Another story based game I ought to revisit, since I last played this around July 2021. I remember immediately falling in love with the framing- playing through a few old demos created by the narrator's friend as he walks you through them and gives his two cents on their game design. I was really excited and enjoyed the conversations the game was having regarding the design choices in these games, and how a bit of the creator's personality bleeds into them. However, the narrative switches focus more on the narrator and his relationship with the person who created these demos, in which it kind of lost me. I was more interested in the conversation rather than the people.
Below is an old little tidbit I wrote right after I played it, I figured I'd put it here too.
The framing of the Beginner’s Guide is pretty interesting. You are playing through a series of simple games Davey’s friend, Coda, made between 2009 and 2011. Coda has not made a game since 2011, so Davey hopes that by publishing this collection of games and receiving player feedback, Coda will feel inspired enough to give it another shot. Davey narrates and explains each project, giving his interpretation of what he thinks Coda intended with his design decisions. It’s pretty interesting stuff, it is fun to play through Coda’s first game, move on to the second to see what themes and design choices he keeps, seeing his vision evolve. Hearing Davey give his personal opinion on what he thinks Coda meant and learned with each game was entertaining too. It felt like playing a part in a director’s commentary, except the director is absent and their overbearing friend took their place instead.
I was very interested in the first half of the game. A game talking about games, I’m a sucker for those. During a particularly restrictive and claustrophobic game, Davey shares an anecdote, an argument he had with Coda. As you are forced to get locked in a jail cell, Davey explains that the game would make you wait one whole hour in the jail cell before letting you out to explore again. He brings this up to Coda, saying it’s not very good game design, no one would wait an hour like that. Why spend all this work on creating a world that isn’t accessible. Coda wasn’t very interested in creating accessible worlds, just his own vision. This kind of conversation is interesting to me! A movie can have a director’s cut where he adds an extra 30 minutes of footage, thus completing his vision. A video game can be a little more unique, extra conditions can be added, you may not be able to get the full story unless you really engage with the game. Games like Dark Souls or Undertale that have you talk to specific people under specific conditions to unlock different storylines or endings, stuff like that is entirely unique to the medium. Does adding these strange conditions to get the full story, often inaccessible without a guide, make games better though? Personally, I looked up a guide when going through both games mentioned above. Was this the director’s vision?
It’s such a small part of The Beginner’s Guide but it’s the one I was most interested in- questions about games, their potential in storytelling, and the merit of certain design choices. To my personal disappointment, it doesn’t linger on those questions for long. Instead the focus shifts on Davey and Coda’s relationship. As the games progress, they seem to get more isolated, expressing self-doubt and maybe even loathing. Davey explains how worried he was, how it was taking longer and longer for Coda to make a new game only for it to be another simple romp through self-doubt. It’s around this time I start to get annoyed with Davey.
See, the player doesn’t know Coda, all we know about them is through Davey; they’re introverted and they make games. All of a sudden, the games get sad. It’s the way Davey talks through these games that bugs me. Coda’s games at this point feel deeply personal, like reading someone’s diary. There is dialogue that resonated with me, dialogue that read like someone talking themselves down from a rough episode of self loathing. Davey expresses how he wishes he could have helped, but he never really does. He talks about how playing these games made him uncomfortable and concerned, but never goes into detail about how he went about engaging with Coda as a friend. Davey has a habit of dehumanizing Coda through admiration. It’s evident when he talks about how they first met- Davey explains how he was overbearing when he met Coda at a game jam in 2009. He played Coda’s game and proclaimed to himself “I need to be friends with this person”. When the games get introspective, there’s a part of me that thinks what Davey really wants to say to Coda is “You’re not being weird in the right way”.
These aspects of Davey are all certainly by design. By the end of the game, he explains the last game he received from Coda contained a message at the end. The message expressed gratitude for Davey’s interest in the games, but to please never contact them again. Coda asks Davey to stop showcasing the games, and that they’re not actually depressed, just burnt out; the fact that Davey interpreted the games as having self-loathing content says more about Davey than Coda. It’s even revealed that some of the games we’d just played had actually been modified by Davey with added symbolism that wasn’t there originally. Davey goes on to solemnly explain that he wants Coda to make more games so he can feel special again. Davey essentially found validation by being associated with Coda. Hey, I’m friends with this person that makes weird games and I get to play them, aren’t I cool? When Coda stops making these, Davey stops feeling validated. He releases The Beginner’s Guide as a last ditch effort to get Coda to make games again so he can feel validated again. He can’t imagine living without validation.
