GFD

GFD

@GFD

  • he/him

🇨🇦 Aspiring game designer/programmer/musician. Speedrunner and pianist. Privacy advocate. Feminist. Trans rights. 8‐time February 29th survivor. Wario. My brain’s probably worth a lot of money!

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GFD
@GFD

what’s the deal with pseudonymous game devs recently??

the solo dev of Balatro has only ever been known by “LocalThunk”. the Pizza Tower designer just goes by “McPig”. there was another example i can’t recall right now, but apparently nobody knows who the “Marben X” that made Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015 is. why do this? why are the first 2 prominent examples i gave both Canadians?

it used to be the case that employees were forced to use aliases in game credits, and this has broadly been considered a terrible thing to have happened. i guess this doesn’t translate directly ’cuz these devs can choose to use the same pseudonym across products, but… they’ve all apparently made One Thing, and it’s not clear that they’ll make more under the same name. and without proof of authorship, they can’t put these releases on a resume, right? i don’t understand. what’s going on??

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in reply to @GFD's post:

kylelabriola
@kylelabriola

I think it's largely about maintaining privacy. To be totally honest, I would not want to be Stardew Valley's creator, ConcernedApe, because it's public knowledge that his name is Eric Barone. And his face is known from photos, etc.

LocalThunk was asked this directly in an interview. For him he said that it wasn't 100% vital that nobody ever discovers his identity, but he didnt want his real world identity tied to his work. I'm assuming he doesn't want the fame/fanbase/etc to intersect with his family and daily life. Frankly, I'd probably do the same thing if I was him. People online can be very weird about things.

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GFD
@GFD

can they be that weird about things? i don’t really see game devs who go by their real names complaining about this kind of thing outside of targeted harassment campaigns (which will probably unmask your identity no matter what). unless it’s just sort of an unspoken thing in the industry? otherwise the cons seem to outweigh the pros even without considering how much work it is to maintain anonymity. don’t you have to form a company and hire an agent for contact in order to maintain legal ownership of your work without an exposed identity??

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lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

i mean if you're making games solo then i don't know if résumé cred is the biggest thing on your mind. you can just make another game solo

and more importantly they're choosing to do it, which is totally fine

also there's nothing stopping you from putting it on your résumé! you can prove authorship plenty of ways if you want

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GFD
@GFD

oh the worst thing about how things used to work is definitely the lack of choice. but that’s why it’s a bit confusing to then do it willingly.

i guess mostly i’m unnerved about there being multiple high‐profile examples of this recently (and from other Canadians). like, do they know something i don’t that maybe i should before doing solo dev myself??

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lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

no idea. i release games under my handle because that's what everyone knows me by, but i do also put my legal name on most of them, but uh, that's partly because "eevee" is not super duper specific

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