#when youre a beginner you can tell people are tiptoeing around saying the obvious thing

[chewwytwee]

people conflate being nice with not being critical. Being nice to people doesnt mean never presenting them with any kind of negative information or feedback it means don't be a prick while doing it

[lonesomealley]

The Beginner’s Guide as a Proper Beginner’s Guide SCRIPT

Why The Beginner’s Guide is a proper beginner’s guide.

By Count_

Spoiler Warning / Opening

Warning, this is the obligatory spoiler warning, if you have not played The Beginner’s Guide I fully recommend that you purchase it for full price and play it. Although if you do not have money, I would recommend that you then go and watch a YouTube let’s play of the experience because you can effectively get the same experience from both despite what some people say. In the description below is a link to a silent let’s play that I recorded which is what was used as the footage for parts of this video. Please watch or play this experience and then come back and watch this video, it won’t be going anywhere. Also, just in case you may want to listen to this video purely through audio, you may miss out on many of the examples that I’ll be flashing up in the backgrounds of my commentary. Spoiler warning over in 3… 2… 1...

The Beginner’s Guide is a narrative experience created by the brilliant mind of Davey Wreden. What ensues is a hybrid of a first and second person narrative where the player walks about the small -death of the author like- 3D environment projects created by an ominous character named Coda. And over time the player begins to learn that the narrator, Davey Wreden himself, isn’t to be entirely trusted. Keeping details of the game emitted until Coda them self leaves a message explaining why they aren’t around anymore.

My overview of this information is so simple because the experience itself is not what the video’s about. The video you’re watching is a case study into how the player can use The Beginner’s Guide as a valuable resource when working on their own passion projects. Since i have played The Beginner's Guide over ten times now, I can say with certainty that there is a lot more here than just an interesting drama. The name “The Beginner’s Guide” not only reflects genius work but is also a dive into the basics of how to make art, media, writing, etc. I’m led to believe that the topics I’m about to discuss hasn’t been considered all too much either, because when looking into the idea there doesn’t appear to be any documentation on these concepts. So what I’m going to talk about are ways that I feel the medium of passion work can be pushed to the absolute limits. Here are some timestamps on screen and they will be in the description if you wish to click past the parts that don’t seem interesting to you.

Case 1: Build with a Purpose

It’s arguable to say that the levels in The Beginner’s Guide are somewhat poorly constructed at times and even amateur. Which is interesting when you take into account that Wreden is taking us on a journey through a collection of amateur environment-story telling projects. And in turn this property makes these levels believable, the player actually feels like they are going through levels produced by someone who isn’t getting paid for their work. Now some people will say that this argument simply exists to dodge criticism but hear me out. Would the experience really be strengthened by having highly polished and professional levels that give the idea that these levels were created by a professional while talking about a single character who simply created these games for them self? No, no it wouldn’t. Wreden even uses this as a plot device when talking about the house level, where he states: [VIDEO CLIP WHERE DAVEY CALLS OUT THE INCREASING QUALITY]. Obviously something to consider when paying attention to the release dates of Coda’s works.

This may seem obvious to some, but those who are just starting off in design should make sure that everything they create has a purpose. I especially find myself in a loop of not really knowing what I want to do because I don’t have a grasp on what is important to developing the world I am trying to show off. What’s the solution? You can build the essentials of a project piece and then add the meaningless details later. Just make sure those meaningless details don’t ruin the overall purpose you are trying to give your work. Although that is no reason for the developers to become lazy with their work; that’s not what is being advertised here. What’s trying to be said is to make everything believable because immersion is one of the preeminent, vital ‘organs’ of passion design. Just like mentioned above, Wreden intentionally made everything appear amateur not to ease his workload, but to convince they player these games were truly made by someone else in their spare time. And from here, the player is given a gateway into the convincing mind of an imaginary character.

A few examples come to mind, such as the environment changing as you move through it to imply the player is in a dreamlike state. Or the player is experiencing the world through the eyes of a grumpy old man who is dying and dissatisfied with his life, so you show the world around in him a different light to reflect this: Dirty textures, things dying underneath the character as he walks around the environment. How about a character that suffers from PTSD triggered from symbolistic objects, and so the developer may make those symbols stand out from the environment, something as simple as making the object colorless in a colorful environment. All of these ideas are relatively simple, yet their impact should not underestimated when it comes to storytelling.

