The Beginner's Guide
From GameLabWiki
About the Game
The Beginner's Guide is a walking simulator, which was published in 2015 by Davey Wreden. The game presents itself as a collection of an anonymous developer named Coda, and is narrated by Wreden himself, who does some minor edits while the player is 'walking through' the levels. Therefore the game can be related to several topics of the game studies: there are certain levels of self-reflexivity and meta media, the question of authorship in video-games and playability in general.
Research-relevant Topics of the Game
Core Game Mechanics
In The Beginner´s Guide the player interacts with the game world by walking around and being able to open and close doors. Well this does seem to be quiet boring but for the reason that this game rather must be seen as a interactive story the agency of the player is held back to be able to listen what Wreden, the narrator keeps telling the player about the world and his friend Coda. But still there are demo versions of Codas games that represent their meaning only by showing off their game mechanics, which can be seen in the backward walking game for instance (further information to this topic can be found in the “playing with agency” section).
Metacommunication in The Beginner´s Guide
Upon the research towards The Beginner´s Guide one automatically stumbles across analytic interpretations towards the narrator presented as Wreden himself and even being synchronized by Davey Wreden. The Beginner´s Guide being interpreted as a game which´s goal happens to get players into the head of Wreden and showing off how becoming famous overnight may change the mindset of a person referring to real Davey Wreden after publishing his game The Stanley Parable in 2013. Even though the developer in The Beginner´s Guide is placed as the fictional character Coda the emotional connection between him and Wreden is presented quite clear throughout the game especially when Wreden tells the player of his intend to get Coda back designing games again. By trying to understand the persona of Coda while playing the game the player also happens to understand the connection between Wreden acknowledging the work of Coda but also trying to undermine the rules Coda created in some of his demo versions, for example when the player gets stuck in prison and would have to wait an hour as intended by Coda but instead happens to leave prison earlier because of Wreden deciding that it´s time to move on. This does refer to an actual developer showing off how their intended rules can be undermined by hacking or modding their creations through others and therefore refers to a discourse that is placed outside the intradiegetic area of the game.
“This is what I like about Coda`s games. Not that they´re all fascinating as games, but that they all going to give us access to their creator.” -Davey Wreden
Reflection on the medium Computer Game itself
By reflecting and referring towards the medium of a computer game itself Bernhard Rapp stressed out that a game is always staging itself as a game[1] which means that a game can only present itself by using the technical conditions that are grounded in the medium it is played with which for example can be seen at the edges of the game world. By Wreden showing the player the programmed corridors by zooming the player out of its actual location the player is able to see the technical conditions as well as other corridors and different ways through the level of the game which normally aren´t revealed to a player due to the fact that they should discover the game world by themselves.
Another example of self-reflexivity towards the medium video game but also due to its visual appearance as Kirchmann[2] emphasizes in an aesthetic but also dispositive way happens to be told by Wreden right in the beginning of the game when the player is introduced to the first demo version of a level design Coda created. There the player can walk through a Counterstrike desert map but soon happens to find out that there must be some sort of failure or graphic glitch in the code because of floating crates throughout the map. Those floating crates, as we are told by Wreden, are not to be seen as graphic glitches but rather as hints for the player that behind every game a real person is standing and creating it.
