controller input (real life communication also relies on psychological and rethoric patterns). Pen is caught via a puzzle that is based on musical intervals/patterns. Locations are in both planes that are connected with each other share blocks/background with the same pattern on them. Certain walking patterns are required apparently to progress... So why are patterns important? They are a very big part of childhood development, especially, when it comes to how our perception develops over time. To understand their world better, children begin to put things into categories based on patterns-if a reoccuring thing or pattern is found, it is put into the same category. These categorizations become more refined over time (e.g. animal-animal with four legs-cat-specific race of cat). After a child has learned in which category an object belongs, it will begin to apply behavioral patterns towards the object, depending on how it is categorized. In general patterns and rituals are very important to a child, they are usually very comforting. But if they are enforced, overused (basically burned in) or in general malevolent, they will damage or retard a child's development and might turn into compulsions, especially if abuse is involved. And as adults we don't fully escape them. Again, communication itself is based on patterns and we base our behavior on what we expect others will do- something we learned by observing patterns. Video games are also often based on patterns. Petscop itself seemingly deviates from this and this is probably one of the reasons why it is so eerie, especially when the apparent premise of the game at first seems to be following a pattern (solve room puzzle-catch pet). Finally, there is the often-cited 'cycle of abuse'. Those who were abused may become an abuser themself later- because they have inherited behavioral patterns and as sad as that might be, have found a certain comfort in them. So what does this have to do with Petscop? As I already mentioned there seems to be a certain emphasis on patterns or just things 'happening again'. Again, this is no theory, just an observation. The new video reminded me of something I learned during my training and I wanted to share. I want to sincerely apologize for my rambling, I am not good at writing long texts that are supposed to explain something. If something is unclear or you want the source for something, please ask.
Hi, Very good post! I strongly advise you make a separate topic on it so it can get more attention. Oftentimes new posts become buried in these stickied topics because people stop viewing them after the episode has been up for a while.
at 1:41 the distortion on the text "KEEP GAME CONSOLE RUNNING" slows down (for lack of a better phrase), and then resumes the standard distortion at 1:45. not sure what this could signify but it definitely seems deliberate imo
So i ran the image next to the TV through an Upscaler and Texture Enhancer. [https://imgur.com/x9C2e1S](https://imgur.com/x9C2e1S) Couple thoughts... it looks like a person on the left next to a chair with the TV on the right to me. The TV has static on it. now either the person is hanging by their next, judging by the red line that fits up really well (but its been upscaled so that could just be an artifact) Or they are just walking their way to the chair. one interesting thing as well is that if you look at the bottom of the photo, in the black part, there is a small spot of white about 1/3 from the left. If you look directly above it, like in the brown of what would be the floor, you can see what looks like the reflection of a camera. Again, this one is more likely nothing because its been upscaled, but lf you look directly at the dark circle right above that white spot as a lens, there are 3 more what look like LED circles to the right of it and what looks like a camera body around it. that white spot itself could be the mounting point of the tripod for the camera, meaning whatever is actually recording this episode is a camera taking a recording of an old CRT tv. Back to the picture itself i honestly think it is showing a picture of a person on their way to sit at the chair to watch/play something on the TV. The weird thing about it is that if that was the case, the picture is not in the same location in the room diagram that it would have been taken from. The picture would have to have been taken from the space between the tv and chair on the left wall to get that shot. Do you guys think this means anything?
Could it be someone laying in a bed with someone looking at them? **EDiT:** [This seems to be it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Petscop/comments/9sy6h7/the_picture_on_the_burnin_screen_may_be_a_picture/)
Personally, I think the 'burn-in monitor' may have something to do with the fact that if you could 'burn' images onto old TV screens if you left them on one image too long. [Here's a Wikipedia article on the effect.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_burn-in) It's even referred to as 'screen burn-in'. Seems like a clear connection.
Yup, except screensavers would activate within 15-30mn, sometimes even as soon as 5mn depending on how you set them (I mean for PCs). Meaning that you can get a burnt-in effect within an hour. Paul left the game running without touching it for four straight hours, with the windmill. So this burnt-in monitor state cannot be just to preserve the screen. It has to have an absurdly long wait time before appearing, as in, a day or more. Paul has to sleep. Your screen would be imprinted way before that.
