Philosophy and The Beginner's Guide

The answer to all your questions, Davey!

Intro - October 2008 - The First Line

This guide to the Beginner's Guide is best read at the end, or on a second playthrough.

TBG opens with a very weird line: "Hi there, thank you very much for playing the Beginner's Guide."

3 Odd Things (odd things being our questions to resolve):

• Why does the narration address us in such a familiar way?
  
• Why does the narrator say 'thanks for playing!' like we're used to seeing at the end of games?
  
• The Beginner's Guide to what?

Let's answer those in reverse order.
The game can be read as a beginner's guide to four topics, at least:
- Davey Wreden, creator of the Stanley Parable, and Coda
- The Stanley Parable
- Video game criticism
- Video game development

Each of those leads to another set of confusing questions. Just who are Davey and Coda? Are they real people? (short answer: yes!)

How does this game relate to the Stanley Parable? (short answer: both games heavily feature prisons and struggle with the idea of player accessibility)

What does this game have to say about criticism? (short answer: what you say as an outsider, even as a friend of the developer, or even the developer's own critical processes, might not matter to the developer, and may do more harm than good. This applies even to praise.)

What does this game tell us about development? (too much and too complex to list in a short answer, sadly...)

Too many questions... and just from the opening statement...

Don't fret. We don't have to answer all the questions, or even finish this guide. I don't really know if I'll get to the end of it. Maybe I'll add pretty pictures or diagrams, but if not, the guide has to at least have a sense of completeness.

To that end, it's important not to worry about having a solid answer to all the questions. This kind of game will make your head spin if you try to nail down every important thing. These questions are more what I find important than what Davey necessarily intended.

Is Coda a real person that developed all these games? As real as Davey. Maybe Coda is a virtual construct: a past version of Davey, or a codename for a friend, or the embodiment of an idea.

It might help to know that a coda in music isn't just the ending. A coda is the segment of music that brings a piece to an end. Those final 12 notes at the end of the Mario theme? That's a coda! The idea is to bring everything together.

In the game, Coda represents the idea of ending things. He ends making a level, releases it (flaws and all), and then just moves on. Coda writes at the end of the game that shutting himself off outside feedback is a way of protecting himself. Then again, we don't know if that's something Coda wrote, or something Davey added to make sense of everything. We don't know if Coda made any of these levels, but we do understand the idea: that Coda brings things to a close and doesn't need external validation.

Davey does. But we shouldn't assume Davey is any MORE real than Coda!

Sounding pretentious.

Trying to determine how 'real' something is a silly word game that philosophers have debated for centuries. However, we have to resist seeing Davey as somehow more real than Coda. What we have, in actuality, is a series of vocal tones that our brains interpret as words. Further, those words were carefully scripted, probably spoken several times before the mic got them just right, edited, and aligned to different triggers in the game.

Further, there's more than one Davey. There's the Davey at the start of development for this game, and Davey at the end. Unless he sat down and wrote the entire script in one go, with no cuts, and then immediately edited it with no mood or life changes, then multiple versions of Davey Wreden made The Beginner's Guide. However, one element ties all these different Davey's together, and that's the goal of external validation.

The existence of the game is for us to understand Coda, not for Davey to understand Coda.

Which means that 'thanks for playing' really means...?

By experiencing the game, preferably purchasing it, you've done what Davey wants! A sale of the game that Davey can see directly validates him. The rest of the game, Davey can't experience, unless you create a Let's Play. That would be very nice for the creator, probably, to see a Let's Play. Creating a review like this is another kind of feedback currency. However, LPs and Steam guides don't pay the bills. They aren't a direct way to say, 'yes, please, keep making work! We love you, Davey!'.

What's ironic, though, in the Northop Frye sense of the term, is that your feedback has no impact on Coda. You feed Davey, the writer, so eager for connection and attention and conversation, but your feedback apparently doesn't matter to Coda.

OR DOES IT???

This is where the question of actual vs virtual matters. If Coda is a part of Davey (or Davey a part of Coda), then when you pay money, you directly allow the creator to keep thriving. A homeless developer can't really make games. Coda could move in with friends or rely on family, but he still has to interact with someone. Further, the whole time Coda was making games, he was talking to or interacting with at least one person: Davey. Even if he didn't discuss his games or reveal his secrets, Coda is interacting with the real world, even if he is just an embodiment of an idea.

Similarly, Davey does create for personal reasons. All those words come from some internal wellspring of inspiration. I seriously doubt Davey playtested every word like some political operator, testing to see which would get exactly the right reaction. Much of the crafting of the game is personal, especially the parts we won't necessarily see. Davey's soul of creation shines in the optional sections.

And that has implications for Stanley Parable.

SP, to me, is a game made of optional content. It's also a prison. That it is a well-designed prison, with a narrator who you converse with through your actions, demonstrates how The Beginner's Guide neatly transitions the player into the Stanley Parable. Instead of speaking with a button prompt (1, 2, or 3?), you speak with movements. If Coda interacts with his worlds through buttons, Davey's style is always to respond to your actions, and to try to speed your actions.

