I was perusing the IFWiki and came across this page:
It’s a list of IF works with anonymous authors.
There’s quite a few.
I started wondering if there are any ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ of IF? Like an anonymous game that sparked a whole lot of speculation regarding authorship, but was never revealed?
IF has always had plenty of pseudonymous and/or anonymous authors. Most of these go by without much comment, but certainly there are a few over the years that have sparked intense speculation. Some of those have been revealed, others have not.
I created an IFDB poll for the latter group.
To be clear, I don’t expect any of these mysteries to be solved, but it’s fun to gather together the most notable examples.
I invite folks to contribute and/or reminisce.
P.S. The “Real" bit of the title is admittedly a bit much, but I didn’t want folks to confuse the show and IF similar to the show.
As a bibliographer and historian, I’ve always been frustrated by the extensive use of pseudonyms and anonymity in the IF community, so this is a topic of interest. However, I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for. Are you looking for:
authors who are completely unknown
authors who are not credited in the game, packaging or documentation, but are known from other sources
authors who write their game as “Anonymous”
authors who use a pseudonym, but their identity is known
authors who use a pseudonym and their identity is unknown
In the last two cases, “identity” may itself be a pseudonym.
In the early days of IF competitions, it was common for authors to release a game under a pseudonym, then release a post-comp version under their real name, so these authors are known. On IFDB, it is common to see something like ‘John Smith, writing as “Joe Bloggs”’.
Where it gets really confusing is when the same author has either:
used multiple pseudonyms, or
used initials only, or
changed their name, or
used different ways of spelling their name in different games or even in the same game or in documentation
First of all, to be super crystal clear, I’m not trying to actually unmask someone who intentionally and willfully used a pseudonym or published anonymously. This is entirely about the joy in not knowing and uselessly, and often baselessly, speculating anyway.
If you’re actually trying to attribute specific games to specific authors, this isn’t that thread.
Sure
No, because if they’re already known, there is no mystery.
Sure, as long as that anonymity holds.
Nope, for the same reason, no mystery.
And, yes, this would count.
@BadParser is right. You might not be familiar with it. It was a very long run show in the US (over 600 episodes spread over almost 40 years).
These are interesting questions, and made me look at the database query that listed the anonymous authors on IFWiki. I had written it quickly, just so that the “Anonymous” page wouldn’t have a red link! It only listed games for whom the author had actively been added to the wiki as “Anonymous”. It didn’t include games for whom no author had been added at all. I’ve added those to Anonymous - IFWiki, and there are a similar number of both.
It would be possible to create a list of all games under pseudonyms, but it wouldn’t be complete as sometimes we use pseudonyms as real names, either in ignorance or on purpose.
Please be aware there is a difference between researching authorship of older uncredited games, and “outing” someone who wrote under a pseudonym.
Many historical games were written with a youthful idealism before today’s more evolved concepts of what is proper or even legal. Many employers today do social media searches on potential and existing employees, so in many cases that might be a good reason to disassociate previous works using a pseudonym.
Also consider a hypothetical situation where someone writes about LGBTQ+ subjects that they may not yet wish their family (or employer) to know about and thus don’t list their name or adopt a moniker for that subject matter.
Unless an author is up-front about writing under a different name, please respect people’s wishes to remain anonymous. Even speculation might harm someone if they become associated with a notorious work they had nothing to do with.