pabosher

"Just make sure to complete [The Beginner's Guide] within your Steam refund window..."

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"...as there are legitimate reasons to want to return this game after purchase."

 

Has anyone else seen this post on Destructoid earlier today? I guess this discussion may fall into spoiler territory, so be warned. You should really play it. It's a damn fine experience.

 

[To clarify the above statement regarding refunds, while I view this game as a work of fiction, and recommend people play it as such, many players view the narrative as an accurate work of non fiction.

If you fall into the camp that view this as non fiction, an aspect of the narrative implies that the content is stolen wholesale from another developer. While I paid for the game and believe doing so is a morally acceptable action, what I wish to make clear is that if players disagree with my reading of the narrative and feel I reccomended them an experience they didn't morally agree with, there is a financial way to back out of that purchase.

This is not an encouragement to back out of payment due to length, but simply me pointing out that if you finish the game and believe the narrative to be non fiction, and if you believe that you purchased stolen goods, there is a way to avoid your money remaining with that developer in this very specific case.

My initial vague comment was an attempt to avoid a major spoiler for the narrative, but has unfortunately left the reasons for my recommendations open to wider interpretation]

 

Does everyone else agree that this is dumb, and that TBG is clearly a work of fiction? Am I overlooking something in the narrative that would actually cause concern? I just saw this blow up on Twitter earlier, and was shocked that anyone could think that this was actually a video game about stolen work.

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To answer your question, yes, this is extremely dumb.

 

Also, that bit on the Destructoid article is really scummy. Either recommend the game or don't, but don't encourage people to exploit the refunds system so they can play it for free.

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Regardless of whether or not it's a work of fiction, it would be up to the person stolen from to seek damages, not the consumer to vote with their demand for a refund.

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I disagree entirely with her. I took The Beginner's Guide at face value, completely in its own context, and never once did it cross my mind that this work of fiction was true. It *is* a stupid thing to believe in my mind.

 

And, as clyde says, you'd THINK that 'Coda' would get in touch and be like NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK.

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This whole ridiculous thing seems to be an argument in favor of some portion of gamers being woefully lacking in appreciating art or narrative that diverges from traditional power fantasies, plus a culture that's been encouraged to look for conspiracy theories for years now (both in the real world and in the narrative of the media they are consuming). 

 

From what I've seen, there is zero evidence of this being a work of strict non-fiction outside of the imaginations of some people.  FFS.

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"Just make sure to sneak into the cinema to watch Cloverfield as there are legitimate reasons to want to avoid paying to see this movie.

 

To clarify the above statement, while I view this movie as a work of fiction, and recommend people watch it as such, many viewers see the narrative as an accurate work of non fiction.

If you fall into the camp that view this as non fiction, an aspect of the narrative implies that the content is stolen wholesale from the US military who in turn stole it from the citizens who filmed it. While I paid to see the movie and believe doing so is a morally acceptable action, what I wish to make clear is that if viewers disagree with my reading of the narrative and feel I reccomended them an experience they didn't morally agree with, there is a financial way to avoid completing that purchase.

This is not an encouragement to back out of payment due to length, but simply me pointing out that if you finish the movie and believe the narrative to be non fiction, and if you believe that you purchased stolen goods, there is a way to avoid your money remaining with that distributor in this very specific case."

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"...as there are legitimate reasons to want to return this game after purchase."

 

Has anyone else seen this post on Destructoid earlier today? I guess this discussion may fall into spoiler territory, so be warned. You should really play it. It's a damn fine experience.

 

 

Does everyone else agree that this is dumb, and that TBG is clearly a work of fiction? Am I overlooking something in the narrative that would actually cause concern? I just saw this blow up on Twitter earlier, and was shocked that anyone could think that this was actually a video game about stolen work.

 

People spent centuries believing Sir Thomas More's Utopia was nonfiction too. Some people are unable to grasp irony.

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Only possible defense I have for Laura Kate Dale is some ambiguous mentions by her about what Wreden told her in a private conversation but AFAIK she didn't say anything about what Wreden said so... yeah I think that is like, super dumb to the point that I'm kinda surprised that the article itself wasn't some sort of parody, which AFAIK isn't given her standing firm on that view.

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Did she say it was Wreden? I just read of some "off-the-record" comments which could be a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-heard-that, and could also be Wreden screwing w her, or simple misinterpretation.

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Best new games of 2015*

 

*but don't pay for this one if you don't want to

 

 

 

No, no this is not a smart list.

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Michael Lutz wrote something on this subject and I think it's pretty good.

 

I think the most benefit-of-the-doubt kind of read I can give her is that, as she says, when she first recommended the game way back when, she got a lot of complaints from dumb-butt people accusing her of shilling stolen goods, and now this little remark was intended to deflect those ridiculous criticisms. After all, if she actually believed this stuff herself, the thing to do would be to recommend people stay away from the game not somehow consume it without paying. Also, it still feels pretty wrongheaded to try to honor these folks absurd non-fictional read.

