Forum:Should there be a page for Fragmented Keys?

Forums: Index > The World that Never was > Should there be a page for Fragmented Keys?

For those who don't already know, it was revealed that Disney was creating a new Mobile and Android game called Kingdom Hearts: Fragmented Keys.

It is believed that such a game is cancelled but such info could be revived based on the potential that it could still be developed. Many official concept art has revealed the following:

New Worlds based on Wreck it Ralph, Star Wars, Lilo & Stitch, and Frozen

Returning Worlds: Dwarf Woodlands, Agrabah, Neverland, Space Paranoids, and Wonderland.

(More info to be mentioned as it relates to this discussion) --Riadse96 (talk) 08:33, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Was this actually real or just some fanboy's imaginings? I've only heard about it through Reddit (through which all other sources got it from), and any possible official source hasn't said anything about it. You want my opinion, it looked fake from the start. Ultima Spark (talk) 10:24, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

First of all, link a source.

Secondly, UNTIL AND UNLESS we have information about this picked up from every Kingdom Hearts site (which, if this was an official game, would likely be the case), we're not putting this information up. TRSNX 11:40, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Here are the articles from Kh13.com if anyone is interested: 1 2

Personally, I think that there are a lot of things that don't add up regarding the development history of the game, KHInsider summarized it here. --ShardofTruth 13:33, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

So let me sum this up. Reddit user puts up a screenshot. Said screenshot is backed by some unknown user who lost his phone, which would probably turn out to be nothing more than a sockpuppet. Then there are loads of stolen art passed off as concept art of this "game"? Have the creators of said artwork actually said anything? I mean, maybe there'd be no undue distress call for Disney to react to its artwork being used in this manner because they'd just swat it off like a fly. But the fanart? Has no one actually stepped forward to clear the air about this? What's worse is that IGN is also backing this story up, not knowing that it's quite obviously fake. Today you will be examined for the Mark of Mastery. • TroisNyxÉtienne — 16:01, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

I like this article from Khdecoded as it reveals that the art came from GFL Animation Studios which has since taken the images down. The images are rather too complex to be fan art. --Riadse96 (talk) 17:16, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

If IGN confirms it, I'm inclined to believe it since we treat it as an official source. TheFifteenthMember 18:27, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

The KHdecoded article appears to be a reader-submitted article, without factchecking oversight, and even the title casts doubt on the claims -- also, the art is pretty simple, and nothing about it sounds official. If there's no statement from a reliable source, someone not doing laughable "internet sleuthing", then this is an absolute no -- even the IGN article seems to be operating on hearsay. As a basic requirement, any reputable news source would be able to easily get an answer from Disney, GFL, or Square Enix instead of relying on a bullshit reddit post."We're werewolves, not swearwolves." (KrytenKoro) 19:57, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Hell, have any of the Kingdom Hearts fansites throwing away their reputation on this done a basic trademark patent search? Producers register tons of optional names before they put this much work into a thing, it is ludicrous to believe that they got to the concept art and story planning stage without staking claims on possible names."We're werewolves, not swearwolves." (KrytenKoro) 20:04, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Interesting, today's the first time I see this has actually gotten any attention. My understanding is different to the one expressed in KHInsider, though I remain equally skeptical. Based solely on what is expressed/written in the KH13 articles, from what I know, the entire concept of the game is based on the leaking of information by a "former developer" of the game, who posted this information on his personal LinkedIn profile. Then come all the blog links that supposedly were linked on his profile that housed the concept art. I became skeptical when I saw the concept art. Then there's the issue of Frozen being involved in the game, a game in planning nine months before Frozen had actually premiered. Not to mention, as KHInsider has noted, the concept art is really badly made. My explanation can be found on the KH13 article comments, to which DChiuch strongly believed he there was a perfect explanation for it. There does appear that a game (different from this one) was in development at about the same time, but I think that while that one is more probable to have existed, this one...not so much. It is my belief that the game never existed, and KH13 is the sad victim of a scam levied against the Kingdom Hearts community, probably for the purpose of upping up the scammers own resumes (Kinda wish that the this kinda publication had been given to our "scam"/prank). KeybladeSpyMaster 00:46, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

What would really help, right about now, is if Disney or SE actually issued an official statement either supporting or refuting this, so we know once and for all. That might happen, I don't know, several months from now... but it would really be appreciated. Not for our sake, of course, because we're not buying it -- but for the sake of the hundreds who have gone gaga for it, not knowing if it is a scam or not. Helping others always comes before asking others for help. • TroisNyxÉtienne — 10:46, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I wanted to clear up KH13's reputation regarding this story. Kingdom Hearts Fragmented Keys is definitely 100% real, and any claims that have been made about us being fooled are completely untrue. Even more evidence has appeared since we initially broke this story – for instance, check out this user on LinkedIn. This user is a verified ex-employee, and links to 11 other team members who worked on the Fragmented Keys project. You can check out all of their profiles and cross-reference them – a bunch of them mention Fragmented Keys and many of them can be verified as legitimate. There is tons of evidence. I've taken a screenshot of this in case they remove it from their page. --DChiuch (talk) 06:48, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