The emotional climax is perfectly fine. Davey’s performance is good and I’d be lying if some of his words did not resonate with me. It’s no doubt the most memorable moment in the game, aside from the house cleaning game. However, it is the part I am least interested in, it reminded me a bit too much of a manic pixie dream girl trope; the main character being in a relationship with someone who they admire for their strange and mysterious behavior, but make little effort to engage with as a human being, only basking in the status of the relationship. To me, this is only a dramatic layer of the game. I think there may also be a layer of “suffering from success” but I don’t know the Davey guy, I can’t draw conclusions on him just from this one work (wink).
While the game doesn’t linger much on the questions of game design, it does touch on some questions regarding authorship, intent, and how we can interact with personal works. The player will inevitably draw conclusions and opinions about Coda even though we never hear a peep from them until the end of the game. Even when you know the truth between Davey and Coda, you still don’t know much about Coda. How could you? You only play through a select few games through Davey goggles, it’s like playing a game of telephone with the author’s intent. What impression could you have drawn about Coda without having Davey talk you through these games? How much can you learn about someone by only seeing what they make but never asking them a thing about it? Should we even bother to learn about the author through their work? I’m not very clever and I know little about the whole concept of “death of the author”, but I can give an opinion on Coda and their games.
Though a game is capable of telling a story in totally unique games through interactivity, it has one slight disadvantage; it’s a game. There is an expectation that it will be fun and entertaining to a degree. Digesting Coda’s work isn’t fun, they weren’t designed to be fun, they weren’t even meant to be released. Coda’s work is personal. It’s not a diary, it's an expression. It’s scribbles on paper when you’re mad, it’s screaming until your throat burns, it’s speaking every ugly thought you’ve ever had into existence so they can stop throbbing in your head. Coda’s work is a creator venting, and hearing someone vent isn’t always easy to parse.It isn’t always meant to be analyzed and peer reviewed; there isn’t always a correct way to respond, there isn’t a “win” condition. It’s about getting it out of the system. If there’s one thing Davey did right by the end of it- he got it out of his system too.
Below is an old little tidbit I wrote right after I played it, I figured I'd put it here too.
The framing of the Beginner’s Guide is pretty interesting. You are playing through a series of simple games Davey’s friend, Coda, made between 2009 and 2011. Coda has not made a game since 2011, so Davey hopes that by publishing this collection of games and receiving player feedback, Coda will feel inspired enough to give it another shot. Davey narrates and explains each project, giving his interpretation of what he thinks Coda intended with his design decisions. It’s pretty interesting stuff, it is fun to play through Coda’s first game, move on to the second to see what themes and design choices he keeps, seeing his vision evolve. Hearing Davey give his personal opinion on what he thinks Coda meant and learned with each game was entertaining too. It felt like playing a part in a director’s commentary, except the director is absent and their overbearing friend took their place instead.
I was very interested in the first half of the game. A game talking about games, I’m a sucker for those. During a particularly restrictive and claustrophobic game, Davey shares an anecdote, an argument he had with Coda. As you are forced to get locked in a jail cell, Davey explains that the game would make you wait one whole hour in the jail cell before letting you out to explore again. He brings this up to Coda, saying it’s not very good game design, no one would wait an hour like that. Why spend all this work on creating a world that isn’t accessible. Coda wasn’t very interested in creating accessible worlds, just his own vision. This kind of conversation is interesting to me! A movie can have a director’s cut where he adds an extra 30 minutes of footage, thus completing his vision. A video game can be a little more unique, extra conditions can be added, you may not be able to get the full story unless you really engage with the game. Games like Dark Souls or Undertale that have you talk to specific people under specific conditions to unlock different storylines or endings, stuff like that is entirely unique to the medium. Does adding these strange conditions to get the full story, often inaccessible without a guide, make games better though? Personally, I looked up a guide when going through both games mentioned above. Was this the director’s vision?