Another thought to maintain as well, keep things simple yet use complexity to your advantage. The literal language that I am speaking right now is based on using simplistic words and sounds to communicate ideas to each other. It’s when one starts applying complexity to an idea and object that it makes such stand out from all of the other ideas and objects. If you’re writing a story for example, you won’t describe every single object in the story unless it provides a gateway to deeper plot devices and storytelling. I can say, “The child tiptoed across the floor.” in a scenario where nothing

else is important except that the child tiptoed across the floor. To add complexity onto this sentence, I can apply details like, “The child tiptoed across the floor in the darkest hours of night.” Now what we have is a situation where a child is probably sneaking around somewhere to avoid something. Finally I can add detailing about the floor, “The child tiptoed across the wooden, creaky flooring at the darkest hours of night.” Now what we have is a sentence that implies a form of danger and performance. It can be important that the child tiptoes across the creaky floor to avoid his parents hearing them, or possibly that they’re trying to escape a monster. There’s even an example of this in the material, you notice these characters? All of them have a distinct box on their head that indicates what role they have in the story. Except for this one. Why? Because it can be inferred that this is a representation of a person from the real world, and that these are prop characters used for a story, whether it be Coda or just a random character used to pull off this idea.

How The Beginner’s Guide pulls off this technique is very subtle, yet when the player looks past the melancholy story and strange environments, they can find how perfectly everything fits into the grand scale of Wreden’s creation. This idea can be applied to most other reputable games as well. If you don't believe me, try looking at your favorite video game, movie, or story, and look at how perfectly the world is crafted simply because everything was created with a purpose.

Case 2: Every POV’s a Screenshot

This next topic drops off the storytelling side of passion design for a little bit, and is more purely about visual design such as video games, painting, and even photography, sprinkled in with some audio design, yet primarily video games since they enact interactivity. If you’re looking for tips on how to do storytelling and are not interested in anything else, you can skip to the next case in the video. Although I would recommend sticking around for this part if you are looking to give your audience a unique mental image to remember your work.

Imagine being placed into a plain, grey, room. No doors, no windows, just you and your mind, starved of entertainment Then all of a sudden, the wall transforms into this bizarre rainbow tunnel or the wall starts getting really trippy. Which one looks better? This, or this [of course showing examples]. If a photographer were to take a picture of either room, which do you think will sell better to an audience? Here is an example from the level Mobius, the player is in a spaceship with a giant door hurdling itself at the ship. Look at this screenshot, everything feels crafted in a way that looks like a work of art, with the main focus being the large colliding space door. Think of abnormalities like this and start applying them everywhere. Except in this scenario, the abnormality only exist because of a painfully plain existence within a controlled environment. Sometimes the abnormalities are subtle enough that it resonates with the observer and becomes something of beauty. Then there are large collections of these abnormalities, which interact with each other to create environments, paintings, defining words scrawled out onto a page. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re wondering “what I am talking about.”

To actually understand the insanity of the first paragraph I need to explain the idea of abnormalities, because believe it or not, our entire reality is made up of those abnormalities. When walking outside everyday, the average person may not take notice of everything around them because they are familiar with the area. Now think of someone who has never been in that environment before, such as a tourist who missed their flight and are stranded in that same environment. Everything feels very strange to them, and they will be wary of their surroundings, keeping an eye out for threats as well as useful places like hotels and fast food joints. What may be a boring town for one person could be seen as mysterious by another. The world is abnormal when you think about it, because all of our standards are different from each other. Google’s definition of abnormal is: “Deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying.” Now then you have to ask the question, “What is normal?” which isn’t an easy or even consistent question to ask on a methodical level. Things that are normal are those that ‘conform to a standard,’ yet now there is another problem, what is the standard? Everyone has different standards, though most of us agree that certain topics are normal and others are not, such as murder, rape, mass genocide, war. But there is always a niche, and in an established society those niches are serial killers, people who are deemed mentally unstable, nazis, and savages. And while I could rant all day about these people, they do exist, and they find such normal offenses such as rape and murder to be normal. Normality is completely subjective from person to person, and is only the result of previous experience and morals. The world is a set of abnormalities that creates ultimately what is normal, and this correlates strongly with video games.

The idea pushed here is to make your environments interesting; worthy of having photos taken. I can go through several screenshots that are beautiful, weird, and enlightening about what meaning the author is pushing forward from their work. And don’t forget that we are working with full 3D environments that allow for movement, sound, and a lot of visual freedom. Rooms with unassuming visuals may be bolstered in-game by a memorable soundtrack or symbolic meaning. Before you ask, yes I am clearly stating that you should also encourage players to take audio screenshots, A.K.A. making memorable music. Especially since it’s often said that audio is 51% when making videos [POINT TO CITATION], and that applies here [POINT BACK TO VIDEO GAME] where the landscape never comes across as empty, but rather rewards the player for looking around and listening in. Simply turning around in some of the levels is enough to give off an entirely different feel. And most of the time that feeling in The Beginner’s Guide is reflection, a need to look back on what you just experienced. Although in your own medium, this feeling can be anything: surprise, shock, confusion, even confidence if you play the cards right.

