A few months ago a friend asked me what my top five games of all time were. I don't usually think about that, but listed out five games that I really really enjoyed; ones I think about even to this day. They were all mostly pretty common choices - Ocarina of Time, Persona 4, ect. They only called out one of my choices which they didn't know. That choice is a game called The Beginner's Guide.
The Beginner's Guide is by Davey Wreden, most well known for creating The Stanley Parable. After that game came out he went dark on what his next big project was. Then in late September, 2015, Wreden announced his next game: The Beginner's Guide. It released two days later. Here is the trailer he released for it:
It doesn't tell you too much about it, and I think that's for the best. I feel the game is at it's most effective when you know as little as possible about it. The arc it takes you on is intense, unexpected, and emotional, and it loses some of those attributes if you know where it's going. I played the game shortly after it released, and it left an impression on me more than almost any other game. I recommended it to friends, I thought about it often, and recently I decided to jump back into the game to give it another look, and realized it remains every bit the evocative experience as when I first tried it.
The Beginner's Guide is about a person who makes games.
Their name is Coda.
The games Coda makes are unusual. They aren't all meant to be beaten. We're never fully sure if they're truly meant to be played. In fact, we're told Coda never intended to distribute or show these games to many people.
Davey Wreden is the one who is showing us to them. Not a British narrator, not anonymous text. Like, the person, Davey Wreden. Davey introduces himself at the beginning via a voice-over that accompanies the gameplay. He explains that these are games by a friend of his named Coda. Davey even gives out his email address at the beginning to message him if you have any questions or comments. He explains that he hopes to show us these games to give us an impression of who Coda is.
And that's the game, but as you might have gleaned, the game is much more than we might think at that start. And so is Coda. And so is Davey.
This is a game that is about making games. It's about why people make games, and the games they make, and what making games does to them. When I played it I was in what would be my last year of college to learn how to be a game developer. I hadn't fully decided what kinda games I wanted to end up making, or what my identity as a game dev was gonna be. So this game, and its meditations on all those topics, was particularly effective to me.
But it's also about more than just making games. It's about where we derive meaning in our lives. It's about what our relationships do to us: what we give and what we take in them.
And it's like an hour and half long and $10, so if you haven't played it yet, I really recommend just giving it a shot. You may like it as much as I do, you may not, but I guarantee it's a game unlike one you've played before, and it's worth experiencing at least once.
I'm gonna touch on some of the elements found deeper in The Beginner's Guide, so if you do plan to play it, please steer clear till you're done:
As the game progresses we also see the progression of 'Coda', who goes from weird Counter Strike maps to inventive little mechanics prototypes to house cleaning simulators, and onward from there. Davey narrates us through each of them, explaining what each of these games mean about who Coda is as a person.
And there's something a little bit uncomfortable about that. Just a tad. Like, we'll play a level with a glich in it and Davey will explain about how this glitch must have been something Coda saw that changed his direction in game development. But Davey doesn't really have any reason to know this. He just sort of assumes it to be the truth.
The games themselves are interesting, and engaging, if not really meant for us. They require hacks to skip long wait times or unimaginably slow walk speeds. They're interesting, however, and they show something the gaming public doesn't often get shown: the type of games a game dev makes just because.
When I was in college there were totally the games people made that were just Diablo clones, or relatively unimaginative roguelikes, or just straight up re-skinned Super Mario. But there was more: there were weird little games people made just to try it. Little experiments in using physics in weird ways, or games that did strange and unusual role reversals or had mechanics that didn't seem to make much sense. Games that weren't meant to be fun. Games that weren't meant to be marketable. Games that weren't for you or me. Games that were for the person who made them.
Those are the games Coda made.
And it's really interesting to play games like that. They're uncaring, and sometimes self-indulgent, but they're compelling in a way that Call of Duty or Madden can't be: in the way that they can jump around and be personal and weird and wonderful.
But Coda's games get weirder, and they get personal in a way that becomes increasingly uncomfortable. They aren't self-indulgent sometimes so much as self-accusational. Work harder. Be better. Be more happy.
