Narrative Review: The Beginner’s Guide
“I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest. So I can be for you what you want to see” [1]
-Ben Folds Five, Best Imitation of Myself
Overview
There is one thing to mention before beginning to discuss the enigmatic piece of interactive fiction known as The Beginner’s Guide. The game is a work of fiction. Thinly veiled? Based on true events? Perhaps, but the story the game tells is not in and of itself a true one. Due to the style of the game’s author, Davey Wreden, the audience has come expect the use of meta-narrative in his works. His first interactive piece, The Stanley Parable, showed us this quite clearly. However, The Beginner’s Guide takes meta-storytelling to a whole new level. Despite the fact that the game appears to be telling a specific story about its author, this story is not true.
The Beginner’s Guide is an interactive-fiction based “walking-simulator” created and conceptualized by Wreden[2], who is well-known for his highly lauded comedy epic, The Stanley Parable. Unlike its humorous predecessor, The Beginner’s Guide tells a very personal and somber tale about the rift between two friends, and the exploration of their own creative processes. The piece tells the story of game developer Davey, as he makes an effort to reach out to old friend and fellow developer Coda. Davey does so by packaging a series of Coda’s games together and walking through his creative processes for each. The package of games, known simply as The Beginner’s Guide, features sixteen of Coda’s games. Davey suspects each game contains some kind of underlying meaning or hidden message intended for the player, who in this case is himself. However, Davey fails to realize that Coda may have just been making games to have fun, and that there may not be any kind of hidden meaning behind them at all. In the process of sharing and analyzing Coda’s games, Davey finds he has further distanced himself from the actual creator, himself.
[1] Unless otherwise specified, quotes used will be taken directly from The Beginner’s Guide
[2] The author of The Beginner’s Guide will be henceforth referred to as Wreden, while the self-insert character of Davey Wreden within the context of the story will be referred to as Davey
Characters
The Beginner’s Guide features two explicitly-identified characters: Davey and Coda. However, there is another more elusive character mentioned only through the use of her pronouns, Her. In addition to the in-game narrative roles these characters play, they also each represent a different aspect of Wreden’s own creative psyche and process, which will be referred to as his “Creative Archetypes”.
● Davey: Davey is a naive and optimistic game developer who is eager to please and gain the acceptance of others. He is new to his craft, and finds inspiration in the world and people around him, desperately wanting to create games that have a part of himself packaged within. He comes to focus on the works of a friend named Coda, whom he meets at a game jam in Sacramento, California. He notices immediately that Coda’s games are somewhat different than the rest, and Davey makes a strong effort to befriend the fellow developer in order to discover where he gets his creative spark. Coming off perhaps a bit too strong, Davey’s journey to learn more about Coda and his work creates distance between Coda and himself. Their friendship crumbles, and Coda stops making games. In a last ditch effort to make contact with his friend, Davey packages a series of Coda’s games together and releases them in order to reach out.
○ Creative Archetype #1 — The Architect: With design, there must always be intent. The architect archetype searches earnestly for the meaning behind things, why they are constructed, how they can be improved, and how they are created. The architect answers these questions with, and works in absolutes. With a protractor and a compass, they work hard to build the future out of wood, concrete, and Lego Mindstorms.
● Coda: A game developer and a free spirit, Coda enjoys creating and developing games for the sake of making them. He likes to develop experimental, silly, and sometimes outright frustrating-to-play games using Valve’s Source engine. Most of these interactive experiences are first person exploration-based games with some form of loosely framed narrative elements. Coda does not necessarily believe that games need to be fun, or even “playable” in the strictest sense of the word, so long as they contain interactive elements. From a personality standpoint, Coda seems to be somewhat standoffish, but kind when approached. However, he is also someone who feels violated when his personal boundaries are crossed, something that Davey does to him quite often. Other than these facts, most of what player’s know about Coda is told through the unreliable voice of Davey. As a result of this, it is somewhat difficult to ascertain how much Davey tells us is actually true about Coda. Nonetheless, according to Davey, Coda is someone who thinks very carefully about what mechanics mean in his games, and connects them using overarching motifs and symbols. However, it is fairly clear that this is likely untrue, and is in fact Davey’s own personal interpretation of Coda’s process. It is much more likely that Coda simply enjoys making weird games for weirdness’ sake.