One critique I’ve seen commonly used against Wreden’s works is that they’re pretentious, sometimes saying that these interactive experiences are just glorified movies. I’m not going to go at destroying this criticism, I was just trying to be clever with my topic transitions, but I will provide why this is relevant soon. So we shouldn’t forget that emotions and feelings are purely mental, along with instincts and logic. Abusing the whims of the human brain can lead to player attachment, interest, immersion, and practices with logical thinking. If the designer places a bunch of strange figures in a room in a certain manner, the player may ask themselves, “Why have they done this?” or think to themselves “Why does this seem to have so much importance even though I don’t immediately understand it?” From here the player will begin to develop their own understanding of the world and what your creations mean to them. The player often becomes the played when going through passion work, because it is expected that the player feels certain emotions and thinks about certain objects in the environment. Though that said, it should be pointed out that a good creator should never need to force a meaning toward it’s players *unless again it is for a pivotal reason within the work, again comparable to Wreden’s narration.* Okay now that this information has been told: what does any of this have to do with pretension? Because while there is no need for The Beginner’s Guide to be interactive, that doesn’t mean there’s no benefit received from this interactivity. The case can be argued that being able to control your own camera in these environments allows the player to further bond with whatever they are faced with. Does the player really need to pay $10 for interactivity? Well if this were a movie instead, the player would still need to pay money in order to watch the movie.

Having a great understanding of the world and what can and cannot be by reality is a strong starting point for anyone who wants to make interesting worlds out of their works. Especially today where the lands of drama and sadness in passion really only cover the basis of love and money, there is a lot of room for unique creativity. So use this knowledge in order to direct your audience toward a place that might just allow them to ponder your creativity and spread it far. *Just a side note: I kind of went on a rant here but I hope that you were able to tap into my mind there and pick up all of what I was trying to explain.*

Case 3: Place Your 4th Wall Somewhere Else

Funnily enough, the entire reason that this part exist in the first place is due to another video created by Ian Danskin (aka Innuendo Studios) titled, “The Artist is Absent, Davey Wreden and The Beginner’s Guide”. In this video essay Danskin states the following: [VIDEO CLIP]. And I know later he goes back on this statement but bear with me. While I watched, I had an epiphany: “ isn’t Davey just a disembodied character who really doesn’t have much to do with the environments in The Beginner’s Guide?” I mean, he does have an impactful role on the environment, but not intentionally. Is it possible that the fourth wall isn’t between Davey and the audience, for which he is constantly breaking, or rather is the fourth wall behind Davey [Shitty Drawing]. So by this logic, the game actually does have a fourth wall, which mind you still does get broken, but it gets broken in a unique way.

The entire story between Coda, Wreden, and these environments is kind of like a crumbling wall, thousands of years old. Coda tries his hardest to renew the wall and build it back up to glory, yet Wreden keeps attacking it and tearing down progress. At the end of it all, Coda gets tired of trying to fight for a lost cause and opts to knock the wall down himself. The Beginner’s Guide has a very obvious beginning, middle, and end much like how the story of the castle wall I described does in the sense of a tragedy. In the beginning, the world is fine and perfect and these little projects are just beautiful. In the middle, things start getting weird and more mental and the questions start to come up. And in the end, everything is going to hell and it’s a mental breakdown of both Coda and Wreden. Except that the story gets so meta that it literally begins to destroy it’s own fourth wall as the process keeps going. Because it is established within the story that Wreden is an unreliable narrator, ironic considering he is our only narrator and the person that is immediately bonded with and trusted.