And Davey keeps walking us through it: he explains how unhealthy this is. How he kept feeling at the time that this is immensely harmful for Coda. How he felt he had to help his friend.
And we realize this isn't a game about Coda's games. It's about Davey's thoughts on Coda's games. And this isn't a game about Coda. Not really. It's about Davey. Coda didn't release these: Davey did. Coda isn't walking us through this: Davey is. Coda doesn't want us to play their games. Davey does.
Letting someone play a game you've made for the first time is one of the most nerve wracking things I know of. You know the work that went into this. Every bug fixed, every design choice made, every asset used and not used. And sometimes they hate it, and sometimes they love. But sometimes they don't understand it. And that's not their fault. But that game's kinda your baby, sometimes it's a part of you, and when they don't get it, or worse; when they believe they understand it but it's not what you meant, it feels strange and uncomfortable. Because I think there's a part of every game dev that is making that game for themselves. It's personal.
Davey thinks Coda is in a rut because of the games Coda makes. He decides to show other people Coda's games. And upon hearing this Coda cuts himself off from Davey.
With the exception of one last game.
In this last heart-wrenching game we see from Coda we realize something. Davey has told us what Coda's games meant. Davey has told us how Coda felt. But Coda's games don't belong to Davey. And Coda doesn't belong to Davey.
Because every hack Davey has made, and every interpretation he's had of Coda's work has been his co-opting of all that is personal and all that is intimate in who Coda is as a creator and bastardizing it so that Davey can see himself in the things Coda creates.
A personal aside - A few months before I played The Beginner's Guide I was in a game-jam (a game dev event where you build a game in a short time), where I helped design a platformer about a character who loses all the things he cares about over the course of the game. His possessions, his relationships: everything. And as he loses those things the game gets harder. Excruciatingly hard. And I was super proud of that game. But various people have told me how nihilistic I must be for making it; how cynical it paints me. It's not a nihilistic game though; not to me. It's about continuing to play when the game is at its least forgiving. It's about believing in what lies beyond the toughest level you've ever faced. Most people who know about it don't believe that. And that's fine. But I believe it, and it's the reason I wanted to make it.
So anyway then Davey lays it all out: his friend cut him out because he assumed he knew every thought and feeling about Coda and the games Coda made and then he told others that Coda's games were what Davey interpreted them to be. Davey is releasing the game to reach out to Coda once again. The Beginner's Guide is ostensibly one big "Please forgive me" in the form of exactly what caused the rift in the first place. A repackaging of Coda's games by Davey to make amends for Davey repackaging Coda's games.
Coda isn't real.
This actually caused a bit of discussion around the game's launch because neither the game nor Wreden ever pointed that out. But upon reflection of how the game works and the narrative it shows, this becomes relatively evident.
Davey ends the game explaining that he can't find his own internal reason for creating or doing anything, and it's tearing him up. It's why he sought refuge in interpreting his friend's work.
It's important to note that this 'Davey' isn't truly real either, because clearly his relationship with Coda is some degree of fabrication. But I suspect there's something true in what he says, even if it isn't all truly factual. I have no interest in extrapolating how much of Davey Wreden is the in-game 'Davey' or the in-game 'Coda'. I would just fall into the trap 'Davey' does in the game itself. I'm sure there is some truth that Davey Wreden poured into this game when he made it and its story and its characters. And it's his truth. All I can do is take what he's put here, find the meaning that I'm able to, and try to come away with what this game has offered me. Because I don't know what Beginner's Guide is about; not truly. But the experience of playing it is immensely valuable to me all the same. I've no doubt this game means a lot to the person who made it. And I'm fine not quite knowing what the meaning exactly is.
Altogether, this game hit me as someone who makes games. As someone who creates anything honestly. Because often someone who creates something makes it for others to experience; to communicate things they find important. But almost undoubtedly, on some level, to some degree, they do it for themselves. And I think when we create things, and when we experience a thing someone else has created, it's important to keep those both in mind.
And that's why The Beginner's Guide is in my top five. If you haven't played it, I definitely recommend it!