○ Creative Archetype #2 — The Artist: Sometimes the question is more important than the answer. The artist lives in the present, always seeking to capture the fleeting moment before it passes. To express one’s inner state and to reflect one’s outer. Be it a wall, canvas, or Cintiq screen, to be an artist is to create a mirror frozen in time.
● Her: Though it is somewhat unclear whether or not She was intended to be a fully-fledged character, or simply to serve as a metaphor, She has an unmistakably important role throughout the narrative of The Beginner’s Guide. In several key moments of Coda’s games, a woman speaks, is spoken to, is referred to, or even appears directly to the player of the game. The key similarity between each of these isolated events is that she appears whenever Coda’s games reach a state of personal and emotional vulnerability. As such, it can be assumed that she is an invention of Coda used to create something outside of himself with enough degrees of separation to project his inner-most insecurities, fears, and emotions. In separating these feelings into a fictional character, he is able to fully understand and grapple with them.
○ Creative Archetype #3 — The Author: The author is not concerned with questions or answers, but rather the journey it takes to receive them. Like the hero, the author embarks on a quest of many trials and tribulations. She is often put under a great deal of emotional stress before crossing her own personal thresholds. Though the pen may be mightier than her sword, it is debatable which is best for slaying dragons.
“He was, himself, the most horrible creature he could imagine.”
- Chapter 8: Notes
Breakdown
To say The Beginner’s Guide is a deep dive into the themes of meta-narrative, the creative process, mental illness, game analysis, imposter syndrome, and the darker parts of video game development would be an understatement. This master-work of experimental fiction explores all of these concepts and more, and does so in a way that is both personally relatable and emotionally touching to anyone of the artistic persuasion. At times, its narrative becomes so personal that it verges on memoir, or at the very least, autobiographical-fiction, from the perspective of its author. Through the use of narrative devices, repetitive imagery and motifs, as well as several thinly veiled metaphors, Wreden gives us a peek behind the curtain at himself, his fears, his theories and thoughts on game design, as well as his opinions on the artistic process as a whole. As a result of its personal tone, it is important to first understand the context from which this piece was conceived to more properly comprehend the themes it tackles.
After the release of Wreden’s previous work, The Stanley Parable, he seemed to find himself in a stupor of post-success depression. Though never confirmed directly by Wreden, it is no great surprise that such a thing could happen following success. Continuing on after accomplishments can often be an extremely difficult task for artists. In addition to creative block, which can arise as a result of burnout, concern with the need to improve with each and every project can be extremely exhausting. Whether these pressures are external or internal, they can often become serious issues for artists if these self-imposed expectations are not met. As a result, it is understandable why the success of a previous game could leave Wreden with such a loss for what to do next. As many often do, Wreden found himself returning to the classic author’s anthem: “write what you know.”
The structure of The Beginner’s Guide has the player follow the voice of the Davey as he guides players through a series of sixteen small games each created and conceived by Coda. As the player walks through this sequence of games, Davey explains his own interpretations and theories of what he thinks each game means, as well as including related personal anecdotes about himself, Coda, and their relationship. Throughout the course of the narrative, Davey often modifies these experiences slightly in order to make them more accessible to players. In this sense, he makes Coda’s overall vision more easily understood. However, it becomes clear as the story progresses that he does so to the detriment of both the work as a whole, and the respect of its creator and his privacy. In fact, “Coda’s Vision” may not even exist, and has very likely been created by Davey as a device that allows him to insert his own meaning and self-importance into Coda’s work.
Wreden is able to effectively isolate his own thoughts, emotions, and feelings about his own work and how others view it into fictional characters, or archetypes. The Beginner’s Guide, among other things, becomes Wreden’s journey into using these archetypes to effectively overcome his feelings of depression by creating a conversation between three different creative perspectives. In doing so, he is able to come to a conclusion about his own identity as a game designer. For us as players to come to this understanding ourselves, it is necessary to follow in Davey’s footsteps, to properly analyze and understand each of Coda’s games. In this way, we can draw our own conclusions and find our own meaning from them, as Davey does throughout.
