Yiik

Postmodernism, and YIIK.
Hey guys!

I wanted to make a short post on here about Postmodernism and YIIK. What elements of Postmodernism you’ll find in YIIK, and why we chose the name YIIK: A Postmodern RPG.

If you don’t care about Postmodernism, I’m still fairly certain you can enjoy the game quite a bit! But, since there are a lot of die hard connoisseurs of Postmodernism out there, I figure I’d explain ourselves a bit….

On the topic of the name YIIK: A Postmodern RPG. When development first began, we just called it Y2K. But, too many people couldn’t tell it was an RPG when they just scrolled by, so we wanted to have the name be able to explain to the player what kind of game it was.

We used the word postmodern, because the story is heavily influenced by Postmodern Authors like Haruki Murakami, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace.

The story is very influenced by Marukami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

As for elements that make the game postmodern, there are a few I’ll talk about! Many postmodern authors combined, or “pasted” elements of previous genres and styles of literature to create a new narrative voice, or to comment on the writing of their contemporaries. So, we wanted to see how we could create a battle mode around Pastiche. YIIK, features a battle mode designed around Genre Blending. Each mini game represents a different genre, as a sort of nod to the Maximalist styles of David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest and Tri-stan.

An important element of postmodernism is its acknowledgment of previous literary works. The intertextuality of certain works of postmodern fiction, the dependence on literature that has been created earlier…

YIIK, is a game that exists within the real world (at times), and will feature some allusions to Chrono Trigger, Pokemon, and many other games, in order to pay homage to the genre defining games that responsible for it’s influence… while also trying to expand on them.

That one you’ll kinda need to see in action for it to make sense!

Many postmodern authors feature metafiction in their writing, which, essentially, is writing about writing, an attempt to make the reader aware of its ficitionality. Much like House of Leaves where it’s a book about a book about a movie, YIIK is a game that revolves around a conspiracy theory image forum. The characters will talk about the forum, reference it, and the player can browse it as it’s updated as the game progresses. You can find quests here, and really dive into the forum and get to know each character who posts on there. (There are a lot, and each of them have a progression… something we’re pretty proud of!)

We also explore Temporal distortion, nonlinear timeline. While most of the game takes place chronologically throughout the year of ’99, there are moments where we move the player through time… which is an interesting challenge as RPGS have leveling systems… I think we handled it creatively? we’ll see!

And of course, the game also features a world flowing with Magical realism.

Here is a great quote on what that is “Arguably the most important postmodern technique, magical realism is the introduction of fantastic or impossible elements into a narrative that is otherwise normal. Magical realist novels may include dreams taking place during normal life, the return of previously deceased characters, extremely complicated plots, wild shifts in time, and myths and fairy tales becoming part of the narrative. Many critics argue that magical realism has its roots in the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, two South American writers, and some have classified it as a Latin American style.”

Of course, there is a load more things I can get into, but this was boring enough. I hope this clears things up a bit! I understand the name can be a bit eye-rolling… but I think it makes most in context of the game.

For me reading on Postmoderism, here is a great post about it!! http://postmodernblog.tumblr.com/post/106532710/a-list-of-postmodern-characteristics