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Not really confirmed it, which leaves it to interpretation. I actually like that.
I think this is a kind of meta-story, though, being a ficticious tale where the developer placed himself as the character. I can't remember any examples right now, but I've seen this done before. I think that's one of the things that makes this game so amazing, actually.
One of the points that suggests at the story being ficticious is the Epilogue. Why would Davey talk back to the user about his after-thoughts if the game were actually meant to reach Coda?
In the end, of course it's all open to interpretation.
And then everyone is confused if this game is about the developer.
........
The narrative of Davey and Coda is a metaphor for real-life Davey's experience with ego and expression and how others react to the expression of an artist and project their own reality onto it. Yes, it's up to interpretation, but you can see it all pretty clearly in Davey's past statements about his experience with The Stanley Parable.
As you say, if Coda were a real person and the narrative were literally true, this game would be creatively and financially unethical if not outright illegal. So we can pretty much put the lid on the idea that the story within the game is factual.
+1. Also the entire dynamic of story-Davey's unhealthy need for external validation as a "patch" for his emotional problems, even at the cost of creativity and general well-being and losing sight of what he'd originally made, is something else the real Davey wrote about.
The game is real only in the metaphorical sense.
spoiler message here
(extra spaces were added before the brackets so that you could see it)
an exmaple this is a spoiler msg
Yeah, CODA doesn't exist. Coda is an earlier version of the developer himself (Davey Wreden), Kinda like the phone booth section where you're talking to your earlier self still trapped in the prison. Davey Made all of these games inside the Beginners Guide. If you're looking for closure after playing this game, I would highly suggest playing "The Stanley Parable" one of Davey's earlier games. You really get a feel for what he's touching on after you've played that game as well. I've been following Davey for years now. So let me shed some light on a few things real quick.
1) Video games are a modern art form. Thousands of years ago you had sculptures, then you had paintings, then animated films, music and audio visuals. These were all creative outlets for artist made possible by the tools available to them at the time. In this present day, that art form is now video games. It's kind of hard to understand games in this way with titles like halo and call of duty even bioshock and any game with big name company on it, because those games are designed to SELL and to ENTERTAIN. But think of it like this, we used to have paintings because paint was an available tool at the time; computers were not. Leonardo da Vinci didn't create the Mona Lisa so that it could be sold and enjoyed, it was created to be taken as it was and appreciated for just that. This is exactly what The Beginners Guide is supposed to be, something to be taken for exactly what it is. It's not a game in the sense that you beat it or get a high score or anything. It is simply the product of an artists work manifested in the form of interactive audiovisuals known as video games.
2) After Davey released The Stanley Parable (his first huge success) he fell into a deep state of depression. I won't go into explaining it simply to avoid the great injustice it would be to misrepresent what was going on in his life. Instead, here is a link to his website under the name of his old company Galactic Cafe (the company name that Stanley Parable was released under). On the front page, its a bit of read, but he's goes into great detail as to what was going on in his life at the time. http://www.galactic-cafe.com/
These next points are going to be irrelevant if you haven't yet read the article from Davey on the above link.
3) Coda is not a real person. If when you load the game up, and look at the icon for it you will notice this symbol of a circle with a cross extending throughout the circles border. This symbol is called a Coda in music composition (don't look up a dictionary definition for this word Coda because most definitions are partially inaccurate) . A Coda is used to signify the end of a movement in a peace of music. For example, a Symphony is a type classical composition that has Four distinct movements, each movement has its own tone and feel with the first and last movements being nearly the same. The Coda symbol would be used on the sheet music to signify that the current movement has ended and likewise signifies that a new movement is beginning. If that sounds familiar, that's because this is exactly what the door puzzle is: You've reached the end of something, you take a brief moment and pause before continue to the next movement, or in this case, before opening the second door.
4) If you read the blog post you will see that this entire game:The Beginners Guide is Davey's own Coda, his own door puzzle. He was very depressed for a long time with game design, he's always strived for a connection between him and his audience and you'll notice that if you've played the Stanley Parable. at the end of The Tower level there's a quote from 'Coda' on the wall saying "I can't help you, you have to help yourself and that's OK, you're not mine to fix". This is actually Davey passively SPEAKING TO YOU AS THE PLAYER. Davey felt very disconnected from his audience that played his games and very connected to his games himself. So for people to not understand his games and games being all he knows, he felt like he didn't know himself anymore. The Beginners Guide is Davey's attempt to bridge that gap, to help his audience better understand that you don't have to have a solution, to help people understand to just take his games for what they are. In part, by doing this Davey feels that if he can bridge that gap and bring people to understand his games, he can repair himself by gaining that connection with his audience. And by doing this, Davey is walking through the door puzzle closing that second door on the depression filled part of his life and moving forward.
Please note that I have no external proof for any of this to be truth other than the examples I have provided. This is simply my interpretation that I believe to be accurate of my favorite game developer . All I can hope is that my interpretation of this is accurate and that I've reached a connection of understanding that Davey has strived for.
-Astrydax-