The Beginner's Guide Stream

I personally find this game boring, I've stopped watching at 50 mins, but I find the comments here really cool and interesting!

This medium lends itself to art unlike any other

It’s kinda fascinating how much this kinda mirrors those old Valve developer comments modes in stuff like Portal, only for literary analysis

The Beginners guide is one of my top 2 davey wreden experiences

i keep coming back to this video because i love this game and i love this playthrough. i remember watching another guy's playthrough and when in the end davey mentions the 3 dots the guy went "what dots?", meanwhile joseph noticed them from the beginning. its the little things shaping the experience

The second the narrator said "You can skip though the notes, nothing extra will happen if you read all of them" and Joseph said "I don't believe you" instantly set that Joe didn't understand the point of the game even half an hour in. Also, the door puzzle is meant to convey shutting what's behind you so you can find what's necessary to move forward, not breaking the game in a way or whatever he said. I know the video is old now but I still felt like I had to comment, his playthrough was so subpar I felt bothered enough to reply.

This is such an interesting game to interpret, in how antithetical the themes seem to be to interpretation.

Stop adding shitposts to my games

This is the exact opposite way to say I'm sorry. He wanted you to move on.

My interpretation of 'will you stop adding lampposts to my games' isn't that Davey was literally adding lampposts to the games after the fact; Early on, Davey says 'After this, Coda would end all of his games with this lamppost'. The thing is that even given that Davey is an unreliable narrator and even if you want to assume that Davey's intentions weren't entirely honest, I don't see him telling such a bold faced lie if in fact he had been the one adding the lampposts in the first place.

I feel the implication is that Coda was pressured by Davey's expectations during their association, and added the lampposts as a way of appeasing Davey's desire for an ending. It speaks to how artists don't create in a vacuum, but are influenced by their environments and the public, even if that influence is detrimental to the end result and/or the artist themselves. This is why the last game doesn't have a lamppost. It's Coda's way of telling Davey that his influence isn't welcome in their games any more.

The most direct evidence against this interpretation is Davey's admission that he had changed the housecleaning game which was originally an endless loop, but tried to pass that off as an intentional part of Coda's design at the point when you first encounter it, even speculating on why it was like that as if he were only an outside observer. But it doesn't really escalate from here, and he goes back to pointing out places he's changing things and explaining why. It seems incongruous that he'd just add a bunch of lampposts and never own up to it later, especially given the implication that the whole collection is a kind of hail mary 'please forgive me' play.

But that's art, right? You take what you want from it, so maybe that says more about me than it does about the game. :)

This game ended up being a great exploration of the pitfalls of Parasocial relationships between Content Creators and their audiences...and it's made all the sadder by the fact that "Davey" creates this parasocial interaction, when he could have had a healthy mutual relationship with "Coda". He creates that barrier on his own, and doesn't seem to realize what he's done. He doesn't seem to realize that he created his own personal "Coda" in his head, and treated it as the real person.

You can certainly interperet things about a creator from their work. But unless you are hearing straight it from the horse's mouth, it's only an assumption.

This is old, but lisa the painful is also made in rpg maker

Davey said Coda was a fictional character, didn't he? And I think that's actually the thing that makes this game genius. I mean he literally used his own name and status, created multiple maps he injected meaning into both in-game and irl, established a fictional connection to a fictional character with his in-game version getting multiple messages across and creating a parallel between Coda and him in real life. This game is amazing.

I love how Davey is basically acting like one of the students in the classroom/lecture hall game - but he doesn't connect what he likes about that game to what is happening between him and Coda.

why he deleted the review

innocuous comment about lamppost

WHAT

How do you leave notes?

I'd have to go back and check but, I think the first time Davey mentions the months between games is at 4 months. So, for the code combination at the end it's the months between each new game followed by the additional month excluding the first (4) and the second to last (8). This game is incredible at setting up patterns like that. I'm blown away that it weaves it into the narrative and shows you who davey is by turning you into him.

I think that this is just the epitome of that hideaki anno quote "the best way to explain my thoughts is through what I make and I can't put it into words"

the part with all the messages made me cry because the guy thought he was doing the right thing and was trying to help but was making things worst and made the experince of making those games less enjoyable and it's sad that he tried and treid but with out knoledge just made things worst and he didn't know. he just didn't know.