Prologue — Intro: Coda’s first level is, quite simply: a Counter Strike map. The player is given several minutes to mull about as Davey explains what this collection of games is about, why he has compiled it, and what his intentions are in doing so. To put it simply, Davey has put together the compilation to encourage Coda to create again, despite the fact that it was Davey who turned him off from making games in the first place. In terms of the layout of the map itself, it is fairly standard fare for a Counter Strike multiplayer map. Davey notes that despite having the simple aesthetic of a desert town, the map itself has random colored blocks placed throughout; a “calling card”, from their creator. It is this fact that first causes Davey to wonder: “What was going through his [Coda’s] head as he was building this?” This question becomes a common one that Davey continues to ask and attempts to answer going forward. To find the “meaning” behind Coda’s work.
Chapter 1 — Whisper: The next level, and first of Coda’s proper games is a first-person shooter called Escape from Whisper. In Whisper, the player traverses a series of winding corridors around a spaceship with a gun to reactivate the “Whisper Machine”. Davey notes that the game appears to be unfinished, as there are no enemies to fight in spite of the fact that the player is given a weapon. As a result of it being the first of Coda’s games, it also is the first instance we as players are introduced to a series of running motifs and symbols that appear throughout the compilation. In this level, Davey gives the player the option to skip a “seemingly pointless maze” placed haphazardly in the map’s mid-section. Davey modifies Coda’s games often in this way, explaining that certain parts of them are not important. In doing so, Davey fundamentally changes the work to cater towards his specific goals, interpretations, and the thesis of his compilation. This is very similar to how one might write an analytical essay.
Another symbol introduced in this level is the reappearing image of Coda’s three dots. Put simply, the dots are three circles placed in a triangle formation and painted onto several walls throughout the compilation. Coda’s three dots become a symbol of his artistic mark and identity. Similar to the colored blocks from the Counter Strike map, they become a “calling card” from their creator, despite not having any specific meaning attached to them at all. The ending of the game directs the player to walk into a laser beam in order to save the space ship via voice over, and is one of the only read lines in the game not spoken by Davey. Instead, the line, “It’s so much to ask, but for all of our lives…could you do it? Could you give yourself?” is read by a woman: the first appearance of the mysterious third character who will be referred to as Her. In asking the player to sacrifice themselves, it can be interpreted as a metaphor for the creative archetype of “the author” sacrificing herself for the betterment of the work. Throwing herself into the gauntlet over and over to produce art in spite of the personal consequences. When the player steps into the beam, instead of dying, they begin to ascend upward, which Davey calls out as a bug intentionally left in to add a human element to the game’s ending. Davey moves to the next game, simply saying, “I have no idea what he [Coda] was thinking, but what’s clear is that after making this, something lodges itself in his brain.”
Chapter 2 — Backwards: The second game is a much shorter and more experimental one called The Past was Behind Her, in which the player can only traverse forward by walking backward. This is the second instance in which an ambiguous she pronoun is used, both in the game’s name and in the in-game text. The in-game dialogue also reflects Davey’s interpretations on the game. His read is that the game is about changing one’s perspective, and how the future is uncertain. The process of stopping and looking backward before moving on also becomes a running theme throughout the collection, representing the author, and in reflection Coda and Wreden’s creative process on how they move on to new projects. It also foreshadows The Puzzle, a recurring mechanic in Chapter 5.
Chapter 3 — Entering: The third “game” simply has the player walk forward for several moments until they see a sign that reads, “YOU ARE NOW ENTERING,” after which the game ends. This level reflects similar themes as those introduced in Chapter 2, as it is sandwiched between Chapters 4–5, and another game called Exiting. The Entering and Exiting games serve as bookmarks for introducing new ideas, ways to look backward before moving forward.