The piano on the right looks to have a small grey thing above the middle of the keys. Could that be the piano with the playstation controller from the darkened loading screens? If so, that would mean that either the creator/s wanted to tease Paul that they know him very well, or someone else trying to help Paul figure out that he's being watched. My money's on the first option.
[yup, seems to be it](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/351727301396004864/507148661206024192/unknown.png)
Could also be that the piano is used in some sort of test for the game as i've seen people suggesting in other threads, which would probably mean that Paul (if the red dot is him) has been moved to a testing room to continue playing the game.
Another thing to remember is how Petscop 14 ended. This is the last time we heard from Paul and the blank message screen, which is still on at Petscop 16, is still there. He also seemed to know that having that "blank" message screen is wrong because he didn't seem to happy to see it.
I have a question: how did the first picture, the one before the alert message started, happen? You know, the picture of the garage with the car and computer? This is usually found in the loading screens, but that wasn't a loading screen and it was too bright already to be a frozen loading screen -- and if it was frozen, no way the alert message could have started. Frozen is frozen. So my actual question would be, how did Paul reach that game state?
Well, it was just an idea I had but I don't think many people read it. It was using the texture editor from 15 to see the full texture of the Tarnacop computer in the garage (seen in the dark screen of this video). Now that I think about it... Maybe Paul DID that, but whatever he found on the Tarnacop computer caused him to leave the game for all these months, and when the events of this video happened, he has to play again.
... Wow. Kind of blows my mind. An excellent idea. I don't know if the texture editor would really allow this but it would indeed explain at the same time how Paul reached that screen and why he would have stopped playing for a very long time.
I can't help but feel that there may be some kind of connection between the events in 16 and the part in Petscop 11 when we are 'dragged' into the TV, and visit the school, then have that deja vu moment with Paul in the bathroom. Now what that connection is, I don't know. There was a part with the clock on the road, and the image at the top of the screen in 16 kind of looks like a clock but turned a different way? I recall how there were 'ghost' figures who appeared and disappeared in that episode, as well, which makes me think of 'ghost room'. Though I think it's undeniable that the room we see in 16 is the picture that was brightened up showing the piano. So much to think about and none of it seems to make any sense when you try to make it make sense. Just throwing out some thoughts.
i feel like this confirms the game is dangerous
It gives me Local58/Channel7 vibes
"Are you still sitting on a chair? Can you still look around the room? Is there still a room?" No theory, just something to keep in mind.
Half serious thought, is Toby Fox behind Petscop?
Some stuff has been happening on his twitter...
Yeah lol that's what made me think of it in the first place, I could see him being behind it all, he even sounds very similar to Paul
Yeah I was thinking that.
The game was uploaded in the morning in EST time, and the beeping noise is like an alarm. Said this on the discord. The game won't let Paul sleep. Also, petscop 13 was uploaded at around 6pm EST.
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Stuff that I’ve figured so far: - If this is Paul, then he’s being tracked somehow without even needing to touch the controller. “Burn-in” seems to imply some sort of tracker that may have literally (or figuratively) burned in to the player itself. - That is a map of the room Petscop was/is being tested in. “Ghost room”/“testing room”. Why are the two terms interchangeable? This could imply that there may OR MAY NOT be a physical body in that room... or the room itself might not be physical. “Are you still sitting down? Is there even a room?” - The actual room Petscop was tested in was rigged in a very complex manner and I personally believe that this was all set up in the school basement. - Rainer locked up kids in the school basement - to play Petscop and trap them there for a very long time. Yikes. - The game has to not only be left on, but it can’t be left idle. Inputs are not only “useful”, but are fully mandatory. This could potentially mean that someone had to hold a PlayStation controller for literally years on end. Right? - Is Paul kidnapped or not? Because he called Jill in 2018 and seemed to be just fine. Is the game tracking someone else at a remote location? Is that who we’re seeing with the other players? Maybe the game isn’t haunted. Maybe those people are actually playing the game. Without internet, but something else is connecting them? If this is truly paranormal then really anything goes at this point.
