The Mirror Lies-

The whole world's wrong but you!

I've spoken about it before at length but I have to come out and just admit to myself and the world that I am justly fascinated by The Day Before. Or more appropriately, by the absolutely weave of bizarrity which is the marketing cycle of 'The Day Before'. Firstly I should stop by and say that whilst I know everyone has their opinion on this game, and I certainly have my own, I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you that the game is or isn't real. I'm pretty much sold on the fact that it isn't real, and even though the recent gameplay footage we saw appears close to an actual viable product, upon further reflection and really analysing the way that The Day Before has been shown off before and talked about after the 'gameplay reveal'; I've reverted my opinion. I no longer even believe that this game is a shambled together asset flip tossed together at the last moment; this just isn't a real product.

No, the question I want to ask today is actually a pretty important one given that it's one of the key pillars of any investigation and one of the most important members of the '5 W's gang. "Why?" But seriously, establishing motive is such an important part to making any sort of accusation that it really should be the very first step whenever any such allegation of falsity arises. If you can't make a valid assumption as to why a person would be tempted to fake something, then it hardly follows that they would. A high class speedrunner who fakes a run in order to sink that all-important World Record spot is spurred on by the prestige of their reputation and the heavy pressure not to underperform to their own established standards. At such a high level, cheating can be justified as merely ensuring you perform to the standard you feel like you could achieve on perfect conditions. Start with the why and everything else should fall into place.

When you ask the question why someone would be encouraged to fake a video game's existence, then the answer should be obvious. Just ask the founders of 'Chronicles of Elyria', 'Dreamworld' or 'Earth2'. Cut through their weak pitches and observe the person beneath, and you'll find a person groping about for crowdfunded capital in order to either run away with, fund themselves to do nothing for a year or two or fuel an absolute pipedream that has no hope of ever coming into fruition. At the end of the day the goal is always the acquisition of money from those who don't know better through the platform of crowdfunding sites. But... The Day Before was never kickstarted. It never asked for funds from the public, it hasn't offered any sort of pre-order offer. It's as though the developers have absolutely nothing to gain from lying about a game which they can't prove exists? Unless...

Unless it's simply clout that they gain! Remember, FNTASTIC pretty much exploded onto the scene with the announcement of The Day Before, but that was by no means the only game that they worked on. They brought out Propnight, a play on the popular Prophunt concept from Garry's Mod, and The Wild Eight: a game who's premise utterly evades me every day. They also made a game called 'Radiant One' but no one can tell what that actually is. Basically, their catalogue has a few smaller indie hits that could have theoretically benefitted from the studio becoming a runaway hot ticket item due to the surprising ambition of their newest zombie survival MMO with a PVP focus. But I'll be honest, I don't like that explanation. What exactly is the point of aiming a few new eyes to your other projects when it also incurs the wrath of suspicion that puts any future projects in jeopardy? It just isn't worth it, even to a warped and scam-attuned mind. It has to be something more banal than that.

In fact... it has to come back to money. There simply is no other explanation. Whether that's money to try and funnel into the studio under the guise of it making the new game, or money to embezzle out of the company entirely for personal gain: the root of all evil is the root of this game somehow. But it's strange, because the only people actually paying FNTASTIC is their publisher MYTONA, and that company is said to be keeping a close eye on The Day Before by seeing it's progress at every milestone- oh wait... when they say 'seeing it's progress', do they mean with hands on demonstrations, or with glitzy showcase gameplay videos? The same videos the public has been seeing, rife with pilfered store assets and not-fit-for-purpose features and world geometry? I think I figured out who's the one getting stiffed in this whole affair.

MYTONA is a publisher that has themselves a history in developing games from their New Zealand headquarters and publishing some of FNTASTIC's side games around their big 'break out' game. As far as I can tell they aren't themselves a huge publisher, and probably wouldn't find themselves involved with a potential scam unless they weren't privy to it. Besides, FNTASTIC have used their partnership with MYTONA as an alibi before, claiming that the publisher checks in on them at every major development milestone so if anyone was going to call them out, the Kiwi's would be the first. But if we're to take certain the many accusations of falsified gameplay presentations in the past then there's nothing to stop us further assuming that FNTASTIC pulls that same wool over their publisher's eyes whenever possible. Because if there's one thing these people can do it's throw together widely ambitious, and yet still realistically boring, gameplay trailers. Could the victim in all of this be MYTONA's investment dollars slowly being eaten up by a studio treading the waters?

At this stage the balance really is whether or not this team is lying to their publisher or lying to their fans, and which eventuality would be the worst. Well, I guess in 'repercussions' the act of lying to a publisher would open you up to legal proceedings against a plaintiff who presumably has the means to hunt you down. But on the plus side they can pretty much indefinitely claim to be the bleeding heart heroes to their fans, not taking a cent away from them, and hide behind that perception. On the otherhand, lying to the fans would literally be putting your own consumer base at risk if the truth ever comes out. And if they're doing both, like it seems they might, then this is one precarious little house of stumbling cards that the team has built up for itself, now isn't it? But in an age where admitting to fault is the same as accepting death, we'll probably never get a confessional on the matter- not as long as we live.

What I'm curious about is the plan from here, whether or not the team can actually make the game they set out to. Or rather, whether they can slap together a minimum viable product in a truncated development window and claim that this was the game all along which just needed to be scaled back from the original vision thanks to industry standard conceptual pair-backs. Zombie survival games aren't exactly a wizard's feat, they've been done before and to largely abysmal results- The Day Before seems to have taken that formula one step further to bring us the first zombie game with hardly any walking dead in it at all, so there's that USP to get all excited for at least! I honestly think they could pull it off. Throw together a year's worth of work and argue until they're blue in the face about how hard they've worked to even get that together. It won't be fun. It's user base will die off before the end of the year and the game will cease post-launch development before 12 months of being out in the public. That way the developer can save same small face and claim they actually delivered, even when the world knows to be suspicious. Come back here and give me my 'Nostradamus' label at the appropriate time. 

Does it matter if FNTASTIC do deliver in the end? Even if it is the disappointment we know it'll be? Well for the team it absolutely does, because the creation of an abject disappointment is far more understandable than a false product which never materialises. If the team want to have any sort of future developing games with the backing and support of anyone, they need The Day Before not to fizzle up so they can change that narrative. To those actually paying attention, there really is nothing within FNTASTIC's power that will change their mind. Anything short of delivering the exact quality of experience that the team promised in their reveal will rub that crowd raw, and considering that promise wasn't even feasible back then yet alone in the handful of months they have left- well, let's just say that FNTASTIC are going to have their work cut out for them getting their own Comic Con booth.