Chapter 4 — Stairs: Perhaps one of the most blunt of Coda’s games, Nonsense in Nearly Every Direction has the player climb a long staircase to reach a room at the top of a tower. However, the higher the player climbs, the slower they become. Again, Davey gives players the option to skip this segment by modifying the game itself. Triggered by pressing the enter key, the player’s speed returns back to normal. Interestingly enough, the enter key being used to skip past Coda’s intended gameplay segments is used over and over, and may be a throwback to the previous game, Entering. Essentially, Davey is blindly skipping Coda’s own intentions in favor of his own. Upon reaching the top of the tower, the player finds themselves in a room plastered with tons of short sentence fragments, each containing a game idea. In Davey’s words; “Coda would often tell me [Davey] that he didn’t mind if people thought of him as cold or distant, he said that he knew he was actually a vibrant and compassionate person, but that it takes time to really see that. It can be a very slow climb to get there.” Essentially, Coda is someone who identifies as somewhat of a tortured artist. He does not mind the isolation and loneliness that comes with being stranded atop a tower nobody is meant to reach, as long as he is free to create and express himself.
Chapter 5 — Puzzle: Following Coda’s seemingly non-sequitur naming scheme, Ready Set Fish is a game that introduces an extremely important mechanic used throughout the rest of the game, The Puzzle. This puzzle, while not necessarily designed to be challenging, is used to denote transitions between physical spaces in Coda’s worlds, as well as between metaphysical ideas. It always follows a specific pattern: there is a door with a switch on its exterior. The switch opens the door, but there is a second door behind the first which remains closed. To open the second door, you must pull back the lever and run through the dark space between the two doors before the first door closes. After doing so, you will find a second lever on the inside that will open the second door. Crossing a threshold, moving from one idea to the next, putting the past behind you before you are able to move forward. These are all valid interpretations of the puzzle. After solving the puzzle, Davey instructs the player to again use the enter key to remove the walls of a hidden area. Behind them, a complex series of mazes can be seen in the distance. Similar to the previous game, as Davey explains it, “…you don’t get to know what you’re missing, or even that you’re missing anything, that’s not your role as a player.” It was never the artist; Coda’s, intent for the player to ever see the room full of game ideas or the mazes, he felt content just knowing he put them there. However, as Davey asks next, “So if your [The Player’s] role here is not to understand, then what is it?”
Chapter 6 — Exiting: An almost identical experience to the game Entering, other than the sign now reading “YOU ARE NOW EXITING.” Between Chapters 4–5, the parallel that can be drawn between the door puzzle and the game’s Entering and Exiting games is uncanny, Entering being the first door, Stairs and Puzzle being the dark space between new ideas, and Exiting being the second door. Even Davey realizes that “There’s a bigger picture that all of his [Coda’s] games are meant to play… some larger meaning that we won’t be able to grasp until we’ve seen all of them…”.
Chapter 7 — Down: In The Great and Lovely Descent, Davey discusses Coda’s use of tools such as the Source engine as the player climbs down into the depths of a coffee shop. After this, the player finds themselves trapped in some kind of prison. In addition to seeing Coda’s three dots a second time, we are introduced to two new symbols in this chapter, one being Coda’s prisons. In the following games, Coda seems to explore a fascination with prisons, the player often being locked inside them and unable to escape. In this scenario, Davey mentions this particular prison locked players inside for an entire hour before letting them go, but he yet again modifies the game for an earlier release. Whether or not they in some of way express Coda’s mental state, his feelings of loneliness, or quite simply that he feels trapped, he continues to explore the concept of prisons throughout the collection.
After escaping the prison, the player is confronted with three non-player characters, each of whom asks how to solve the puzzle. Despite the player’s best attempts to describe it to them, the characters only seem to give the player the cryptic warning that they “…will visit them again soon”. The three non-player characters can be assumed to represent Wreden’s three schools of thought, the architect, the artist, and the author, also corresponding to each of Coda’s three dots. Lastly, the game ends with a final important milestone, quite literally, a lamppost. Davey explains that Coda fixates on lampposts, and that Coda could only could make pointless games for so long. The lamppost was a destination. However, it is later revealed that Davey is the one who added lampposts to Coda’s games in the first place. That he was the one searching for a destination, or a meaning in someone else’s work.
