“This is sort of the nature of the world that we’re living in, this idea that consensus reality is being eroded,” Frechette says. As the producers continued their research and interviews, they found a theme: there were as many different versions of the legend as there were people telling it. Exposure from the mecca of video game chat rooms,, in the early 2000s cemented its place in pop culture. The conspiracy, as the podcast uncovers, stems from a single post online. “In the early 2000s, I just sort of became aware like a lot of people who were dwelling on the Internet that there was a killer video game from Portland,” Streckert, who gives lectures in Portland about video game culture and history, tells listeners. Healthy skepticism about whether or not the game ever existed abounds, but is that even the point?

With two episodes remaining-episode five, “The Seller,” aired on November 10-the story reveals the real people behind the assortment of conspiracy theories sustained throughout the years by keyboard activity and online forums.

We interviewed everyone, from regulars at Ground Kontrol to video game designers to arcade owners to journalists that had grown up in the Portland area.” “We started shooting little interviews and organically they transformed into a documentary,” says Luoto, “At that point, we sort of thought truth was stranger than fiction. When a Kickstarter campaign to fund the film fell through, Frechette and Luoto looked towards a more inexpensive medium: podcasting.

Frechette wasn’t at first taken with the idea, but with a contact at the conspiracy’s ground zero, Dylan Reiff (who eventually became the field producer for the podcast), the filmmakers made a research trip up here in 2015. In 2011, Luoto approached Frechette with the idea of making a feature film about Polybius after first coming across the legend online.

Polybius game