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I think it seems to be borne out of this whole 'The customer is always right' mentality, which is just ridiculous.

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Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I feel like this would be easier to discuss if people used the logic-understanding of "valid". One could still say, "If you accept the premise that Wreden stole the games, and that a consumer is accountable for ethical production, and you believe that it is unethical to sell someone else's games in this form, then one can make a valid argument that asking for a refund is ethical." Validity is only as relevant as the premises that are assumed imo.

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Maybe I'm being pedantic, but I feel like this would be easier to discuss if people used the logic-understanding of "valid". One could still say, "If you accept the premise that Wreden stole the games, and that a consumer is accountable for ethical production, and you believe that it is unethical to sell someone else's games in this form, then one can make a valid argument that asking for a refund is ethical." Validity is only as relevant as the premises that are assumed imo.

 

How so when everyone is specifically bewildered on the absurdity of the first premise?

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I know that some folks are very considerate of intellectual property. So I can't assume that the first premise isn't true enough for the consumer. For instance, Robert Yang wrote a piece about how he toyed with the idea that he might be Coda. All the while, he assumed that The Beginner's Guide levels would be inspired by his own (if I'm remembering correctly). If Wreden built levels inspired by the levels of an actual game-designer who he was referencing, I would be fine with that, but I suspect that some would not be as liberal as myself.

My call to use "valid" in the logic-understanding of it was really a response to the Lutz article though. For some reason, I had also thought that Dale had used "valid" where she actually said "legitimate".

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Rock, Paper Shotgun's "Have You Played...?" series discusses The Beginner's Guide!  Wade into the comments for some still-strong opinions!

 

One of the negative opinions felt that Wreden, as the narrator, was specifically narrating to someone who bought his game on Steam, therefore any of his confessions are just "content"—just audio files you paid for.  Therefore any emotional appeal in the game is false!

 

I have a hard time getting to that point.  I never thought of the narrator as the guy collecting my dollar bills (even though he is?)—I thought of him as a storyteller.  I guess, "hey, buy this and let me talk at you" is a valid reading of this game (and almost anything), but it's really limiting.

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One of the negative opinions felt that Wreden, as the narrator, was specifically narrating to someone who bought his game on Steam, therefore any of his confessions are just "content"—just audio files you paid for.  Therefore any emotional appeal in the game is false!

Wouldn't that be... true of like every art ever basically?

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Wouldn't that be... true of like every art ever basically?

 

I actually looked up the comment because the way mikemariano had paraphrased it didn't make any sense to me. I think the commenter's point is the conceit about Wreden (narrator) having a breakdown "live" at the end of the game rings hollow because the whole thing had to be recorded, compiled, tested for bugs etc. To put it in other words, it's a version of this old Monty Python and the Holy Grail bit:

 

 

where the python bit plays it for laughs (why would Joseph inscribe aaagggh in the wall if he is being murdered), but Wreden (real life person) doesn't so much as wink about how it complicates the ostensibly spontaneous emotional outpouring at the end of the game.

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I felt that sense of the conceit being unreliable from the Counter Strike level in the beginning; I didn't think that was a level-file actually pulled from another game. So the entire game felt like awkward preachy rhetoric to me, but I came to enjoy that sensibility. I liked the idea that the narrator was a creation of Wreden that was depersonalizing themself through the levels in the game and a "Coda" of their own fiction.

Simply put, the conceit being absurd is what triggered what I eventually came to like about the game.

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It's one of those things where that makes no sense, I know it makes no sense, and I give zero shits that it makes no sense. If you really want to justify it, it's easy to headcanon that Davey wanted to share this epiphany he had while recording his commentary and so he packaged it in. Generally, though, I think this is one of those things where a work asks for a small buy-in so that it can pull you deeper into the narrative -- also, the premise would be hard to execute on without that, unless he made the game episodic or something.

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Yeah I'm basically where you're at with this I think. For whatever reason it basically falls under the category of getting a pass for suspension of belief purposes for me.

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Does chalking it off with your conscious suspension-of-belief still allow you to include the conflation of the narrator (Davey) and the actual author (Wreden) as an integral part of the piece?

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I dunno what you mean? I definitely think of the narrator as being distinct from the author, though within the context of the piece the narrator plays the role of the author.

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Yeah ditto not sure what you mean. But to elaborate re: the suspension of disbelief, I guess it's of a piece with having the same attitude towards film/movie: I (and I think I can probably say "we" in a universal sense) don't question "omg how is there a camera there recording this" when viewing a period piece set before the invention of motion picture cameras, for instance. It's just a thing you take for granted, right?

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