Chapter 8 — Notes: Despite what the game may say upfront, Notes is not in fact connected to the internet. Notes has the player traverse a large cavernous room littered with small blue notes left by “other players”, each commenting on some part of the level, or just spouting random nonsense. As Davey discusses, and as can be probably guessed at by the player, each note was in fact hand written and placed around the room by Coda. As Davey explains; the notes “convey a sense of loneliness… [a] person who’s filled with thoughts…and has no way to express them except as scattered and unheard voices in a game that wasn’t meant to be played.” The importance of this statement is insurmountable, as it mirrors how Davey and Wreden must have felt while actually creating The Beginner’s Guide, a game meant to act as a conversation with one’s own self. In the next room, a giant and colorful painting adorns the wall, one which looks intricate from far away, but from up close is revealed to be no more than a series of random dots. Again, the player comes across the puzzle, and as Davey explains it, it is a mechanism with a reliable solution Coda uses to move on. Behind the second door lies another lamppost surrounded by typing typewriters. Perhaps, they are meant to mirror the loneliness of the messages outside. Or maybe, as the notes describe the giant painting; “PAINTING! WHAT DOES IT MEAN?”…“Spoiler, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Chapter 9 — Escape: In the once again oddly titled Pornstars Die Too, Coda returns to his exploration of prisons. This time specifically, many iterations of the same prison, one with modern furniture and bars with a view of the outside. Davey cycles through many different versions of this prison, one with Coda’s three dots, one with the puzzle on the outside out of reach, and countless others, each with no escape. If anything, this particular game shows that Coda has stuck himself on a creative concept with no idea of a solution. As Davey describes, “Coda doesn’t have that voice telling [him] to stop, that particular mechanism of defense against [himself].” As a result, he revisits the same prison over and over until finally, he creates something different. This final version has the player start in a field outside of the prison, directing them to walk toward a phone booth lit by a lamppost. The player than calls a past version of themselves on the phone to let them know that one day they will escape the prison. The cyclical nature of this conversation mirrors the one in Notes, in which Coda attempts to talk himself out of a rut, only to find it exemplify his loneliness further. The only way he is able to escape is to admit to himself that his isolated creative process is toxic.
Chapter 10 — House: In a stark contrast to previous games, House takes the form of a kind of house-cleaning simulator, in which the player performs repetitive tasks such as cleaning dishes and straightening sheets. In an effort to talk to someone other than himself, Coda creates a character who he can have a conversation with, a fellow house cleaner. In a way, this may in fact be one of the most meta-narrative points of the entire game. Coda, in an effort to get past negative creative feelings, creates a character to help him cope. In a way, this is one of the theses’ of The Beginner’s Guide, a game in which Wreden creates three fictional character archetypes to have the exact same conversation. Originally designed to loop cleaning tasks forever by Coda, Davey cuts off the game prematurely stating that “you can’t stay in the dark space for too long…you have to keep moving…Which is the whole point of the puzzle doors, right?… I really thought that was the point…” The level ends as the player passes through the door puzzle to find a lamppost. Clearly, Davey is reaching a point in Coda’s games where he is now uncertain of what they actually mean.
Chapter 11 — Lecture: To perhaps provide a bit of levity after the last few hard hitting games, Items You Love at Member Only Prices has the player assume the role of a student in a lecture hall listening to a teacher give an arrogant speech on “How to be Perfect”. The roles are then reversed, revealing the teacher’s inner thoughts to be just as scared and flawed as anyone’s. Interestingly, from the teacher’s perspective, the back of the classroom is a swirling vortex of doom with an all too familiar lamppost lighting the way, both of which did not exist from the student’s perspective. This may be some form of commentary from Coda, something along the lines of: “there are no professionals” or “everyone is fake”. However, the lamppost suggests Davey had a part to play as well. If not created by the expert, could it in fact be the work of the amateur?