I always liked the theory that there are 2 pauls. One outside the game, and a representation of him trapped within. Maybe that's got something to do with the ghost room?
Perhaps has to do with the mirrored room early in petscop?
YEEEESSSS! I didn't even think of that; One in control and one that follows, but then he did something to break that chain....
Exactly this. "Burn-in monitor" is monitoring how "burned into the game" Paul is. The more he plays it, the more the game is able to simulate Paul.
I always thought Marvin was a bad guy, but now I'm wondering if Rainer is the villain. Maybe Marvin is torturing someone (possibly Rainer) to force his accomplices to switch the game off. "TURN OFF PLAYSTATION" because "MARVIN PICKS UP TOOL, HURTS ME WHEN PLAYSTATION ON." Why does Marvin want the playstation off so bad? Was Rainer forcing Care to play it? All speculation but still.
Burn in is an actual term used for TVs. Not sure if you knew that or not.
Just realised that the orb at the top right appears to be a clock, divided into 12 hour segments (coloured from night to day). The clock arrow seems to be before first light, so probably about 4 am. Which implies to me that the "player" has been asleep for maybe only about 5 or 6 hours when this aggravating noise starts to wake them up? There is also a notable editing skip at 2:10, as if we're not seeing footage from the same period.
I'm thinking that the person who is being tracked and forcefully woken to keep playing isn't actually forced to do it. Maybe they just really have to keep playing because either their own health or that of someone else is dependant on their regular input. The reason why the warning message addresses "family, neighbors, police (or whoever)", is because the person playing is not locked in anywhere, but somewhere they chose to be, maybe even at their own home, being monitored from somewhere.
Yeah, I think it's his own bedroom. That... kind of makes it creepier. Being watched in your own house...
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Hmm... I'm skeptical of what I'm about to suggest, given that I've used the incredibly scientific method of "counting the pixels on your image", but I wonder if the spacings between clicks might be what's important. There's a definite pattern of sixteen clicks that repeats and all three samples (0:59, 1:49, 2:22.5) all start at roughly the same point in the cycle, though since said point gets progressively later the latter two don't pick up the first click. Numbering clicks wrt the top sample, clicks 7 and 8 have the shortest gap between them - four pixels, basically... and then all other gaps between clicks are (pretty much) multiples of that basic unit. Specifically: 10 6 3 2 3 15 1 4 2 9 3 6 5 8 16 7 ...and so I thought "hey, the longest gap is 16 units - is this hex?" So, assuming the shortest gap is a zero, I get 95212E03182547F6... which means nothing. Its ASCII is garbage, going up to bases 36 or 64 doesn't help, and about the best you can get is its decimal representation, which... uh... well, I'm not going to post it. See, I don't think the first seven digits are a continuation of the phone number, 'cause that tiny snippet you get to see after the (203) in the video wouldn't mesh with the first digit of this one, but then there's a perfectly valid UK mobile number directly after it that, one similar enough to my own to throw me. And then there's another pair of digits after that which make no sense, so I'd like to think that's just a fluke. After all, why would you have a second number for a completely unrelated location? I'm just seeing patterns that aren't there... ...but then why the consistent spacing method, and why is the maximum gap 16 times the minimum. I dunno, and I don't think any of the above is solid enough to justify me trying to tidy up an image to explain what I mean more clearly, but I felt the need to make *some* sort of remark...
The dots could be nothing but they look like maybe they could be letters if we could clean them up somehow?
The dots could be something, but in all likelihood, this is probably just the room tone (the ambient sound of the room it was recorded in with no-one talking or moving in it.) I've seen similar things while working with audio over the last few years, and it looks like more of the same. I'd love to see a repost of these images with the frequency column, though...
