Trivia / Anonymous Agony

• Colbert Bump: MandaloreGaming's video of the game brought a lot of attention to it. The video also led to Nieve, a lesser-known rapper who composed Playback, the song used for the overworld theme, getting a bump.
• Troubled Production: To say the game had problems both in and out of production would be putting it lightly. This 47-page document created by former co-owner Melynn Rose and contributed by another former co-owner and a few ex-developers of Coded Emotion highlights the issues, so much so that listing them in detail would take all day:
  • The founder, Jacob Caro, was alleged to be manipulative before Anonymous Agony was conceived, telling Melynn a questionable story about how he was scammed by an artist who sold stolen art to him in order to get Melynn to draw art for his RPG for free. This was apparently a running trend for him and his friend group; he would make up stories, constantly lie and contradict himself, and say sexist and rude things to women younger than him behind their backs. Whenever he was called out for this, he would either claim that they were just jokes, insincerely apologize, or blame it on an illness or stressful situation.
  • When it came to developing the RPG called Divided Infinity, it was also a mess. As a few other people joined the team, the majority being musicians, they were either working for Jacob for free or were promised royalty fees when the game came out. According to the document, he was able to get nearly 60 pieces of music, 85% of the story written with three full arcs finished and the fourth arc unfinished, a good chunk of level design, and had people working with up to 60 characters of varying importance (with more planned to be added). Needless to say, it was a lot of work to be doing for free. Since development was taking a while, Jacob decided to start a side project, planning to release episodes in between working on the RPG. This would be the titular Anonymous Agony.
  • A Kickstarter and Indiegogo were launched at the same time, a redundancy that Melynn alleged was just a way for Jacob to make more money. 4chan's /v/ board took notice of the campaign and provided the majority of its $1,500 funding. However, it was nowhere close to the amount that was actually needed for the work required, the rewards not helping matters.^note Which promised physical copies of the game, the soundtrack, the artbook, posters, and an opportunity to have your own NPC in the game with their own dialogue, story, and quest.
  • After receiving the money, Jacob didn't pay anyone working with him, despite the game featuring full voice-acting, programmed add-ons, music with outsourced singers, and custom assets. This resulted in a cycle of people joining the team, doing some work, then dropping out some time later, which naturally reflected in the final product. Despite working on Divided Infinity and Anonymous Agony at the same time, he decided to start yet another side project called Astatine, exasperating the issues.
  • Jacob wouldn't attend the weekly meetings a lot of the time and had Melynn run things for him despite being specific about his project, which presented a problem since he wouldn't give enough information for his team to work with, and then chew them out whenever he showed up. At one point, Jacob asked Melynn to get permanent days off from her job so she could attend the weekly meetings that he himself wouldn't attend and then get mad when she unsurprisingly refused, calling her unstable and making her out to be the bad guy.
  • The last straw for Melynn that led to her resigning was when Jacob sent her numerous rude and name-calling text messages in ALL CAPS, telling her friends that she was the aggressor and was trying to steal Coded Emotion from him, and then tried to excuse his actions by claiming that he went cold turkey on anti-depressants and couldn't remember what happened. Jacob would constantly try to get her to come back to no avail.
  • A few years later, Jacob would begin work on Anonymous Agony again. He put out a casting call, got a bunch of voice actors working for royalties thanks to composer Johnny Guy's connections, and launched another Kickstarter that wound up receiving double the amount from the previous campaign at around $4,100. Like last time, Jacob wouldn't pay anybody working with him.
  • Jacob would treat Johnny like shit, getting him to pay hundreds of dollars for stuff like Lyft rides, blowing up at Johnny and guilt-tripping him after Johnny got suspicious and emailed Jacob's ex-girlfriend for some insight on who he really is, ignoring him when he was rushing to get an apartment application done, and was overall verbally and emotionally abusive to him. The last straw for Johnny was when Jacob insulted and argued with him while he was suicidal, asked him for more money not even a day later, and called him immature and selfish despite his emotional state. After he left, Jacob would attempt to defame him by claiming that he was being immature, breaching privacy agreements, and sexually harassing women online.
  • Since the game was uploaded to Steam under Johnny's name and he wanted nothing to do with Jacob, he had to transfer over the rights and profits to him. Despite his willingness to do this, Jacob remained hostile and accusatory during the subsequent email exchanges, accusing him of having no friends and being unable to control his emotions.