TLDR: The Beginner's Guide is a really cool game about creating things and their meanings and our relationships with others and I got back into it and it inspired me to make a super self-indulgent essay about it.
The Beginner's Guide is by Davey Wreden, most well known for creating The Stanley Parable. After that game came out he went dark on what his next big project was. Then in late September, 2015, Wreden announced his next game: The Beginner's Guide. It released two days later. Here is the trailer he released for it:
It doesn't tell you too much about it, and I think that's for the best. I feel the game is at it's most effective when you know as little as possible about it. The arc it takes you on is intense, unexpected, and emotional, and it loses some of those attributes if you know where it's going. I played the game shortly after it released, and it left an impression on me more than almost any other game. I recommended it to friends, I thought about it often, and recently I decided to jump back into the game to give it another look, and realized it remains every bit the evocative experience as when I first tried it.
The Beginner's Guide is about a person who makes games.
Their name is Coda.
The games Coda makes are unusual. They aren't all meant to be beaten. We're never fully sure if they're truly meant to be played. In fact, we're told Coda never intended to distribute or show these games to many people.
Davey Wreden is the one who is showing us to them. Not a British narrator, not anonymous text. Like, the person, Davey Wreden. Davey introduces himself at the beginning via a voice-over that accompanies the gameplay. He explains that these are games by a friend of his named Coda. Davey even gives out his email address at the beginning to message him if you have any questions or comments. He explains that he hopes to show us these games to give us an impression of who Coda is.
And that's the game, but as you might have gleaned, the game is much more than we might think at that start. And so is Coda. And so is Davey.
This is a game that is about making games. It's about why people make games, and the games they make, and what making games does to them. When I played it I was in what would be my last year of college to learn how to be a game developer. I hadn't fully decided what kinda games I wanted to end up making, or what my identity as a game dev was gonna be. So this game, and its meditations on all those topics, was particularly effective to me.
But it's also about more than just making games. It's about where we derive meaning in our lives. It's about what our relationships do to us: what we give and what we take in them.
And it's like an hour and half long and $10, so if you haven't played it yet, I really recommend just giving it a shot. You may like it as much as I do, you may not, but I guarantee it's a game unlike one you've played before, and it's worth experiencing at least once.
I'm gonna touch on some of the elements found deeper in The Beginner's Guide, so if you do plan to play it, please steer clear till you're done:
As the game progresses we also see the progression of 'Coda', who goes from weird Counter Strike maps to inventive little mechanics prototypes to house cleaning simulators, and onward from there. Davey narrates us through each of them, explaining what each of these games mean about who Coda is as a person.
And there's something a little bit uncomfortable about that. Just a tad. Like, we'll play a level with a glich in it and Davey will explain about how this glitch must have been something Coda saw that changed his direction in game development. But Davey doesn't really have any reason to know this. He just sort of assumes it to be the truth.
The games themselves are interesting, and engaging, if not really meant for us. They require hacks to skip long wait times or unimaginably slow walk speeds. They're interesting, however, and they show something the gaming public doesn't often get shown: the type of games a game dev makes just because.
When I was in college there were totally the games people made that were just Diablo clones, or relatively unimaginative roguelikes, or just straight up re-skinned Super Mario. But there was more: there were weird little games people made just to try it. Little experiments in using physics in weird ways, or games that did strange and unusual role reversals or had mechanics that didn't seem to make much sense. Games that weren't meant to be fun. Games that weren't meant to be marketable. Games that weren't for you or me. Games that were for the person who made them.
Those are the games Coda made.
And it's really interesting to play games like that. They're uncaring, and sometimes self-indulgent, but they're compelling in a way that Call of Duty or Madden can't be: in the way that they can jump around and be personal and weird and wonderful.
But Coda's games get weirder, and they get personal in a way that becomes increasingly uncomfortable. They aren't self-indulgent sometimes so much as self-accusational. Work harder. Be better. Be more happy.
And Davey keeps walking us through it: he explains how unhealthy this is. How he kept feeling at the time that this is immensely harmful for Coda. How he felt he had to help his friend.
