Preface
YIIK Zine 2022
I’d like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who’s helped make this Zine a reality ❤
Including (but not limited to):
- Ackk Studios and Ysbryd Games, for making and publishing YIIK!
- Everyone who followed, liked and retweeted our posts on the @Y2K22_ Twitter
- Each and every applicant!
- All of our fantastic writers and artists! (Listed below)
On the page after is a short written piece about YIIK and some of the ideas behind its’ design, by none other than Andrew Allanson. Past that, it’s all Zine! Enjoy :)
@rroketas @limunafrog @chelastuff @ropesnek @HoldenMercury @iLikeGoblo101 SusieBean#4268
@tvsplt calciumchan.com @tvCompfy @MintyZedGrimes @ashonauts @LeFruitcakeVEVO
@Glasses2themax @sherbovania Anarcho#0394 omg.lol/lobster
I am having a hard time believing this YIIK zine is real. In fact, I’m constantly shocked by how people react and engage with the game.
In 2014 my brother and I were inspired to create an RPG set in modern times. With a protagonist obsessed with the past. Someone stuck in cycles of self-destruction, and fundamentally warped by nostalgia. Willing reality to tell a story where they’re the protagonist.
We wanted to explore what happens when people believe they’re the main character. And what happens to them when life refuses to comply with that fantasy. After all, almost every story since the 1980s exists to tell you that you’re special and that you’re the protagonist. You get the girl in the end. All of your efforts will be rewarded. And most important, meaning is something YOU get to create. You are the center of the universe.
At the time I was very interested in novels by Haruki Murakami, Chuck Palahniuk, Miguel de Cervantes, and Thomas Pynchon. These authors are often described as postmodernists.
I imagined Alex as someone who liked these authors but fundamentally misunderstood them. A guy who liked the aesthetics of postmodernism without any of the meat.
Postmodern literature and media is inspired by the philosophy that shares the same name. It’s a school of thought noted for skepticism towards grand-narratives. Often called meta-narratives. Hayden White the American historian notes four primary meta-narratives that make up the Western world. Greek fatalism, Christian redemptionism, bourgeois progressivism, and Marxist utopianism.With the creation of this philosophy, nothing was sacred. All narratives about how we got here were up for deconstruction. All shared mythology was called into question. The narratives of the past were seen as authoritarian. Easily exploited for mass control.
Modernity itself was being questioned. Taken apart. Barely put back together.
Lyotard, a prominent postmodern philosopher, thought that the breakdown of meta-narratives would give rise to the petits récits (tiny narratives.)
You can think of these as your subjective meaning.
Source: Oxford Reference "grand narrative"
This gave me the idea of creating a story where the player role-played as a postmodernist. One who had to question a specific meta-narrative presented from the subjective truth created by the protagonist.
Born from this prompt is the wobbly tower of Alex’s delusions. His leaps in logic, and insistence that reality is conspiring to unite him with a mysterious missing woman. His refusal to see the truth, would be the player’s prompt to question what the game is asking them.
The narrative insists that you’re destined to destroy your reality over and over in your fantasies. That you share the same fate as Alex, as you are Alex.
Looking back at the initial story idea, I am fascinating by the meta-narratives that have developed around the game since release. More and more, it proves my hunch that they’re inevitable, and questioning meta-narratives only creates more.
That we are always in a story.
In the upcoming update YIIK I.V, I plan to explore how to best live within a story. And how to forgive reality for not being the story you’d prefer.
Thank you all for playing the game. And remember, there is no use in taking something apart if you can’t put it back together.
Andrew Allanson, December 28th 2022
@chelastuff
