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So the creator of The Stanley Parable has a new game out

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Closest I can think of is Italo Calvino's novel If on a winter's night a traveler, which mostly tracks a second-person protagonist (who grows increasingly distinct as a character separate from you the actual reader) as he tries to hunt down a copy of a book he never finished reading. The novel is structured around lengthy chapters describing the books he reads, recreating not the exact text of these fictional works, but the subjective experience of reading them.

Interesting, I read If on a winter's night... a couple weeks ago and the comparison makes me want to check this out (more than I already did I should say)

(I will say, though, that I found If on a winter's night a traveler to be a uniquely frustrating book, in that the second person protagonist is often described to be frustrated by what he's reading (or what he isn't reading) and that translates seamlessly into actual frustration on the real reader's part. At least it did for me.)

That was definitely my experience reading it as well.

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Man, on my second playthrough seeing that lamppost made me SO uncomfortable. Especially when he put it in the game where you destroy the machine. Jeez.

That is a good point though. I don't think Coda liked endings: his games tend to invoke a kind of purgatory, an endless in-between space of self-reflection. He never released his games, and it's unlikely Coda was his real name, so it's quite likely that it's just a name that Davey gave him for the purpose of the game.

 

I'm assuming that Coda was fictional. But knowing him only as Coda gives a good sense of just how weird Davey's attachment to him is and how misguided his attempts to pathologize him are. I'd assume he was supposed to have came across his work online, on a forum like this one, and only knows him in that context. It would be like saying "I've seen your posts, Problem Machine, and I can really tell that you're a sad, broken individual based on them. I'd like to help. Why won't you let me help?"

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He says up front that Coda never put them online though -- easy not to notice if you don't replay, since he only says it at the very beginning of the game. It actually makes the situation rather causally confusing, since the first game he was supposed to have seen was Online Game, but he goes back to older ones and actively infers that weird line through all of them. It sort of suggests that he might have accessed those games illicitly in the first place...

It might be reading way too much into it, but there is the trailer as well, where it's framed as someone just logging into a stranger's computer and seeing a folder of their work and going through it...

And yeah, I'm sure that Coda is fictional, or at most a fictionalized version of a person

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I had a similar question of how did (in game) Davey obtain all of these game at all? Some of them were clearly shared with him (like the final one made by Coda.) but it was unclear how much was voluntarily shared by Coda given his lack of desire for other people to see his work.  I assume Coda is fictional. Otherwise real like Davey lacks any kind of self-awareness.

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Shortly after finishing The Beginners Guide, I did a little bit of googling about Davey Wreden to see what other people were writing about the game and found this essay and comic by Wreden about his feelings following the attention that The Stanley Parable was bringing him.  It places The Beginners Guide in an interesting context, because much of the feelings being expressed by Coda toward the Davey character are echoed by Wreden in the blog post.

 

I don't remember exactly how it was indicated in the game that Davey had obtained the Coda games, I was under the impression that Coda was sending them to Davey following their meeting at a game jam, and after I finished the game, I'm also under the impression that they (within the game's story, not in real life) were being created in conversation with Davey, because so many of them make much more sense as reactions to Davey's clingy behavior.  The core message of so many of Coda's games seemed to be 'hey how about you back up off me, examine your motivations, and maybe try writing the story of your own life instead of trying to write yourself into the story of mine', and the message repeatedly failed to land, until it had to be spelled out explicitly in The Tower; and even after that Davey prioritizes his own need to constantly be handed someone else's symbols to assign his own meanings to over Coda's need to be free of this weird emotional candiru fish that his work attracted.

 

I'm also not totally sure that the message of the game is "don't try to figure out what art means" as much as it is "don't act like you know someone based on a few of their paintings that you looked at."  People invariably see their own prejudices and beliefs reflected back to them when they experience artwork, this is why people have tried to sanitize Shakespeare and censor Michelangelo and it's why there's so, so many conservative libertarian bronies.

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I'm not sure if the "don't try to figure out what art means" part was directed at my interpretations -- but I am regardless starting to get a tad frustrated at having to clarify that interpretation is fine, it's the idolization of one's own interpretation, and trying to push that interpretation on others, especially the creator, that's the problem. Obviously everyone posting in this thread is at least somewhat comfortable with the idea of interpreting art, since that's what we're doing here: The question is at what point Davey crossed the line, starting taking more from Coda than he should have, started listening to his interpretations instead of to his friend.

