Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
0 
Report this post
If you read the real Davey Wreden's blog, the entire story seems to be a metaphor for some emotional problems he was having after The Stanley Parable came out.
You've got that backwards. Unlicensed code is copyright to its owner, and you cannot do anything with it without their permission. A license is about giving certain permissions to others.
Looks like he just made a funny game as a Coda (The Stanley's Parable), while the world reacted as Davey (finding some deep-♥♥♥♥ sense in the game, thinking and talking about author by the game he wrote, showing game to friends as if it's some overminded art, etc).
I'm not sure the "this game exists to say thinking about things is bad, you should never think about or discuss things or you're a bad, wrong, selfish nerd who kicks puppies, haw haw" interpretation really describes the problems Mr. Wreden was talking about, though.
And to be honest, every time I see it brought up (and it does get brought up in this forum, a LOT) it usually seems to be coming from this place of people who are mad other people are having a conversation and want to shut it down, claiming the game agrees with them and using that to claim some sort of personal authority over everyone else on the matter.
What Mr. Wreden talked about was how his own insecurities and need for/addiction to external validation basically wrecked his friendships and his physical health. He would spend literally every waking moment for DAYS personally answering every single email he received about TSP. He would say yes to every single request for an interview or public speaking engagement or other appearance he received, no matter how physically and mentally exhausted he got, even once he started getting sick all the time. He became obsessed with GOTY - and after a while it wasn't even about being happy he was on there, but being a nervous wreck about the possibility that he wouldn't be, and no longer really getting any satisfaction out of it beyond that.
He never once said a word about it being bad that people had conversations amongst themselves or showed it to their friends. It was the fact that he had some personal stuff to deal with and wasn't emotionally equipped to handle having all this audience attention aimed *at him*. A healthier person would have come up with a better approach to 2000 fan emails in their inbox than "I have to answer every single one of them myself, starting now, because I'm addicted to the feeling I get from doing so" you know?
Fictional!Davey wrecked his relationship with creativity (Coda) because he was desperate for external/audience validation and was projecting his own psychological issues on to other people (which real!Davey talked about almost causing him to ruin a good friendship) rather than seeking help. That sounds rather more like Davey = Davey in this story to me.
The TSP audience is, IMO, most likely represented by all the unnamed people fictional Davey showed Coda's (altered) games to because he wanted their attention and felt like it validated him/his worth as a person.
(This post is not to be taken as me talking any crap about Davey Wreden btw. I think he's an interesting and talented human being and I'm glad he's doing better these days. This is just stuff I picked up from his blog and that public speaking video where he was pretty brutally honest about himself.)
Yes, I'm aware about addiction to external validation, since I'm the one who struggles with this thing all the time (and sadly victory is too rare here). And I feel wicked responsibility of answering questions, emailing back to people, etc.
But I'm not talking about it, since I do believe it's almost impossible to explain such things to people who never suffered from them. So, talking to OP, I'm using more simple way of describing the pattern of in-game and IRL relationship of all characters involved.
And if we're talking about Davey personally - well, I do not like him much. And here I'm making same thing as fictional-Davey did - actually, I do not like *myself* much. But I'm afraid of going too deep with myself, and trying to believe that that's me who's okay. That's Davey some strange dude with mental problems. Not me.
It isn't "more simple" though, it's a different message entirely. And one that, IMO, doesn't fit what the dev has said on the matter. That's all I'm saying.
To repeat myself a little bit: "He never once said a word about it being bad that people had conversations amongst themselves or showed it to their friends. It was the fact that he had some personal stuff to deal with and wasn't emotionally equipped to handle having all this audience attention aimed *at him*."
If I would say something else, it would be "deeper" but less reliyed to actual game, and then probably you'd ignored this conversation, but some other guy would point at me and say "Hey, dude, were did you get this from? There's nothing in-game about audience attention aiming at someone, there's everything about misunderstanding and self-reflection".
So, yeah. It's always a problem to talk about symbols, roles and tropes to me, since clearly not enough people understand them. And while the OP doesn't look like a doctor on phylosophy or something, - yes, my message is a different message from yours.
But it is more balanced, "inbetweened" somewhere between complex and simple understanding of the game. And it has same roots of "creation vs feedback vs acception" and "artist vs observer vs Me-observer" issues, so if one able to understand simple (yet different) "tractation" of the game, he'll be imo much closer to the "actual" understanding. From the point of view that our actual understanding of things and other people are based on our own experiences foremost.
The easiest way to know this is buy reading what "coda" wrote on the walls in "the tower" chapter. They say alot there and explain the story between these two there quite well but there is a few key points which breaks the illusion.
The first is the lampposts, "coda" states that the narrator placed the them there but the narrator states that coda placed them there.
The second is that "coda" states that the narrator is infact the person responsible for the depressing changes to these games which "coda" has created when the narrator explains and keeps pushing on is that "coda" is the one responsible for them.
if this was a real story between these two, then we wouldn't be getting this kinda contridictions without explainations as to why, which the narrator nor this "coda " ever does explain them. Thus, fake story.