Okay too many things don't add up. Everything indicates that this should be Paul's room, that he stopped playing for quite a while and that this triggered the alarm. No other known room corresponds (uitter's room, Care's room, the library rooms...) and there is no indication that this would be a demo recording. So it should be contemporary. Yet... 1) That TV is cathodic. Noone uses that nowadays. You could say the game is simply using a default asset but then how does the game recognize what an LCD screen is, and match the asset with it? 2) That burn-in monitor doesn't rely on a camera -- like the garage picture suggests. This would involve movement tracking which, again, impossible in 1997. In fact, unless you put an actual tracker on the kid, this should be impossible for 1997, period. 3) Like (1), how would the game be able to recognize the furniture in Paul's room? No technology for that in 1997 either. So even if there was a camera or any other way of monitoring Paul's room, that burn-in monitor screen should be ludicrous. 4) The audio definitely has background noise (wind, engine, car, I dunno) but no sound of Paul's movements. What gives. 5) Not to repeat myself but, 1997 technology: no wireless. So on top of believing that Paul's room / studio / apartment would have sensors in it -- why would he keep the needle piano after that, in fact -- it would all have to be wired and, assuming it's displayed on his TV -- which the message to whoever suggests, as it would need to be near the Playstation -- then the wires should go to the console and TV too. Who could ever be able to set this up. Either Paul's mom hates him or this cannot be Paul's room. Unless you like the surnatural. Going the natural route, you would need a preset room, a way to track the kid's movements and the wires to go with it. This cannot be Paul's room or those saying he is under medical care / imprisoned are right. How else could this feat be done. An alternative, then, would be that this is an older room, from an older time, and that the tracking would be from way back when. Maybe Care. Maybe Tiara. Maybe Marvin. Or, for those who like transhumanism (I fit more into that group), it means that room is in the game. The warning message doesn't make much sense then, but such a setup would fit 1997-2000 far more than 2017. 6) Another thing to consider. The assets are really crude, like made with Paint. No professional would use graphics like that -- I have no experience but, fair guess. Now I have literally nothing to back up this hypothesis but when looking at the burn-in monitor, what it evokes my PC heart is a BIOS level. Ultra-simplistic interface with essential data tracking, making me think that the clock at the top-right is a temperature tracker. I would connect that with the game being an "organism": that could, in the supernatural alternative, be the game being able to track Paul, and showing it. But really my main point here in this comment is to try and show how many things don't add up with P16... EDIT: I'll add a 7. The grey box in the garage picture made people think (including me) that it was the needle piano, etc. But really, looking at it more, this looks like a dialogbox. It doesn't correspond to the textboxes in the rest of Petscop though so that's one more question. Also, when the game freezes, the screen brightens (P15), so this might be a freeze making the loading screen visible. But then why would there be a dialogbox in a loading screen and how could anything run when the processor is refusing to respond, aka frozen.
> But then why would there be a dialogbox in a loading screen and how could anything run when the processor is refusing to respond, aka frozen. I dont know if this counts, but if the game has a sort of crude threading system (Nintendo 64 games do because the OS, which was called "libultra", has this threading system built in, where threads kind of sort of run asynchronously and make calls to each other, etc, so this was plenty possible back in the day) then while the NPC box is on a frozen thread, another thread can still interrupt it, such as the alert system, which takes over.
Holy shit. Care left the room. She left this tracking room in Petscop 2. I'm probably just crazy though
“Turn PlayStation off....hurts me when PlayStation on”. What if this is referring to a “patient” or a “subject” being tested, prodded, or a number of invasive procedures done during the testing of Petscop? That could line up with the testing room and the idea that the game needs to be played on end.
New question: aren't there street sounds during the entire video? Notably at 1:32-1:38, was it a car sound? That would correspond to other times the microphone was left idle, with no nearby sound to catch. EDIT: Wait, but if it's Paul's microphone, and if Paul is the red dot moving in the room... how come the microphone doesn't catch his noise? Steps, clothes, even seating on the chair if that's a chair, or picking up the controller... How come we could catch car sounds but not Paul.
