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The story is fictional, how fictional, the creators won't say. Most fiction has some impetus in reality to have inspired it, however.
No and I don't think there is such a thing as a "correct interpretation".
I read it first from my perspective as a level designer, then from the perspective as someone who is trans. Yes, you can read TBG as a trans allegory. No it's not "the correct interpretation" because that doesn't exist.
As for the hacking and stealing one, it wouldn't be on steam. The game is made by a team of people Davey hired. Generally, most people trying to interpret the game differentiate between real-life-Davey-Wreden and The-Beginners-Guide-Davey-Narrator. As for Coda, there's not much consensus.
I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting the work being sold is literally someone else's work; it can very easily however be interpreted as an allegory for guilt over having done so in the past or having shown another's work without permission in the past. One of these things is also far more likely than the other from a pure statistical standpoint. Despite obviously being a work of fiction, it would also be possible to inherit or license someone's work if they're dead. I had thought the narrative was going to go to the Coda character committing suicide until the end reveal myself. Even that is frankly more likely from a statistical standpoint.
There's also the fact that not everyone who has anxiety or crises of identity at some point in their life is trans. In fact, it would seem the VAST majority who have these psychological issues from time to time are not trans. This can easily be interpreted as anxiety as a creator over throwing away work that people never see. Work that could be successful or well received, but no one will know because it's never shown. That has absolutely nothing to do with having gender dysphoria whatsoever. You may as well claim Joe's Garage is about gender dysphoria for all such an assumption is worth.
There's no 'correct interpretation' to any art that's abstract enough. Are any of the creators trans and thus why people like you need to shove in this shoehorned interpretation? I don't really care if they are, but if this interpretation had enough weight to be relevant to anyone who isn't, you'd think at some point it would have been outright said or at least hinted at beyond what only those who are trans see. Instead, the creators refuse to comment on any interpretations beyond confirming the story is fictional. Which itself doesn't say much. I've seen works of fiction that are clearly on the nose 'non-fiction'. i.e., beyond an allegory but not a wholly true account.
Searching for this game and trans seems to only generate blog post upon blog post of interpretation exclusively by tans people who apparently also think it's a drinker's fault if a teetotaler goes to a bar and gets offended or a vegan goes to a steakhouse and gets offended. This is actually one of the arguments I saw; that people having different ideas, behaviors, and preferences to your precious flower like state is not only 'offensive', but also somehow an attack on your identity and that this publicly released video game is somehow an extension of your personal safe space from the offensive drinkers and steak eaters as it were. Isn't the entire point of being forced to tolerate your condition that we all have to tolerate that everyone has different behaviors, preferences, and ideas in the first place?
Ironically this is what the other replies in this thread are demonstrating. lol
Nowhere did Holly say it *HAD* to be a trans allegory, as you inaccurately state. In fact, what Holly actually said was I don't think there is such a thing as a "correct interpretation". You yourself say There's no 'correct interpretation' to any art that's abstract enough. In fact, it really seems like you saw the word "trans" and got completely triggered and just vomited paragraph after paragraph telling someone who just said they don't believe in correct interpretations that they shouldn't shoehorn and mandate interpretations.
Also, I mean... Coda is referred to by the main character exclusively with male pronouns, and the main character is explicitly male. Yet the most-used pronoun within Coda's games is she/her. In fact, I don't know if he/him shows up in Coda's games at all. Maybe in one of the speech bubbles in the fake multiplayer level? And this *is* a game about an introspective artist trying to communicate something to someone who is just refusing to hear it and constantly disrespecting the artist's boundaries.
Interpretations don't have to be intended by the artist. That's the whole point - it's being *interpreted*. Which you'd think people would understand on a board for a game about what the artist loses when an audience sees their work (and the profound violence of forcing that loss upon the artist without their consent). So it makes sense that trans people would read Coda's poem about a girl looking back, and then see how female pronouns keep popping up in the dialogues between Coda and the main character, and see how many of Coda's games were about escaping prisons you were placed into from inception, and then feel a resonance with their own life.