It’s such a small part of The Beginner’s Guide but it’s the one I was most interested in- questions about games, their potential in storytelling, and the merit of certain design choices. To my personal disappointment, it doesn’t linger on those questions for long. Instead the focus shifts on Davey and Coda’s relationship. As the games progress, they seem to get more isolated, expressing self-doubt and maybe even loathing. Davey explains how worried he was, how it was taking longer and longer for Coda to make a new game only for it to be another simple romp through self-doubt. It’s around this time I start to get annoyed with Davey.
See, the player doesn’t know Coda, all we know about them is through Davey; they’re introverted and they make games. All of a sudden, the games get sad. It’s the way Davey talks through these games that bugs me. Coda’s games at this point feel deeply personal, like reading someone’s diary. There is dialogue that resonated with me, dialogue that read like someone talking themselves down from a rough episode of self loathing. Davey expresses how he wishes he could have helped, but he never really does. He talks about how playing these games made him uncomfortable and concerned, but never goes into detail about how he went about engaging with Coda as a friend. Davey has a habit of dehumanizing Coda through admiration. It’s evident when he talks about how they first met- Davey explains how he was overbearing when he met Coda at a game jam in 2009. He played Coda’s game and proclaimed to himself “I need to be friends with this person”. When the games get introspective, there’s a part of me that thinks what Davey really wants to say to Coda is “You’re not being weird in the right way”.
These aspects of Davey are all certainly by design. By the end of the game, he explains the last game he received from Coda contained a message at the end. The message expressed gratitude for Davey’s interest in the games, but to please never contact them again. Coda asks Davey to stop showcasing the games, and that they’re not actually depressed, just burnt out; the fact that Davey interpreted the games as having self-loathing content says more about Davey than Coda. It’s even revealed that some of the games we’d just played had actually been modified by Davey with added symbolism that wasn’t there originally. Davey goes on to solemnly explain that he wants Coda to make more games so he can feel special again. Davey essentially found validation by being associated with Coda. Hey, I’m friends with this person that makes weird games and I get to play them, aren’t I cool? When Coda stops making these, Davey stops feeling validated. He releases The Beginner’s Guide as a last ditch effort to get Coda to make games again so he can feel validated again. He can’t imagine living without validation.
The emotional climax is perfectly fine. Davey’s performance is good and I’d be lying if some of his words did not resonate with me. It’s no doubt the most memorable moment in the game, aside from the house cleaning game. However, it is the part I am least interested in, it reminded me a bit too much of a manic pixie dream girl trope; the main character being in a relationship with someone who they admire for their strange and mysterious behavior, but make little effort to engage with as a human being, only basking in the status of the relationship. To me, this is only a dramatic layer of the game. I think there may also be a layer of “suffering from success” but I don’t know the Davey guy, I can’t draw conclusions on him just from this one work (wink).
While the game doesn’t linger much on the questions of game design, it does touch on some questions regarding authorship, intent, and how we can interact with personal works. The player will inevitably draw conclusions and opinions about Coda even though we never hear a peep from them until the end of the game. Even when you know the truth between Davey and Coda, you still don’t know much about Coda. How could you? You only play through a select few games through Davey goggles, it’s like playing a game of telephone with the author’s intent. What impression could you have drawn about Coda without having Davey talk you through these games? How much can you learn about someone by only seeing what they make but never asking them a thing about it? Should we even bother to learn about the author through their work? I’m not very clever and I know little about the whole concept of “death of the author”, but I can give an opinion on Coda and their games.
Though a game is capable of telling a story in totally unique games through interactivity, it has one slight disadvantage; it’s a game. There is an expectation that it will be fun and entertaining to a degree. Digesting Coda’s work isn’t fun, they weren’t designed to be fun, they weren’t even meant to be released. Coda’s work is personal. It’s not a diary, it's an expression. It’s scribbles on paper when you’re mad, it’s screaming until your throat burns, it’s speaking every ugly thought you’ve ever had into existence so they can stop throbbing in your head. Coda’s work is a creator venting, and hearing someone vent isn’t always easy to parse.It isn’t always meant to be analyzed and peer reviewed; there isn’t always a correct way to respond, there isn’t a “win” condition. It’s about getting it out of the system. If there’s one thing Davey did right by the end of it- he got it out of his system too.