Anyway! I definitely think that after they met most of the games were addressed more or less directly to Davey, starting probably with the last prison game (the phone call). How, though, did he get all of Coda's old games? Did Coda really share his crappy unplayable CS map with him, and if so why? Or did he find it by snooping around on Coda's computer? It's a kind of worrying question.

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Oh jeez, I wasn't really directing that comment 'at' anyone since at this point in the thread I'm not really skipping back to the first page to see who said what.  I was also kind of reacting to the title of the Offworld article about the game, because I very much believe that The Beginners Guide is a game that wants not only to be written about but wants to prompt the kind of conversations about the relationships between creators and audience that we are now having.  But I spaced on bringing it up.  I apologize!

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First I need to just say that nothing I could have said to me-in-the-past would have convinced me to avoid spoilers, but in retrospect, they are completely unnecessary for my personal appreciation of The Beginner's Guide and actually a bit distracting as I was always expecting a twist. But of course I'm going to spoiler tag things I would have freaked out about reading before playing the game:

In the interpretation that Coda is Wreden's creative-process / persona-during creation, and that Davey is Wreden's need to share and connect, the assumptions Davey regrets making about Coda are regrets about judgments he makes about his own self through interpretation of his own creative-output. So Wreden is in a situation where he can't express rawly, even to himself, because it will send him into a more isolated state due to concerns of his own need to express isolation. So it becomes this self-concern positive feedback-loop that shuts down the ability to express through art while increasing the need to do so.

In this interpretation, his conclusion is basically "I need to separate ny artistic expression from the way I think of myself so that I can just admit that maybe I just like making prisons."

The comments on the Source-engine's propensity work into this interpretation too; the way what an engine tends to make would influence how you see the artist (or yourself as an artist).

Also, if anyone is interested in playing a game that has uncanny similarities to The Beginner's Guide, I strongly recommend playing Electric Highways

http://zykoveddy.itch.io/electric-highways

For an additional layer of uncanniness (especially for the maker of this let's play video of Electric Highways) check out this let's play of Electric Highways first level.

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This talk by Wreden is pretty interesting...you can probably skip to about 12:58. Also its from about 5 months ago so there's no Beginner's Guide spoilers there, but it addresses some similar ideas.

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In the interpretation that Coda is Wreden's creative-process / persona-during creation, and that Davey is Wreden's need to share and connect, the assumptions Davey regrets making about Coda are regrets about judgments he makes about his own self through interpretation of his own creative-output. So Wreden is in a situation where he can't express rawly, even to himself, because it will send him into a more isolated state due to concerns of his own need to express isolation. So it becomes this self-concern positive feedback-loop that shuts down the ability to express through art while increasing the need to do so.

In this interpretation, his conclusion is basically "I need to separate ny artistic expression from the way I think of myself so that I can just admit that maybe I just like making prisons."

The comments on the Source-engine's propensity work into this interpretation too; the way what an engine tends to make would influence how you see the artist (or yourself as an artist).

 

 

 

 

As a publishing/professional musician and composer, I couldn't help but read this game as self reflection on ones practice through and through; and so I'm very much in harmony with your reading of the work, clyde. 

 

Everything I'd say about this game has been said previously, so I won't write much, but I will suggest: if you haven't already, you should watch the game's trailer (it plays automatically on the it's Steam Store page). As with the Stanley Parable's trailers, it features original content (narration) not found within the game; and as with the Stanley Parable, I think it's worth considering as part of the experience of the game. I watched the trailer before my first playthrough, as I hadn't seen any media about this game - only ecstatic tweets from game developers. For me, it acted as a strange, slightly ham-fisted, thesis statement. "Try to imagine, without ever having met this person, who they are. Okay, let's do it." This read to me more as an intro to a puzzle than a biographical or documentary work; therefore, I started the game expecting Coda to be artifice, and for the game to ultimately be about Wreden - which was a strange place to start from. It makes the CS Dust intro very transparent: a hard sell on Coda as the subject to take the player's critical attention off of Wreden. Ultimately, I think this game is quite clever in utilizing the medium to discuss the role of the player/audience in interpreting a work. 