By the logic that we have setup, where Wreden isn’t a part of the story but rather he’s a part of the audience just like the player, then there becomes this strange scenario where the audience itself actually breaks down the fourth wall as the story continues. Immediately is can be assumed that these projects are for no one, they exist purely to satisfy Coda. When you start the game, Wreden even references this: [VIDEO CLIP]. Which continues to get referenced as the experience unfolds. Speaking of unfolding, at a certain point within the player’s adventure, Wreden takes notice of a lamppost at the end of a segment, and of course this is later to be blamed on Wreden for meddling with

Coda’s work. The earliest example of this act is the stairs level where Davey writes a script that allows the players to bypass an intended mechanic by the creator. If Wreden is part of the audience, but has managed to add content to these works, then surely this is some weird reverse wall where the audience is working with the story. And what is now left is a story where it’s a creator versus their audience, and sure this sounds like a common story, but it has quite the unexpected twist. The audience is not intended out of Coda’s work. Coda makes this point abundantly obvious at the end of The Beginner’s Guide when he states towards Wreden, “Would you stop taking my games and showing them to people against my wishes?” There are a lot of unique qualities about The Beginner’s Guide that make up a lot of possibilities for one to begin creating their own work. I find this experience to be a good reference point for kinds of creative works that I want to create. And I believe that there is a far land of unmarked territory that creative works could step into to; a call to become stronger than the media of today.

I imagine a story where another story is being told from the perspective of a child who is reading that story. And there are moments when the story abruptly stops for moments of time because something comes up, like the kid gets hungry or possibly his mother comes in and takes the book away from him. There can be multiple levels of fourth wall it feels like, maybe at one point there is a letter in the story that’s from the son’s father and it tells him of a tragic world where nothing matters. And from there the child talks to the reader telling them to go out and enjoy their life. Or in the case of video games, have the player personally be the protagonist, not like those games where you simply put in your name and nothing else matters but possibly you could be adding things to the game. A game where the player needs to cross a pit, but the only way to do that is to open the game’s map file and manually add in a bridge of their own. At the end of it all though it could just be said, “Well the wall always rests between the player and what’s inside of the experience.” I simply don’t agree, the fourth wall should be a rather subjective thing because it allows for an expansive idea for how to write a narrative. Everything about creative work is subjective really, and while we refer to our ancestors, times change, and to keep up with the changing times, there should be a change in the possibilities of reality, or as I’m talking here: original works.

This case is much more about opportunity rather than it is logic, or standards of writing. Being capable of shifting the mechanics of how a innovative work can operate allows for much more expansion for how new, high quality work is even produced and what that entails. To begin shifting those mechanics, one must understand the basics of how to communicate and produce, which conveniently rolls back around to Ian Danskin’s video about The Beginner’s Guide, which much like mine isn’t purely about The Beginner’s Guide but heavily relies on the material for sake of topic. The video covers the fundamentals of storytelling, authorship, and communication, which has a vast amount of research dumped into the discussion. Just hold out with me a little bit longer, and then I’ll provide an annotation to this video if you’re curious.

Rephrase / Closing

No matter how many times I play The Beginner’s Guide, I will never quite get the true idea of what the story is trying to tell me. It can be inferred what the game wants me to know, but it never truly feels right to make such a concise opinion about a game that wants to be so vague about itself. It’s a piece of work that much like some of the environments in Coda’s work, appears so closed off and distant from any form of distinguishable character. Wreden has created a scenario where you can never truly know what is trying to be said, yet sprinkles enough information so that you can get pretty close. And I think this is what most stories should strive, such open ended-ness that the player or reader can come to their own conclusion of what to take away.

In my personal opinion, Wreden has created some of the most inspiring works that I have come by. It’s always the bizarre ways that a story will attempt to present itself that gets to me the most, such as the methodical lectures from Alan Watts that tells the universe in a very new but interesting way. Except I’m not talking just stories here, I’m talking art, audio, environments, our language, and the interactivity of video games. The area of passion work is currently in a weird spell where works will have tenuous story beats that allude to being more complex than what is presented simply because it’s the hip and cool thing of today. Yet none of those projects are talked about for very long, they all seem to get the cop out card for not being capable of creating anything more intriguing. Those that seek out a method of having that illusory mean something other than, “Isn’t it funny that you’re currently thinking of how weird this game is?” will often find their works to last longer than the ones that fall into this trap.

The Beginner’s Guide is a stand up in the ring of modern storytelling that I feel needs to be remembered. I mean, this video only exists because I find Davey Wreden to be a genius: [VIDEO CLIP OF THIS VIDEO IN META WAY THING]. If you haven’t picked up on this already, this entire essay is heavily biased, most of what I have talked about here stem from my own head; they aren’t based on facts. The purpose here is to inform myself and any others who are possibly lost in the crossroads of passion design, with what I hope to be a unique perspective. For anyone that is interesting in creating passion work for themselves, or believes that they can do something with the information I have provided, I highly recommend you give another play through of The Beginner’s Guide. Because as Ian Danskin says, The Beginner’s Guide is “a strange meta textual monster of an indie game”. [END]