Chapter 12 — Theater: Returning to the hard hitters, Theater has the player start in the backstage of an auditorium. After walking on-stage to an empty room, the light’s snap on. As described in-game, a role-play begins, “We are at a gathering of professionals. The woman across the room…is a professional photographer of animals. It’s your dream to photograph animals professionally. Go on, say something to her,” after which the player is given several dialogue options which all more or less amount to stammering. Finally, a direct line of communication between Coda; the artist, and her; the author. Almost in a direct parallel to Lecture, the amateur artist (Coda) is barely able to get a word in to the professional author (her). As a result of this unfortunate interaction, Coda decides to lock himself in another prison. At the end of a long dark hallway, a lonely lamppost sits. Davey, now starting to sound audibly upset explains: “that wasn’t what I wanted for him or for his games. Because I feel like a lot of his games are inviting me to connect, to connect with this person, to bring him closer.”
Chapter 13 — Mobius: In Mobius Trip, as the name suggests, Coda can no longer make heads or tails of his situation. The game even instructs players to only play it blind-folded, though it is impossible to beat in this way. The level’s setting has the player return to the spaceship from Chapter 1, the SS Whisper, though this time with a clear view from the bridge as the ship hurtles toward a giant version of the door puzzle. The only way to stop the ship for hurtling toward a fail state is by talking to a man named “Truth,” who is standing next to a lamppost. Coda finally confesses that he has run out of ideas, that he is burnt out, and that his art is no longer fulfilling. This moment, while heartbreaking, must have been an enormous relief for Coda. Perhaps the most valuable skill as a creative person it seems, is knowing when to stop. But Davey on the other hand does not stop: “Here was the point in my [Davey’s] relationship with Coda where I really started to wonder if he needed my help in some way.”
Chapter 14 — Island: The importance of the Island is that it seems to be the only part of the game where Davey breaks character, albeit for a brief moment, and becomes Wreden. The player starts in a white expanse, following a disembodied voice as it leads them through small islands that appear progressively. You as the player are looking for something known simply as the “Machine,” a device that used to protect you and give you ideas. The voice says they know where it is, but that it is guarded by a difficult puzzle. As the player and the voice search for the Machine, Davey begins to unravel, finally realizing the fault in Coda’s philosophy, that “You can’t talk yourself out of loneliness…You can’t be the one writing both the questions and the answers, then there’s no movement.” Truth be told, you cannot effectively have a conversation with yourself.
And it is as Davey explains this that the player reaches and solves the puzzle, revealing a room which contains parts of the transcript from various levels of The Beginner’s Guide. The voice asks Coda to lie, to say that his work is not toxic. Each time he does so the walls crack, revealing even more words. In an almost physical manifestation, Coda seems to be unraveling each time he lies about the true nature of his work. This is a fairly direct parallel to Mobius Trip, where Coda forces himself to come to terms with the “truth” that his work is causing himself harm. When the walls finally break, it is revealed that the player is on the outside of the prison from Chapter 9. Inside the prison is a woman crying in fetal position on the couch, the only character in the game to have both a face and a voice. This character is most likely Her; the author, Wreden’s most vulnerable and emotional side. And vulnerable indeed, as for the first time in the game, Davey uses the word “I” instead of “Coda” as he says, “… this is what I felt…I don’t know how else to explain it. I wanted it to stop more than anything…I needed more than I had ever needed anything, for this to stop.”
Chapter 15 — Machine: In the Machine, the subject of the previous game’s search, the player is tasked with interrogating this personified object as to why it has stopped producing ideas. You are greeted by two guards on the level’s opening who refer to you as ma’am. This is interesting as the perspective seems to switch from Coda to Her during this segment. Initially serving as a point of confusion, the reason becomes clear when the guard says, “[The Machine] Calls itself Coda.” The reason for the perspective switch is so the player can view Coda from the outside. Of course, attempting to interrogate the Machine known as Coda proves fruitless, so she is forced to destroy the surrounding area, the theater from Theater, with the gun from Escape from Whisper. Very literally, she is destroying Coda’s work with his own weapon, which parallels the result of Davey showing Coda’s games to others.