And we realize this isn't a game about Coda's games. It's about Davey's thoughts on Coda's games. And this isn't a game about Coda. Not really. It's about Davey. Coda didn't release these: Davey did. Coda isn't walking us through this: Davey is. Coda doesn't want us to play their games. Davey does.
Letting someone play a game you've made for the first time is one of the most nerve wracking things I know of. You know the work that went into this. Every bug fixed, every design choice made, every asset used and not used. And sometimes they hate it, and sometimes they love. But sometimes they don't understand it. And that's not their fault. But that game's kinda your baby, sometimes it's a part of you, and when they don't get it, or worse; when they believe they understand it but it's not what you meant, it feels strange and uncomfortable. Because I think there's a part of every game dev that is making that game for themselves. It's personal.
Davey thinks Coda is in a rut because of the games Coda makes. He decides to show other people Coda's games. And upon hearing this Coda cuts himself off from Davey.
With the exception of one last game.
In this last heart-wrenching game we see from Coda we realize something. Davey has told us what Coda's games meant. Davey has told us how Coda felt. But Coda's games don't belong to Davey. And Coda doesn't belong to Davey.
Because every hack Davey has made, and every interpretation he's had of Coda's work has been his co-opting of all that is personal and all that is intimate in who Coda is as a creator and bastardizing it so that Davey can see himself in the things Coda creates.
A personal aside - A few months before I played The Beginner's Guide I was in a game-jam (a game dev event where you build a game in a short time), where I helped design a platformer about a character who loses all the things he cares about over the course of the game. His possessions, his relationships: everything. And as he loses those things the game gets harder. Excruciatingly hard. And I was super proud of that game. But various people have told me how nihilistic I must be for making it; how cynical it paints me. It's not a nihilistic game though; not to me. It's about continuing to play when the game is at its least forgiving. It's about believing in what lies beyond the toughest level you've ever faced. Most people who know about it don't believe that. And that's fine. But I believe it, and it's the reason I wanted to make it.
So anyway then Davey lays it all out: his friend cut him out because he assumed he knew every thought and feeling about Coda and the games Coda made and then he told others that Coda's games were what Davey interpreted them to be. Davey is releasing the game to reach out to Coda once again. The Beginner's Guide is ostensibly one big "Please forgive me" in the form of exactly what caused the rift in the first place. A repackaging of Coda's games by Davey to make amends for Davey repackaging Coda's games.
Coda isn't real.
This actually caused a bit of discussion around the game's launch because neither the game nor Wreden ever pointed that out. But upon reflection of how the game works and the narrative it shows, this becomes relatively evident.
Davey ends the game explaining that he can't find his own internal reason for creating or doing anything, and it's tearing him up. It's why he sought refuge in interpreting his friend's work.
It's important to note that this 'Davey' isn't truly real either, because clearly his relationship with Coda is some degree of fabrication. But I suspect there's something true in what he says, even if it isn't all truly factual. I have no interest in extrapolating how much of Davey Wreden is the in-game 'Davey' or the in-game 'Coda'. I would just fall into the trap 'Davey' does in the game itself. I'm sure there is some truth that Davey Wreden poured into this game when he made it and its story and its characters. And it's his truth. All I can do is take what he's put here, find the meaning that I'm able to, and try to come away with what this game has offered me. Because I don't know what Beginner's Guide is about; not truly. But the experience of playing it is immensely valuable to me all the same. I've no doubt this game means a lot to the person who made it. And I'm fine not quite knowing what the meaning exactly is.
Altogether, this game hit me as someone who makes games. As someone who creates anything honestly. Because often someone who creates something makes it for others to experience; to communicate things they find important. But almost undoubtedly, on some level, to some degree, they do it for themselves. And I think when we create things, and when we experience a thing someone else has created, it's important to keep those both in mind.
And that's why The Beginner's Guide is in my top five. If you haven't played it, I definitely recommend it!
TLDR: The Beginner's Guide is a really cool game about creating things and their meanings and our relationships with others and I got back into it and it inspired me to make a super self-indulgent essay about it.
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