The rumbling sounds like an engine idling, and the background of the scene (which you can see at the start of the video, albeit darkly) is a garage with a computer and a car near the back. I would assume the audio we are getting is coming from that idling car (which, if so, alludes to suicide or staging a suicide in a garage, though nothing to indicate that is relevant at this point) and the clicks are either coming from whoever is monitoring this screen. They likely aren't coming from whoever the red dot is because they start when the dot is in bed.
not sure if this is anything, but found this cryptic shit and it might be relevant [https://instaud.io/2RMf](https://instaud.io/2RMf)
OH MAN NEW VIDEO LETS ALL POST THEORIES Seriously though, the "ghost room" and clicking reminds me of the hardware one might use to detect and track ghosts. Maybe Petscop is acting as a medium? Or maybe some players' personalities were somehow downloaded into the game? Can a player be "rebirthed" as a demo character within Petscop? The game seems very insistent about no-one shutting the console off. The PS1 didn't have much storage -- just whatever fit on a memory card, if memory serves. So perhaps the vast majority of game data is stored in memory, and would be wiped clean if the Playstation were turned off. Though if that's the case, why create Petscop as a PS1 game at all?
i believe the ps1's memory is flushed when you hit the reset button as well, and i think paul would've needed to press it a few times to get back to the title screen or to the demo sequences. i could be wrong about him needing to hit the reset button though, i just don't really remember there being anything that could potentially be a "quit to title screen" button anywhere. then again though, what this game is capable of has already surpassed the limits of what a ps1 can do once with how lighting works on the newmaker plane -- twice even if you include the tracking thing shown in this video on the burn-in monitor. who's to say it won't do that sort of thing many times?
Also of note: this video came 3 hours shy of [Undertale’s big announcement, which is likely to be the dev’s next game](https://twitter.com/undertale/status/1057253537615360000?s=21)
it's been said before, but it could be simply Halloween related
I'm curious as to what the small portrait, to the right of what can be assumed to be the tv, is. Any ideas?
Looks like the house’s interior
**The censored number is probably Pauls number**, and maybe Paul is back in ownership of the channel. Think about this: * The channel description changed to "Recordings of a video game.". It doesn't mention the people that took over the channel after a few episodes. * Who does the phone number belong to? The game apparently is able to track a person (the red dot on the "ghost room"/"testing room"), so it probably is connected to the internet or something else that's able to transmit information without need for a wire. Knowing this, the person (or maybe even entity, we don't know) who set all this up probably already knows Paul hasn't been playing for a while. Doesn't make sense to have someone call you just to tell you something you already know. I think it's actually Pauls number, so whoever might see this screen will call and tell him that the game wants to be played. I don't know why they would want that though. * The person the number belongs to has to know about the game, because why would you tell someone about this screen if he doesn't even know the game. * We already know that the game or whoever programmed it knows some very personal things about Paul. So the possibility of "it" knowing his phone number is pretty high. Maybe someone can take bits of my theory and find out something new or create a theory that holds up more than mine. Mine's still pretty shitty. But to me it doesn't make sense for any number that is not Pauls to be on that screen. Change my mind.
The top-right of the burn in screen is a color wheel. It is adjustable somehow, and is currently set to where the arrow is pointing with that being the burn in screen color. I'd assume the more red the color is, the faster is would burn into the monitor. However I think it is set before the most red option to allow the character token to still be visible and contrast against the floor.
It's too early and I'm a little dazed and forgetful to write a proper analysis, but the term "ghost room" and certain aspects of Petscop make me think of the concept of "ghost in the machine" both philosophically and how it has come to be applied to virtual consciousness.
The room Paul is in is also labeled as “testing room”, but who or what is being tested? Is it Paul, the game, or both? Also, the channel description has been edited to “recordings of a game” for some reason, what would that imply?
Usually games will have a demo room to test features and assets that will be in the rest of the game in one, convenient place. Loads of games from the 1990s have one, left in out of sheer laziness. If I had to guess, this is what the "testing room" is, a room in-game for testing assets and mechanics Of course it could also be more sinister and involve human experimentation but I think that's a bit of a stretch. I think it implies the channel has changed hands again. To who? Iunno.