Chapter 16 — The Tower: The final of Coda’s games. The Tower has the player climb an ominous steeple faced with impossible challenges, a maze with no visible walls, an unsolvable block puzzle, a door puzzle with no switch, each of which Davey modifies to make solvable for the sake of the player. Davey again and again goes against the wishes of Coda to force some kind of meaning from the experience. Despite Davey’s best efforts, he still finds himself at a loss for what this final game is meant to say, “Was I [Davey] a failure for not understanding this game?” As a result of Davey’s own insecurities, he became so caught up in analyzing and squeezing the meaning out of someone else’s work that he failed to realize he had violated the personal space of Coda. Davey’s selfless crusade was in fact one to make himself feel better. And it is at this moment, Davey finally admits, “I just felt so strongly that…if I could have somehow made his work my own, that I would finally be once-and-for-all happy. I needed to see myself in someone else. I needed to be someone other than me.” In doing so, Wreden discusses his process in creating the archetypal characters to better understand himself through Davey, even with the knowledge that this conversation will most likely go nowhere.
As the player progresses through the final few rooms, we are shown messages from Coda himself for the first time, as Coda admits that he may have unintentionally started adding meaning to his games as a result of Davey’s constant probing. Though the most powerful of his claims was to plead with Davey to stop changing his games, to stop ruining his vision by simply asking, “Would you stop changing my games? Stop adding lampposts to them? Would you simply let them be what they are?” That by meddling with Coda’s work, Davey has ruined it.
The player enters the door puzzle one last time, but there’s no second switch, no way to get out of the space between the two doors. As Davey has a mental breakdown, the walls get closer and closer. In Davey’s search to find meaning in Coda’s games, in the creation of The Beginner’s Guide, he has only turned up flaws in himself. Davey mutters one last time:
“Solution. Solution. Solution. Maybe he just likes making prisons.”
“If the story means anything to you at all…think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.”
-Orson Scott Card
Strongest Element
The most successful aspect of The Beginner’s Guide is its use of meta-narrative to hold an interesting conversation about the creative process. Wreden’s decision to create a narrative reminiscent of biographical fiction equips him to tell a story that may be even more personal than most memoirs could hope to be. In his creation of several surrogate characters, Wreden is able to vent emotions he might not otherwise have had the courage to express, to speak to feelings on design and art more honestly than even the truth could have provided. In his creation of a meta-world relationship between different aspects of himself, he is able to effectively carry out the meaning in his meaningless game, or at the very least start an interesting conversation about it between both himself and fellow critics. In short, the brilliance of The Beginner’s Guide is in its use of meta-devices to convey a theme coherently.
Unsuccessful Element
In exploring meta-narrative to the depth that Wreden often does, it is possible to lose one’s audience at times, even though that may have been the intent of the work in the first place. This would not necessarily be a problem if not for a certain read of his game implying that he had stolen another’s work. Due to the nature of Davey’s commentary spoken in-game, he has essentially compiled the works of someone else to put together the content of The Beginner’s Guide. Even though this was the work of the fictional character known as Davey and not that of the actual author of the game Wreden, a valid interpretation is that Wreden himself stole the work of Coda to put together the compilation. Suggesting that stolen assets were used to make a profit on Steam would be a huge issue, which could have been called out in the game itself to make sure players were certain the events of the game were purely fictional. Though, sticking to his guns, Wreden has refused to comment on the events of the game directly.
Highlight
The moment which best executes on the game’s emotional tone as well as its theme and message would have to be getting on-stage in Chapter 12: Theater. The protagonist, Coda, is forced to confront their role-model, Her, as Davey comments on the interaction all the while. Essentially, this is a perfect example of executing upon the dynamic Wreden has created, by separating his thoughts out into three different character archetypes. Coda the artist, questions whether or not his work is even worth showing to the author Her, someone who performs well under stress and who seems to bare their soul and emotional well-being for the sake of their work. Meanwhile, the architect Davey is just trying to make sense of it all, trying to analyze or derive any sort of meaning behind the back and forth. While not necessarily the emotional high point of the narrative, this scene is definitely the thematic crucible.
