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FK in the Coffee
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« on: November 09, 2015, 06:17:58 PM »

I was diving into some research on the game Yume Nikki for an article, and one of the curious things I discovered was that KIKIYAMA, the game's developer, has never been identified. There's no way of knowing if they're a man or a woman, young or old, dead or alive. The only footprint they left - the only online presence of them at all - is this game. Yume Nikki has an author, but it's impossible to put it in the context of its creator's life, since there's no way of getting to the creator themselves.

Are there any other examples of this? An unnamed developer dropping a game out of nowhere and then disappearing with out a trace? Or is Yume Nikki just a lone anomaly that had the good fortune to become a cult hit?
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« Reply #1 on: November 10, 2015, 12:01:42 AM »

afaik we don't really know who ikiki is. also not exactly the same thing, but cly5m (the developer of seiklus) never made his real name public (i think).

other than that there's probably a whole lot of obscure freeware games with unknown authors

EDIT: also atari back in the day was a shit company that treated developers like assembly line workers and didn't credit them. so the authorship of a lot of atari 2600 games is unclear.



« Last Edit: November 10, 2015, 12:07:42 AM by Silbereisen » Logged
Cobralad
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« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2015, 01:36:34 AM »

thats kinda how it works in japan: many legendary mangakas are working under pseudonims and not identified in any way.
old games also have pseudonims in credits instead of real names, although it has most to do with ghost-gamedev practice.
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« Reply #3 on: November 10, 2015, 01:52:40 AM »

Btw: i did some research on early mainframe videogames but to my surprise, the identities of a lot of the developers are known.
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« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2015, 03:09:10 PM »

it's kind of sad actually if the creator created yume nikki as his way to write his diary.... considering the ending.
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« Reply #5 on: November 10, 2015, 03:19:58 PM »

it's kind of sad actually if the creator created yume nikki as his way to write his diary.... considering the ending.
I mean, to me, Yume Nikki is Barthes' "Death of the Author" in its purest form. We literally have no way of knowing authorial intent since the author is completely unknown, which makes each player's interpretation equally valid.

It'd be very presumptuous to make a assumptions about the creator's life through their work. Not all art is a window into its artist.
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« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2015, 03:58:21 PM »

which makes each player's interpretation equally valid.

actually death of the author doesn't mean that at all. barthes also never says that authorial intent is irrelevant iirc, just that an author's interpretation of their own work is not the only valid source of "meaning".
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FK in the Coffee
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« Reply #7 on: November 10, 2015, 05:44:41 PM »

Thank you for the correction! It's been a while since I've read Barthes, so I'm sure I got a fair bit wrong there. I guess I'd consider Yume Nikki to be emblematic of “Death of the Author” because it's impossible to frame the game in the context of its author's life or authorial intent, since we know nothing about the author. The work can't help but stand as its own independent entity. You're right in that the idea of all interpretations being equal is not a Barthesian concept, though, and I did screw up there in linking it to “Death of the Author.”
« Last Edit: November 10, 2015, 06:25:02 PM by FK in the Coffee » Logged
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« Reply #8 on: November 10, 2015, 05:47:30 PM »

Isn't the touhou project also anonymous?
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« Reply #9 on: November 10, 2015, 06:10:17 PM »

Isn't the touhou project also anonymous?

nope
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« Reply #10 on: November 12, 2015, 03:05:46 AM »

This topic kind of reminds me of The Beginner's Guide. Game on steam about whether you can know or understand a person from just playing games they've made.  Seems like a dream journal game would be particularly good at this, too.

But yeah... considering how the game goes, if it is meant to be autobiographical, it's pretty unfortunate, seems like it came from a pretty bad time. The vibes of ennui and escape through dreams, which are labyrinthine, confusing and oppressive, and then the ending... its pretty bleak!

Then again, maybe some people "just really like making prisons".
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« Reply #11 on: November 12, 2015, 03:20:57 AM »

i always thought yume nikki was about the hikikomori phenomenon

but, uh, regarding the game's developer: i just read on wikipedia that there's officially licensed merchandise for yume nikki. unless that's bullshit and the merch isn't official, shouldn't it be possible to determine the rights holder (and hence the dev's identity) from that?
« Last Edit: November 12, 2015, 03:29:26 AM by Silbereisen » Logged
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« Reply #12 on: November 17, 2015, 01:48:40 PM »

If you're still researching, Mastaba Snoopy is as anonymous as they get.
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« Reply #13 on: November 17, 2015, 07:16:24 PM »

i haven't played much of yume nikki because i played part of it 1-2 years back on a really bad computer that couldn't run anything, maybe i'll try it again, i liked what little i tried of it. My favorite game by someone with virtually no online presence is the nekra psaria series by drawmaneater, who just has an irregularly updated tumblr, but this was a semi-regularly updated series (4 installments in the last year and a half, the most recent a few weeks back). would be good to get off forums and social media, probably.

probably i'd like to try something like this, make something very big under some alias unrelated to anything else i did. it would be an interesting feeling whether anyone played it or not. maybe it would be even cooler if nobody played it.

to answer op question, glum buster is the only other significant example i can think of, though less so, because some people knew the person, and he released an ios game before dropping off the map a few years ago, though i'm sure there are others.
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