The Beginner's Guide

The Beginner's Guide is made by the same man who created "The Stanley Parable," which is his most popular work. The Beginner's Guide is his sequel work to The Stanley Parable (it is not the sequel to the stanley parable) and it is the better of the two, despite being shorter and less popular. However, the game could not exist without the Stanley Parable: in the Beginner's Guide, you, the unnamed player, are led by the narrator, Davey Wreden - the real creator of the Stanley Parable - through the works of a friend of his, Coda, because Coda has stopped creating games and Davey wants him to continue. Thus the story starts: Davey wants to convince you to convince Coda to make games.

If you want to play the game yourself, stop reading here. If you've played it and would like to discuss the game with me, keep reading.

The very first thing to consider is why Davey introduces himself as the creator of the Stanley Parable. He could have put another character in his place and had someone else narrate the story, like in the Stanley Parable, and just project his ideas and actions onto the character. This way, he could both have anonymity and beseech Coda and the player. There are few reasons to come out as your real person: one, you want to honestly gore yourself before your viewers and let them see your innards, bearing before them all - which can be considered exhibitionism - or, two, you want to, for the sake of the story of your game, convince the player that what he's seeing and hearing is real, or, you are trying to do both.

I would not put either beyond the creator, given his image and his absence from game making since The Beginner's Guide. I will argue that he is aiming for a mixture of both exhibitionism and narrative reinforcement. Of course, because I give credit to the latter, this means that what is presented to the player is fictional.

Once you begin playing the game, you begin to see the mostly amateur designs of Coda. They are crude and basic - just what you would expect from someone casually making Source games. Despite this, the music and sound effects of every map are stellar, with high fidelity and great composition. The music really moves you towards what the narrator is trying to convey and because of this, it is obviously curated and could never be a part of any real amateur Source design. Beyond this, the very first map "Coda" has made contains voice acting, notable for being both pleasant and high quality - something which zero authentic casually-created Source maps contained. It is obvious that the one doing the voice acting has vocal training. And so, none of the audio, at least, is authentically a creation of the amateur Source map creator named Coda.

Additionally, it is revealed in the story that Davey has modified all of Coda's creations in some way, admitting to introducing the ending to the chores map, whose ending he gave special meaning, and to placing the lampposts in Coda's maps himself. Given that the design of the maps is integral to the story then, their authenticity is to be doubted.

The epilogue of the game has Davey coming to realize his faults audibly for the player, saying he needs to go fix some things by the end of it. The only reason for the author to so plainly reveal a change in Davey's character is because he wants to share it with the player, either because it is a part of the narrative, or because he is an exhibitionist. Again, his choice to play the role of the narrator can lend to either theory. I am arguing for a mixture of the two.

Beyond the narrative and what the player experiences from his point-of-view, taking a look at the console (by hitting ~ in-game), reveals on disconnect that the player is also named Davey. Therefore, Davey is speaking to himself and taking himself through this experience. As a result of this, if any part of this story is true, it is that Davey is selfish and vain and that he wants to apologize for it. If he did steal any maps from someone, or ever present that as his own to other people, they are not these maps and they are not anything belonging to an individual named "Coda," although one can argue Coda is that name given to all the people he could have ever stolen from.

Because of how well each map fits the story, because of how curated each map is, because of how open the creator, Davey, is, it is more likely that the maps are made specifically for the game by Davey for his narrative. And it is also because of this narrative that the maps are most likely curated for the game.

Towards the end of the game, on the map "The Tower," it is admitted that almost all the elements Davey has presented to us as significant to Coda's character and his emotional arc are fake, placed in fact by Davey himself for the sake of giving a narrative to Coda and thus to the game and to the player (himself). The chapter after this, the epilogue, is effectively making fun of and criticizing overly vain people, who live on attention and feel the need to project and become themselves another's work. And the very end of The Tower, where Coda has placed signs telling off Davey, asking him to stay away, is criticizing people who need to insert a narrative and meaning into things that might be meaningless - in essence, the story comes from a tale of overcoming creative bankruptcy, self-doubt, and self-hate, to a tale of ego, projection, extra-analysis, and ultimately repentance, for having gone so far seeking some significant meaning in someone else's work as to ruin the act of creating - albeit temporarily - for him.

And so I come onto the last theory, which ironically in doing so opposes the game itself: Davey has created this game to criticize players who, in his experience, have taken a game, torn it apart seeking meaning, created a bastardized theory, and in doing so reached a wrong, vulgar, and disappointing conclusion, which ruined the act of creating the game itself. I know nothing of Davey's life, so I can only argue his experience is with his own game, the Stanley Parable, and players trying to link the events of the game to Davey's own life and feelings.

This narrative and this final theory I have presented so strongly come together that it is unreasonable to doubt the fictional nature of the story. There is no single individual named Coda. The maps are made by Davey. The story is written by Davey. Davey's choice to narrate it is an extension of his desire to express his woes directly, an extension of his exhibitionism, and an extension of his desire to sow doubt and distrust in the narrative by first building trust thoroughly. Davey is lamenting both to himself and to the player. And Davey is criticizing the player, criticizing his players, and criticizing every player that seeks to project the story back onto the author.

I disagree with the narrative. To question is not only one's right but one's duty and inevitably any pieces of the story that when shone upon reflect your image is your fault alone. When creating something, one will scatter himself into it and be able to find himself therefore in it. You would have to actively censor your story - and thus remove the human element from it - to prevent yourself from being imaged onto your story. And if you fail to image yourself properly onto it, people will observe something else beyond what you wanted. They will conclude differently from what you wished them to. And if that bothers you, you should design a story which clearly points towards your goal. Design a haze and your image is lost in it; design a mirror and the image is too revealing. A good game is a mist. And I think the Beginner's Guide is a good game.

12/10/2022