Summary
- G-Man and Barney actor Mike Shapiro posted a cryptic video on New Year’s Eve, captioned “#Valve #Halflife #GMan #2025”.
- The images in the video are from his newest of three songs, Best Long Dog.
- It’s 197 seconds long and it was released 197 days after his last song. The number 197 even appears in the video, meaning it crops up three times. Half-Life 3 confirmed?
It doesn’t take much to send Half-Life fans into a speculative frenzy. Whether it’s references found in a Dota 2 update or unannounced Valve projects listed on an actor’s resume, the community has uncovered plenty of information hidden within scraps for years now.
So, when G-Man and Barney Calhoun actor Mike Shapiro tweeted a cryptic video teasing “unexpected surprises”, captioned “#Valve #Halflife #GMan #2025”, it lit a fire under the most fervent of fans. Many are now convinced that this is only the beginning of an ARG in the run-up to the long-awaited Half-Life 3.
For the unintiiated, an ARG is an interactive digital mystery often designed to market something. Valve ran one ahead of Portal 2’s reveal.
Put On Your Tinfoil Hat
As broken down by loamiferous on the Half-Life subreddit, the image in Mike Shapiro’s tweet is from his song ‘Best Long Dog’.
He has three such songs on his YouTube and Spotify, all of which were released in 2024. Each has a length corresponding to an isotope: Best Long Dog is 3 minutes and 17 seconds long, ie 197 seconds, which translates to Au-197, or Gold. Magnetic North equals Uranium, and Steeplechase equals Radium.
That might seem like a fun coincidence more than a theory, but what’s bizarre is that Best Long Dog was released 197 days after Magnetic North. The number 197 also appears in the widows of the video, meaning that it can be found three times. Obligatory ‘Half-Life 3 confirmed’ here.
Gold could refer to GoldSrc, and Chell’s subject ID in Portal 2 was 234 (ie Uranium).
They also theorise that each song has a deeper meaning tied to Half-Life. Dog, they theorise, could refer to Barney, Adrian Shepard, or Gordon Freeman (though I’d like to put forward the more obvious character… Dog). Magnetic North meanwhile could be a nod to the Arctic, where the cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode Three was set. And they argue that Steeplechase might be about Breen and Mossman, given the back and forth lyrics.
The trio of 197s feels significant, especially since Shapiro posted a similarly obscure video on December 30, 2019 ahead of Half-Life: Alyx. Something is cooking for 2025, clearly, but whether it’s the beginning of a complex ARG or just a fun tweet… I’ll let you decide for now.
