OK, so I got side-tracked, watching Penn & Teller: Fool Us episodes… >_<
Final “catch-up” replies:
:: @SingularGleam,
Gleam
Thank you; I found those “later”, and actually replied to THAT post, too, so you’ll have already seen that reply, I think. 
Cheers!
:: @DarthTrethon (& @LilLadyD76)
Trethon & D
Yes, Thank you – I read each one when I came across LadyD’s post, and it was of course handy to have the transcripts.
Re vid, yeah, after I watched 1, I figured there’d be no real point watching through the vids … EXCEPT that you can see, in one, where the channel-viewers were making suggestions, in the lower left corner … 
:: @kyle-culver,
Culver
Many thanks for your shortlist of direct YT links.
To explain briefly, the in-line linked thread replies – mainly those posted by Singular “earlier” in the thread – now look like empty black boxes; I believe they may have been “current” links to Twitch feeds which – I only learned from someone else’s comment later – may have “expired”, which is why some ppl “re-post” to YT.
I had, since posting my first comment in this thread, then come across other contributions which allowed me to watch / read the 5 interactions. What an exercise; I thought it was a good bit of “trial run”.
THANK YOU, Kyle, for providing another “hot-link list of 5 Dreamers”! 
I’ve Bookmarked you-3’s 3 different “list” posts, for QuickAccess - Thank You!
(Still getting used to this forum interface… ha! bloody n00b… ) 
:: @MacForADay,
Forgive me not being clearer…! [ + ] Thanks, also, for appreciating my reply. [ /+ ]
MacForAFewArgentPararaphs
While, yes, I “also” get the feeling that Sean & Hello Games are keen on Community Engagement, of course, I was referring more to his own earlier experiences, when he was younger, of the interest etc he expressed about QUAKE, back in the day – that he was getting involved even before the game launched. 
Part of my frustration is that they seem to have also granted them literary liscense to write their own story for the ARG that isn’t necesarily canon to No Man’s Sky
I would hazard a guess that HG gave A&S an “outline” & some “guidelines” in order for them to stay within canon as much as poss, but expand upon (any established) canon with a measure of artistic license, yes.
I would generally agree with your evaluation, here.
[ + ]
Forgot to mention:- yes, I’m fully “on-board” with the concept that we are not likely communicating with ANY Hello Games staffers / devs, but rather A&S reps tasked to this particular (NMS / ETARC / ATLAS CSD) ARG.
[ /+ ]
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(Mac said:)
the ARG characters even talk about No Man’s Sky (you can’t be a part of the origin story of a videogame if that videogame already exists in your reality).
WHAT IF…
NMS does & did exist in the Dreamers’ “reality”, say, if they “experienced” 1.0x.
The Dreamers could then be part of the “Origin Story” into 1.1, 1.2…
OR
Dial it backwards a bit more – say the Dreamers “experienced” an experimental, pre-launch version of NMS, which WE never saw, before 1.0x launched.
That would (better) fit them into the “Origin Story” of our experience of NMS.
Take it another step further / darker:
The Dreamers were “the first guinea pigs / test batch of subjects”.
Feedback from their interactions within the Sim informed changes necessarily made before the “next batch of test subjects”, in the same way that, in THE MATRIX, the Machines “lost entire crops” because the Simulated world was “too perfect” and was not then believable; so the Machines had to add in “imperfections” etc to stabilise the brains’ acceptance of such a “reality”.
Whether or not we are “the next batch” (though wholly outnumbering these 12 by massive factors), or a much larger Sim-experiment, following on from several “failed & tweaked” previous versions … may or may not bear out…