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I interpreted it similar to what clyde described -- that Coda and Davey were two sides of the same person. For a long time I actually expected that to be revealed as a twist, but maybe it's intentionally left somewhat obfuscated in the end.

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I interpreted it similar to what clyde described -- that Coda and Davey were two sides of the same person. For a long time I actually expected that to be revealed as a twist, but maybe it's intentionally left somewhat obfuscated in the end.

I think the "Stop putting lamp-posts in my games!" is suppose to be a fairly explicit nod to the idea that they are two desires in the same artist.

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what? that makes zero sense as to why that would be the 'explicit nod' to the idea that Coda & Davey are the same person. Like I can see why people enjoy that interpretation, it's the opposite of compelling to me, but there's no way that the lamppost thing is definitive.

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I'm with jennegatron on this. There isn't enough evidence one way or the other for either interpretation so I rely on the Occam's Razor rule to reject it. At any rate, I don't think the actual identities is too important to the work.

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Isn't the fact that Coda directly calls out Davey as another person interfering with his life evidence? Or the fact that they met at a game jam? I've seen stretches before, but man that one is really bad.

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Even if they aren't literally the same person within the fiction of the game I think it's reasonable to interpret it as real life Davey writing two characters that are both based on aspects of himself.

On the one hand I like this interpretation because it's interesting for most of the same reasons as them being the same person without requiring you to jump through any narrative hoops to justify it. On the other hand I'm worried that it gets too close to that "making judgement about an artist based on their art" thing.

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How does the request to stop putting lamp-posts into the games fit into y'all's interpretations?

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Coda & Davey (the in game narrator) are literally 2 different people. Coda made The Tower specifically to give it to Davey, and Davey had literally been adding lampposts to Coda's other games and then showing them to people as if that was Coda's original work. Coda is telling Davey to stop.

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Coda & Davey (the in game narrator) are literally 2 different people. Coda made The Tower specifically to give it to Davey, and Davey had literally been adding lampposts to Coda's other games and then showing them to people as if that was Coda's original work. Coda is telling Davey to stop.

What do you think about the difference between the bridges, teleports, disappearing walls and other accessibilities being announced as Davey's input and the lampposts that were falsely attributed. Do you see a possible reason for this (what I view as an) anomalous exception?

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I think that Davey had been altering Coda's games to fit what he thought they should be (to have endings like the house cleaning game, to have recurring themes like the lampposts, to pass over the mazes/labyrinths and telling you what things meant). I think Davey interpreted Coda's works strictly in one way and wanted to make it easier to sell his interpretations to people by making what he saw as small changes. By skipping you over the labyrinth in the shooter game to get you to the transcendental laser beam he was making a change that the player would appreciate but that undercut what Davey had built. By adding lampposts and adding exiting through the other door he changed what the housecleaning game meant, but didn't tell the player he had changed it. Who knows whether Davey or Coda was the one to create the tiny interstitials of the walking in darkness with the little signs to connect his games. I bet Davey wanted to believe that all of Coda's games belonged to one world, but who knows if that is actually something Coda made. By making small changes that Davey knew the player would appreciate (like resetting the speed on the staircase), it felt like he could then make other small changes without telling the player he made them to color the impression the player of Coda's games. Davey felt so satisfied when he showed them to people who liked them because they weren't wholly Coda's work. Davey had made them 'better.'

 

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I think that Davey had been altering Coda's games to fit what he thought they should be (to have endings like the house cleaning game, to have recurring themes like the lampposts, to pass over the mazes/labyrinths and telling you what things meant). I think Davey interpreted Coda's works strictly in one way and wanted to make it easier to sell his interpretations to people by making what he saw as small changes. By skipping you over the labyrinth in the shooter game to get you to the transcendental laser beam he was making a change that the player would appreciate but that undercut what Davey had built. By adding lampposts and adding exiting through the other door he changed what the housecleaning game meant, but didn't tell the player he had changed it. Who knows whether Davey or Coda was the one to create the tiny interstitials of the walking in darkness with the little signs to connect his games. I bet Davey wanted to believe that all of Coda's games belonged to one world, but who knows if that is actually something Coda made. By making small changes that Davey knew the player would appreciate (like resetting the speed on the staircase), it felt like he could then make other small changes without telling the player he made them to color the impression the player of Coda's games. Davey felt so satisfied when he showed them to people who liked them because they weren't wholly Coda's work. Davey had made them 'better.'