Critical Reception
As a result of the deep, thought provoking, and complicated themes, the game received mixed reviews by critics and players. Earning a 76 on Metacritic[3], the game was lauded for its open, personal, and honest approach to the topics that it discussed, though some critics felt its metaphors were a bit too heavy handed. In Tyler Wilde’s PCGamer review, he discussed how he felt that some of the game’s narrative devices were a bit “blunt — a social anxiety theater, a literal creative machine — and Wreden’s narration [are] overbearing.”[4] Giving the game a score of 69/100, he stated that despite its shortcomings, it did provide a thought provoking experience into Wreden’s creative process. He discussed how, very much in response to the success of The Stanley Parable, The Beginner’s Guide was “the album after the breakout album that’s all about how hard it is to make more songs that everyone likes.”4 However, IGN journalist Lucy O’Brien awarded it an 8/10, applauding Wreden’s explorative efforts and introspective commentary. While Wilde seemed to be slightly annoyed by Davey’s ongoing commentary, O’Brien stated that “His presence encourages a great sense of fun while moving about Coda’s worlds”[5] and that the commentary and metaphorical discussions added a lot to the experience. Sometimes the game even surprised her by parroting her own thoughts, “Wreden’s commentary was always one step ahead of my own internal monologue: ‘Why is this wall here?’ I’d think. It just ends like that, says Wreden with a laugh.” [5]
[3] “The Beginner’s Guide.” Metacritic. N.p., 01 Oct. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.
[4] Wilde, Tyler. “The Beginner’s Guide Review.” Pcgamer. PC Gamer, 06 Oct. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.
[5] O’Brien, Lucy. “The Beginner’s Guide Review — IGN.” IGN. IGN, 07 Oct. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.
Lessons
● Lesson 1 — Respect Creative Boundaries: Whether working with a team of collaborators or just on your own, it is important to respect both your creative boundaries and those of others. Know when to schedule time off and take breaks, and know how to approach creative differences when working with others as well as how to discuss them. Boundaries will vary based on the situation, but you should never violate them for your own selfish reasons. If you are uncertain of what these boundaries are, do what Davey constantly seems to refuse to do–ask.
● Lesson 2 — Art Needs No Justification: There is nothing wrong with making sure that the elements of your game, story, or narrative are intelligently designed. That things are carefully constructed and thought out, carefully placed and hand crafted. But if there is anything that Coda has taught us, it is that not every creative work needs a reason. Sometimes it is okay to build a prison in a game just because you enjoy making prisons. You should not feel it necessary to ever explain your artistic intent, or the reason behind a mechanic, so long as it makes the creator happy.
● Lesson 3 — Love Yourself: Some may call art made to serve your own happiness selfish, but ultimately Her emotional stress and suffering comes from her angst around what she thinks others think of her work. She suffers as a result of the work itself, thinking that it will somehow improve it as a result, but in the end she only isolates herself. Artists have to remember to love themselves. Artists should not sacrifice their wellbeing for the good of their work, and if they do not enjoy the process, that given field may not be the best for them. An important lesson is to always put one’s own mental health above your chosen career, it is the most important thing an artist can ever hope to foster.
Summation
In creating several fictional characters to represent himself, Wreden is able to get past negative feelings and creative blocks he has encountered in his own work. Coda does so by creating Her, and Wreden does so by creating Coda. The two project their own feelings onto fictional characters so that they can more properly come to face them. It is the fact that both go through similar arcs on their journeys through the nature of creativity that exemplifies the true brilliance of Wreden’s meta-narrative design. The game also asks nearly as many questions as it answers, sparking debate and conversations similar to ones that Davey has about Coda’s work among players of The Beginner’s Guide. This brings players on the same journey, and takes them through their own arcs as they play each game. It is clear that Wreden’s intent was to overcome personal issues as well as to reflect his own experiences. In a sense, to help others overcome similar creative struggles. Either that, or maybe Wreden just enjoys making prisons.