The prison in Stanley Parable shows anger or frustration when you go off the designated path of design. Coda just left the undesignated paths there, but empty and pointless. Davey's style is instead to prod you back to the path, and even when you take silly detours, his narrator will ridicule you for it. Coda's answer to the issue of detours and players doing whatever they please was just not to care. Davey's response was to fill every possible inch of his spaces with content, attempting to please every branching pathway. "Here's a world to explore, but it's just narrow enough that I can have control over every part of it."

What neither Coda nor Davey do is add elements to the world that live and react on their own. Davey comments that you can't speak with yourself and progress, but playing in a virtual world almost certainly allows that. An AI can respond with a certain degree of autonomy in a pre-programmed fashion, even if that's just to move from point A to point B. A randomizer can present a certain facsimile of life in an AI's behavior. The little lives of Half Life soldiers might be virtual, but they're real, and you can communicate with them.

It's just that communicating with them involves bullets! And moving around.

If that's a little weird to think about, then instead consider the Stanley Parable narrator or Davey in this story. They are real voice actors, and they have pre-programmed triggers that allow you to interact with them, mostly to just get talked at by them.

That might be the core weakness of SP and BG.

Why do Davey and Coda seem like one person?

Where one ends and the other begins

From our outside perspective, The Beginner's Guide can't exist without Coda or Davey. Because of that, the final product leaves us to believe both are part of a single entity.

Before the end of the game, we have a neat dichotomy: Davey does the narration, and Coda does the level design. Davey also does a bit of level design to let us skip the experiences he thinks are too painful or time-consuming. (This, coming from maker of Stanley Parable that has a miserable game you must play for four hours in order to see a special ending.)

Even if we accept this dichotomy, the game we're playing isn't Coda's, nor is it entirely Davey's. The experience we get, over here, the players, requires both of them around. There's also an unsung hero: Dualryan. A third, definitely separate person composed a soundtrack, and that soundtrack creates the atmosphere of the game as much as Coda's levels or Davey's narration/skipping.

One odd thing about game design

The game begins with a Counterstrike map, made with other people's resources. However, in the end, Coda whines on the wall about Davey remaking his levels and adding elements he didn't intend.

Game design, all design, inherently revolves around using other people's resources. Another person made the computer, or the parts inside, and unless you machine code, you're using tons of other people's work. There's always an unwitting element of shared creation and reformation, up to the point of silly AMVs on YouTube which just throw a filter and maybe some music on someone else's work.

That's cool, though. That's just part of the process! Throwing your own ideas and interpretations on the game, adding even tiny elements, can make a big difference in the atmosphere of the game. The lampposts totally alter the dark moods of the levels.

From an internal point of view, like Coda's, someone else changing your experience or adding elements to it shouldn't matter. Interaction with other people at all shouldn't matter. This makes me think the text at the end, and who knows what else, is actually made by Davey, who is all about external validation. As mentioned in the last part, external validation matters as much as internal creativity. They don't have to be separate spheres.

To a person who needs to pay bills, that needs external validation when creating games or books or movies, getting to stick your name on it and make the money to survive matters quite a lot. Davey is taking advantage of Coda's creativity, and that's why the ending feels so inethical and skeezy. It also feels just wrong to attach ideas to Coda that aren't actually his: when I saw the line 'stop adding lamposts', I felt gross inside. Just because Coda and Davey could be the same person, that doesn't make the moment less uncomfortable.

That's because from the external standpoint, in the world of the actual, attribution matters.

Davey and Coda seem like one entity because the game, the only way we can know either of them, is their co-creation.

The composer gets dumped in there too, without a word.

But if all you knew was the game, just the main experience, it would be impossible to say where one begins and the other ends. Davey embodies player experience and validation. Coda embodies endings. For us, the player, we need both. The experience is incomplete without either. Davey and Coda are both real, sure, but we don't know if either of them reflect an actual person. We don't even know how much Davey the narrator reflects Davey the real life guy who eats and breathes and Tweets.

And maybe, just, in general, the game feels much better if Davey isn't stealing the work of someone who asked to be left alone. If Coda is an actual person, then Davey has done something monstrously inethical and cruel. We don't want to believe the worst in people, so we like to imagine Davey and Coda are the same physical entity, if representing two entirely different side.

But it still feels gross, doesn't it?

The Tower - June 2011

First, notice that the dark mood of this level is created by the music. The starting room isn't that dark or terrible if you take out the track. In fact, the lighting has an industrial warmth associated with levels Coda has intended to be, more or less, friendly. Of course, you have to LEAVE this room to see the level, so that might show that Davey (and you, the player) have to venture into some dark territory to see everything.



Then, notice that you're moving upwards. Upward movement is filled with hope in these games, not despair. There are some weird lighting things going on in the first room, though., though: the large spotlights on the ground don't have an in-room source.



Your next room is the little invisible maze. Cute, but actually unsolvable. You're always, always intended to cheat if you want to see all of it.