As it's a cancelled project, I think it's important enough that we go ahead and actually make a page on it. Truth be told, it's not much different from our Removed content page. The problem at hand is the lack of, well, content regarding Fragmented Keys. There is no concept art. The "screenshots" that I've seen, if they can even be called that, are dubious at best (deviantArt has better fan-made stuff), and we don't even have so much as a tentative project logo. Other than a name and an incomplete staff list, we just don't have enough to actually make anything of it. A Fragmented Keys page would look a lot like "Kingdom Hearts: Fragmented Keys is a cancelled Kingdom Hearts spin-off that was undergoing development for the iOS. Little is known about it as no official information was ever made public." The end. That would literally be the entire composition of the page. --Webber22 (talk) 02:33, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I feel like there's a substantial amount of information. From 1 we know the studio that was developing the game was Wideload Games (now defunct), we know a feature list, the platforms it was going to be on, and the game engine / language that the game was developed using. 2 has a screenshot of the title screen of the demo (we contacted this user and verified that they really were indeed part of Disney's beta testing program, so this is almost certainly legitimate) as well as a screenshot of the app's icon in the comments. 3 has information about all of the concept art that we found for the game, which allows us to write about all of the worlds/movies that were at the very least considered during the concept stage. Yes this concept art was contentious due to its quality, but it was on an official website for a very real animation studio with a confirmed history of working on big name titles. Another site tried to spread some misinformation that this wasn't on GFL's official website, but this is untrue, you can verify that www.gflanimationstudios.com is official. Although GFL took the concept artwork offline as a result of us breaking the story, you can still see a reference to it on the director's LinkedIn page and you can still access the pages through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, eg. here. We also backed up all of the art in our gallery.

Please let me know if anyone is unconvinced about anything, or has some doubts, or requires more information. I know the quality of the concept art makes this look dubious, but we're very confident about all of our published findings. --DChiuch (talk) 06:14, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Maybe we could put it on the Removed Content page? Chainoffire 04:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I think a cancelled game is very different to removed content from released games. Personally I think we have enough information here for an entire article (which I've outlined above), but if everyone is against that then maybe a "Cancelled games" page? There is also "Kingdom Hearts Online" to talk about (but there is strong evidence that Kingdom Hearts Online became Kingdom Hearts Fragmented Keys), and the original "mystery game" "Birth by Sleep sequel" referred to in a few interviews, which was originally going to be on PSP and of course is now being realised as BBS0.2. Either way, I feel like Fragmented Keys is fundamentally different to the stuff on the "Removed Content" page, and my personal view is that each of these cancelled titles deserves its own page. --DChiuch (talk) 06:14, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Did Disney or anyone else actually trademark the name, though? That should neatly answer whether the game was real or not. It should also be fairly easy to contact SE or Disney about it."We're werewolves, not swearwolves." (KrytenKoro) 12:20, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Plenty of things are real and not trademarked. In fact, only "KINGDOM HEARTS" and "KINGDOM HEARTS CHAIN OF MEMORIES" are trademarked in the US, none of the other games appear on trademark databases (you can verify this on uspto.gov). Also, they wouldn't trademark a secret title until they were sure that they were going to release it. Not sure why you'd think that it has to be trademarked to be real. It also wouldn't be easy to contact SE or Disney about it, since not many companies are happy to openly talk about secret, unannounced and cancelled projects. --DChiuch (talk) 13:04, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Admittedly, I'm not a trademark law buff, but I was able to find more than just KH and CoM.

• Birth by sleep, filed just a few days after the game was announced in Japan.
• 358/2 Days, filed at the same time.
• (Incidentally, CoM is trademarked as "Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories" because a trademark for "Chain of Memories" already existed.)

I can't find Unchained or coded, but those are also super-generic words that Disney may have not been able to trademark. Almost all of them are copyrighted, too. Fragmented Keys produces no hits.

This guy was the one who arranged for us to participate in the launch of KH3D. Why not just send him an e-mail, asking if he is able to discuss the matter? He, or whoever he refers you to, may not be able to actually give specifics, but you can trust they wouldn't outright lie about whether there were specifics to be had."We're werewolves, not swearwolves." (KrytenKoro) 16:18, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Oops my mistake, you're right – there are some trademarks for other games, but still, not all of them, so the lack of a trademark isn't evidence. It's neither here nor there that "Fragmented Keys" has no hits on the trademark database. It makes sense that they wouldn't want to register it at the trademark office until it was officially announced, they wouldn't want to reveal the game that way. I know that some game announcements get leaked this way, but this is relatively rare.