I think the narrator saying things like "I'm skipping the maze" and "you can hit enter to climb the stairs normally" is showing this sort of ironic respect but also misunderstanding of codas work/intent
Edit: Holy shit. I just finished the vid. Should've waited. I interpreted that huge infinite maze at the end as a "fuck you" to Davey

"Hey guys how it's going Kripparian here" was a really unexpected joke

Everyone saying that Davey is at wrong here and he should leave Coda alone, but in my view, they both equaly as bad. Yes, Davey used Codas work to make himself feel better, but its not like he was wrong about Coda - he dont have even basic social skills to say that he really thinks, he need to hide behind games. And if he didnt want to show his work to the public, why show it to Davey? No matter friends or not, its kinda killls the purpose of "making game for himself". Yet he keep "feeding" Davey this games, knowing that it enables him even more. He could just tell him that there is no deeper meanings, that he just messed around with source and thats it, yet he didnt. Its a story about two mentaly ill people and it makes me sick too, which i guess was the purpose and if it is - its damn well done game

So it's a game about how the creator is a narcissistic leech that will never learn or change his behavior no matter what everyone around him begs him to do? How he will live his entire life hurting, using, and ruining others and no force in this world can change them?
Neat.

it's interesting how a game about not reading too deep into everything can be seen from many different perspectives

its not a deep insight or anything but the housecleaning game is my favorite thing ever. i wish it was real its so soothing and comforting

The Beginner's Guide is not a game, its an experience.
Sure its played like a game, but I don't think its really a "game".

this guy coda is a type 5 enneagram. i am too. holy fuck, i relate to this guy. tears man, that isolation is fucking profound and part of who we are.

This is litereally the worst experience I've ever had with a game. people on steam reviews wrote it made them cry and what not. but in reality you pay $20 to have a bad time and listen to some pretentious bullshit. I get what this game is about. I understand the story here. but that doesn't make it any more interesting. its like reading Immanuel Kant. He's got some clever stuff to say but boy am I hating my life reading it.

This game feels like it was written by a middle schooler (coda), and then looked back and analyzed by a future self; possibly a high school/early collage aged person (the narrator).
It’s kinda cringy, but only because I knew several people when I was in middle school with severe anxiety and depression. And then met people with much worse conditions in college.

This game made me re-evaluate my life back when I played it 5 years ago. Definitely a great experience that anyone that creates anything should try. Glad you gave it a chance Joseph.

Reading some of the comments for this game while I'm only 10 minutes in... it's like a different language

We did it guys. Anime is real.

"Who's that woman crying?" Apparently it's me

I don't think he literally added in lampposts, but that his demand for a "finish" for the game caused Coda to put a lamppost at the end of his game to signal "Hey, here's the end you demanded." but that is just my guess

Joe please play Outer Wilds

literally anything: happens
Joseph: "...wuh?"

In the context of the story, Coda is a real asshole isn't he? I can't believe he's supposed to be some kind of victim in all of this.

"How DARE you mod my games to make them tolerable. How DARE you show other people my games because you're concerned about my wellbeing. You don't like yourself and you tried to make yourself feel better by playing my games? Well, you played them wrong, here's a spit in your face, fuck you, NEVER contact me again!"

"Maybe he just likes making prisons" became my default response to any argument for Authorial Intent on any work; it's a fallacy to assume you can learn about an author's psyche through their art alone.

Coda's games are giving me Pink Floyd's The Wall vibes.

I'd go as far to say that this game wasn't very good. Felt more like some oblivious person telling me the details of a personal conflict between two people that has nothing to do with me and hence (because I'm not a Davey of the world) I find nothing attractive about it. Just a bunch of unrelatable drama that i can, at best, try to imagine or think to a time in my life when i might have been equally as young and immature enough to have been susceptible to these events which now simply appear to me as a very one sided kind of high school drama.

I'm embarrassed for Davey because, as evidenced by this game, he still doesn't get it and would feel bad for Coda except for the fact that, as evidenced by his disappearance from game development, he successfully identified and removed a toxic person from his life who probably hid himself very well for a time. I'd imagine he's safely making his own games in relative peace now.

Edit. I'll add that i doubt it's a literal true story as the narrators actions and thoughts don't fit with someone as intelligent as the same guy who made the Stanley parable. If i look at it from the angle that this was really a subtle jab at fans who display characteristics of someone susceptible to behaving like Davey, i can say i still didn't like the game, I do respect it, but that writing about it (or even thinking about it) anymore than what i an right now would feel kind of gross and inconsistent with the true effect (or lack of really) this game just had on me.

As for Joe, I wonder if you'll watch this let's play and cringe at how you played and commented on this game someday. I'm genuinely curious. My fear is you won't. I almost suspect it's similar to the likelihood of me cringing someday at my compulsion to leave this reflective summary lol.