Why does Davey let us believe we can solve it? He wants us to sin. Earlier on, we could press the A button to skip past part of the stairs, or we can stubbornly refuse, and play the game the way Coda intended. We can also choose to solve the labyrinth after Davey skips us past it. Here, if you try to stick on Coda's side, Coda or more likely Davey, punishes you, because he has one way he wants the game to be played. He wants to smugly bring you onto his side to justify some nasty actions. If you try to resist, you'll be miserable until you either cheat to see what's wrong or give in and press A. Or, uh, click, I guess.



However, check this out: At the very top of the next gate is a little sliver of light. You have to look practically straight up to see it. Even in the midst of what's meant to be despair, there's a beacon of hope, like a lighthouse in the darkness?



After we've cheated and crossed the bridge, Davey added a disgusting, skeezy revelation long before we get to the top of the tower: he altered the housecleaning game. He intended that level as a beacon of hope, and betrayed the player's trust in us getting to know Coda by completely changing the nature of the game. He gave it an ending, destroying the loop, which would have shown us that Coda had a lot of fun and happiness during a prison phase!

In fact, that one line destroys the idea that Coda had anything to do with any of these levels. We have no idea where Davey's influence ends and Coda's begins. If you believe the two are separate entities, whatever message or thought Coda had in these game experiences has been replaced by Davey's interpretation.

Coda drops a 6 digit code puzzle that Davey considers pointless, and just a waste of time. However, if Davey actually considered all the different games to be a part of a series, maybe he'd have noticed the hints referring to the tarot cards Devil, Tower, and Star, such as in the notes level. The numbers are meaningful, and Davey just doesn't see that!



The maze was a test of patience, which we have to cheat to get past.
The numbers are a test of knowledge, although the clues are esoteric.

Davey then presents challenge three as different, as suddenly impossible. That's odd. Wasn't the first challenge also impossible? But you'd only know that if you cheated or looked at the guide. Davey is throwing everything out of whack by becoming an unreliable narrator.

You keep rising through the level. Except for that little drop into the dead room, with no exit, you're always moving upwards, and always able to see how far you've come.



And as you ascend the tower, you get your first glimmer of color. The purple lights are never easily visible: you always have to be craning your neck upwards, same with the beacon of light shining in the darkness. Davey never comments on them. However, they're glimmers of personality and hope to me, signs that Davey just missed while layering on a melancholic soundtrack.





Now, the text at the end? Here's the double-twist for me. There's enormous dissonance between Davey's narration and the text Coda is writing on the walls. Coda seems to be confirming all of Davey's worst fears. He is explicitly stating 'yeah you made me stop making games' whereas the narration questions whether Davey really did stop Coda from making games, or somehow ruined the experience for Coda. Well, my interpretation is that Davey wrote all these messages himself, meant to cause the same harsh shock in the player that the realization did for him in real life.



And that is SO Davey! Coda doesn't care about player feedback or interaction, for the most part. All of these experiences have been, so far, for himself, saved on his computer. This is an extremely sharp departure.



Who are the people Davey showed Coda's work to? Why did they give Davey credit for the work? Either Davey took the credit for himself, or Davey and Coda are the same entity in real life, even if they're entirely separate personalities.

Another clue: there are spotlights in this section. Earlier, in the tower part of the levels, the lights came from nowhere. In this final spot, where we were supposed to get to the floodlight that could be seen earlier, instead we have... something that looks very much like the beginning of the level, extended into a long self-hating letter.



We never reach the light.



One last note: I wonder how the level changes when you switch off the narration?

[abab9579]

To me, this game looks like more of a horror game than a sad emotional game.

[Memory]

Decided to replay this rollercoaster of a game after a long time. Good effort put into the guide, i appreciate it.

[avarant]

Man, I had a totally different interpretation of this game. I played it quite a while ago, but when I came to the end, I felt like the collective "we" (players) were Davey. That Coda was representative of Davey's creative process and that the Davey in the game represented the force the outside world exerted on what he wanted his game to be. It felt like the two characters were different aspects of the same person.

[Lukeman]

You can actually beat the maze:
https://youtu.be/LNWDhCc0Dc4
I'm guessing the trigger that's "blocking" the way is to check if you actually beat the maze, or just went over it.

[Lord Fortnite]

Thanks for making this. It really helped me understand this game and to make peace with some of the clouded parts. :)

[Han Solo]

The Beginner's Guide to what?

its the beginner's guide to know your self , in a honest and brutal way

[Feathers]

"For R." I'm pretty sure this game is more of an apology to his friend that he treated like crap when he was depressed. Remember the end part of this on one of the text things it says: "I feel physically ill around you." In this talk: http://livestream.com/accounts/6845410/gamesnow/videos/83818176 Davey explains that was what his friend... I forgot his name, but it starts with an R, said to him. You should watch that if you havent, it gives some big insight into what davey felt after the creation of the stanley parable. I think it's closer to... Coda is Davey, and Davey in this is both davey and the press. Or something. That bit is more runaway thought from me though, so take that with a grain of salt.

[Glad you came ルース]

gg

[Gikiam]

Interesting. you may want to skip some parts of this explanation, I don't agree with all.
What do you think about the fact that the game asks us not to forget the sound ? We would be free of Davey to enjoy the games!

[Игривая лень]

Thanks! I won't let you down!~