 

 

I think I see where you are coming from. You saw the lamppost-comment as a literary-device that would put the authorship of everything we had seen in doubt while I saw it as a prompt to confuse their identities and realize that they are different sides of the same individual. I can read the lamppost-comment either way.

-------

On another note, it's interesting that the accessibility-adaptions don't seem to occur when you play the game with narration disabled.

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I feel like I should play it again now, but here's one other thing...

 

When the machine is going to be destroyed, it felt to me like you are actually playing Davey for a while, or it's at least as if this has been created for Davey, but there's no sense why Davey would have to step in front of the PRESS to represent Coda in Coda's mind unless they really are the same person. This could be a misread, I don't remember the exact details.

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A lot of Coda's earlier games become more interesting to me when I choose to imagine that they don't actually mean anything.  A few times while playing I was reminded of a quotation from the Jackson Pollock biopic (which I am not sure is a direct quotation of is, but w/e), in an interview with a journalist who wanted him to talk about what his drip paintings meant:

 

If people would just look at the paintings, I don't think they would have any trouble enjoying them. It's like looking at a bed of flowers, you don't tear your hair out over what it means.

 

It's very easy for me to believe that the Whisper Machine level was just Coda fooling around with the tools and becoming familiar with the editor.  It looks like the 3d version of someone noodling on graph paper and there's a maze in the margin and some scribbles about a Whisper Machine, and the beginnings of an idea for a game that never got finished.  Likewise the cleaning level: maybe he just wanted to get the hang of how quest-giving mechanics might work in a game, and being assigned chores was a good way to do that.  Maybe in the endless staircase, he was experimenting with volumes that affected player speed.  So these games are like Jackson Pollock getting excited about drip painting: they're new and interesting mechanics to him and they accidentally provided a rich set of symbols for someone else.

 

Also, I can see the merit in reading Coda and Davey as two different artistic impulses - one being the satisfaction of creating for its own sake, and the other being the need to create things that satisfy an audience, but that is not the reading that I find the most relatable.  I latched on pretty hard to Coda in the Tower because so much of the story of what happened there is stuff that's happened to me personally - I've been in the position of having toxic fans repost and alter my artwork and either attribute it to me or claim it as their own, there's some kinds of art that I've stopped doing entirely in order to discourage the continued attention of the audience for it (and in response, they've done exactly what the Davey character did, in hoarding and sharing it, knowing full well that I don't want them to, in the hopes that they could goad me into creating more of it), and they've ascribed to me all kinds of motivations and beliefs that are in no way actually representative of me as a person, because they imagine that they know me based on a few scribbles I made.

 

However, in saying all this, I also recognize that I'm basically committing the same crime as Davey, by projecting my own experiences into the work and then assigning that interpretation as authorial intent.  So, er.  Whoops.

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I think it's safe to say that Coda intended to communicate some specific meaning starting with the looking back game, though the genesis of that as explained by Davey seems highly suspect to me. Rather than being inspired by the beam of light that has so thoroughly caught Davey's imagination, it's just as likely that Coda got into making short narrative experimental games because short narrative experimental games were kind of a big thing in 2009. The looking back game may have been him playing around with that form in the same way that the whisper machine was him playing around with more traditional gameplay

 

I think his games tended more closely towards messages and meanings the longer he associated with Davey -- something which, based on the messages he left in Tower, I think he became displeased about and started to resent Davey for, though this displeasure was probably amplified by how obtusely Davey managed to misunderstand the messages he left.

 

You're not the first artist I've heard say it reminds them of the experience of being an artist and relating with fans/other artists, which is one reason why the reading of them as literally the same person within the narrative of the game feels very unsatisfying to me. I think the game has something interesting to say about the at-times toxic relationships between fans and artists and other artists, and disregarding that layer of meaning is missing an important part of the experience.

I feel like I should play it again now, but here's one other thing...

When the machine is going to be destroyed, it felt to me like you are actually playing Davey for a while, or it's at least as if this has been created for Davey, but there's no sense why Davey would have to step in front of the PRESS to represent Coda in Coda's mind unless they really are the same person. This could be a misread, I don't remember the exact details.

I think in this case the press and player are both kind of represented as parts of the same overall entity, and the device of the press announcement is mostly used as a device to externalize and verbalize what's going on

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