I don't think he would be the best person to contact as Fragmented Keys seems to have been 100% a Disney thing, similar to KH V-Cast, with no involvement from Square. It would be better to contact some of the people from Wideload Games / Disney who list the game on their CVs. Still, even without doing this it's a certainty that this game existed. --DChiuch (talk) 17:31, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

But it doesn't really change the fact that we have next to nothing to go on, and the little that we do have is hilariously suspect. I'm fairly open-minded; I believe this has just as much of a possibility to be real than fake, but to side with the real bit I'd need more evidence that what we currently have. --Webber22 (talk) 16:12, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

The evidence that I outlined a few posts up is absolutely solid, I see no reason to doubt it. If it was a single piece of evidence, maybe, but we have multiple sources of evidence that can all be cross-referenced, and that are all very solid if you look into it. --DChiuch (talk) 17:31, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Sorry man, but that stuff is just too easy to fake.  :( A couple of years ago, I trolled the FF community regarding a Type-0 stateside release, with all the bells and whistles. If you want the confirmed existence of something that is dubious, you need at least three individual sources that can be corroborated, preferably in direct contact - ideally, each contact assigned to a different person. To further make it concrete, these contacts should all be consulted by different sites. Fragmented Keys was only covered by you guys, only has a single contact with an extremely suspect portfolio to begin with, and the included "screenshot" contains JPEG artifacts forming a sort of "halo" around the logo - something that can only come from image editing resources. In contrast, an actual game screenshot would utilize image compression with the same pixel ratio as the rest of the individual assets on the image, even IF compressed to a JPEG resolution, like Famitsu does. Like I said man, I pulled this stunt before myself and I can recognize it a mile away.  :< But all the same, I'm all for putting up a page - IF we can get enough concrete evidence on it. This is a wiki based on factual information, so for all intents and purposes, we follow the rules of journalistic integrity...right? So, there are certain standards we gotta abide by. Ask any other site out there, from KHInsider, to KH-Vids - it doesn't even HAVE to be KH oriented, and they'll tell you the same thing. Pete Campbell from KHU now works as a professional editor and AT consultant; he'll tell you the same thing. And I know you know him and are cool with him. --Webber22 (talk) 20:07, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

It would be easy to fake some content, sure – but it's NOT easy to get 11 Disney employees to list the title on their LinkedIn, to get a major animation studio (GFL Animation) to list the game and concept art on their LinkedIn and websites, and to get a confirmed Disney beta tester to post a fake screenshot on reddit. Absolutely none of that would be easy to do. Tell me how ANY of those could be faked, and then tell me how they can ALL be fake together, it's just impossible.

You are trying to disprove the whole thing by pointing out little quality things, while addressing none of the solid evidence. It's not just a single source, in addition to the GFL Animation thing and the person from the Disney beta testing program, we also have all of these employees: [there's the first one that removed their profile, he requested that I remove him from this story so I won't link to him] 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. Note that some of these people list it as "Unannounced Mobile Game for Disney Interactive", while some multiple the exact same project as "Kingdom Hearts Fragmented Keys", they can all be cross-referenced. Tell me that ALL of these profiles are fake (even though they go years back and are linked to from the employees other social media channels) AND that GFL Animation Studios is fake (even though they appear in the credits for several motion pictures, and that their Kingdom Hearts Fragmented Keys concept art page was online multiple months before this story ever broke). Just saying "oh this pixel here is off" or "this is terrible DeviantART quality" is not an argument for it being fake, unless you address all of this solid evidence and provide an alternate explanation.

PS: I find your comments about journalistic integrity bizarre. I don't have to ask other sites to know journalistic integrity exists and is important, obviously we know that and it plays a role in KH13. That's why we did our due diligence in researching the story, considered the possibility that it could be fake, found that it couldn't and only then reported the story, laying all of the evidence out there. Does it matter that I know Pete, and that he has a respectable profession with standards? I could tell you all my real life stuff and career but let's not make this about reputation, let's actually examine the evidence. --DChiuch (talk) 06:20, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

If there's anything bizarre about this is how hilariously defensive and militant you are about this. I'm saying consult Pete. Let someone professional examine the evidence. Technically speaking, I'm capable of doing that - but like you said, I won't enter my reputation or work life into this. Not to mention I have biases about this, even if I admit I'm fairly open-minded about the possibility.  :/ --Webber22 (talk) 07:09, 30 April 2016 (UTC)