“even though he starts from this dessert town he than scatters these colorful abstract blobs and floating crates around the level. And of cause it destroys the illusion that this actually is a desert town, and instead this level becomes a kind of calling card from its creator, a reminder that this video game was constructed by a real person.” – Davey Wreden
What happens to the player is that instead of being interrupted in his/ her flow experience the narration of Wreden gets the player back in the game presenting a different perspective on playing the game and therefore triggers the attention of the player in a different way than usual. Rapp noted this phenomenon in his research approach towards self-reflexivity and computer games by pointing out that even though immersion and self-reflexivity are ideally mutually exclusive that doesn’t mean that the player experiences any sort of constant interruption but rather tries to give the game more or another sort of Consistency.[1] This fact can be seen when the player is led into the game Ready, Set, Fish that seems to only consist of one corridor and two rooms which are enough for the player to generate a satisfied experience by solving the puzzle Coda created but instead of stopping and skipping the demo after the player solved the puzzle Wreden gives the opportunity to remove all the walls of the room by pressing the enter button. By doing so the player reveals dozens of other corridors same as the one he or she played through a second ago as level designs. Here Wreden points out that “a dull interior hides a fantastic outer world.” Which again can be linked to the self-referential idea that the demo versions and short games in The Beginner´s Guide are connected to the real Davey Wreden as a game designer and how his point of view differs from the ones presented to the players. But not only does Wreden point out that the player misses all of these design ideas he rather points out that it´s simply not the role of a player to know that there is a backstage area behind a game, and therefore not only assigning what the role of a player is but also questioning the assignment right after. So, another level of self-reflexivity is opened up referring to the player instead of the designer of the game how they position and understand themselves not only in their role as a character or avatar in a video game but also as a ‘gamer’ in general.
Types of self-reflexivity in The Beginner´s Guide
As already mentioned above there are different accesses towards the research approach of self-reflexivity implemented in The Beginner´s Guide. The following chapters try to point out some of the methods of self-reflexivity that are used in The Beginner´s Guide.
Playing with repetition and expectation
Repetition itself is a major part of a game or playing in general as we can find in Huizinga´s Homo Ludens and refers to the fact that one main feature of a game is that it can be repeated.[3]
The Beginner´s Guide does interrupt this experience by placing the player in an supposedly known setting, for example the game of November 2008 where the player finds himself/ herself in a Science Fiction related map he/she has to leave and that happens to be invaded by an unidentified life form. But instead of an expected shooter game, the demo doesn’t involve any of the above-mentioned enemies. Instead the player must listen to what the narrator keeps telling him/her to find out that there are no monsters or enemies of any sort. What happens to the player is that gathered experiences he or she had made in other computer games in this setting, for example the HALO series, can´t be repeated and leaves the player in a lack of coherence. This lack of coherence than is skipped through Wreden through all the demo versions of Coda.
Another example takes place in The Great and lovely Decent by getting in touch with the blockheads in different rooms some are trying to escape the prison their stuck in while others are just fine with it, but both conversations start with the exact same question catalogue therefore the player thinks that he/ she already knows what the blockheads are going to tell the player but actually the game breaks this circle of expectations by changing the interests of the blockheads reflecting on the behavior and expectations of the player due to an already learned code of conduct.
Playing with agency
As The Beginner´s Guide is labeled as an interactive story the player finds out really quick that having Wreden as their narrator does change the agency of the Player in certain ways. While in other video games the player is able to experience the game by his or her own actions it differs in The Beginner´s Guide due to the fact that the player is introduced to the demo versions of Coda by Wreden and most of the time already gets extra information at the start on whether how to solve the game or is interrupted by Wreden shortly after a few seconds of moving by themselves leading to a restricted agency for the player. For example, by skipping different tasks like the labyrinth in the SciFi game. But this limited agency also stresses out the reflexivity of The Beginner´s Guide for the player can really get to know how Wreden is reflecting on Codas work and how those games suit his personal taste and philosophical ideas. Which then again refers to the metacommunication throughout the whole game remembering that Wreden actually is the real creator of The Beginner´s Guide.
In the backward game for instance the player happens to not only experience a philosophical idea being placed in the game by Coda but also is able to hear what Wreden is thinking about those philosophical texts placed inside the game. Here the agency is revoked to grant the player full excess to the self-reflexive moment mentioned above. This, as Rapp points out, is a common technique to place Self-Reflexivity in computer games by reducing the immersion to a minimum which leads to the game only showing off its mechanics and helps the reflexive moment to give another form of coherence to the player.
Playing with the free will
The usage of free will inside The Beginner´s Guide differs quiet a lot but in general it can be said that the player´s experience and agency depends on the mindset of Wreden and which parts of the mini games he thinks are putting together an adequate picture of Codas personality or not. Also, the game reflects a lot on the idea how a game must be designed to be playable. So, while The Beginner´s Guide does reflect on an absolute metacommunicative discourse it tends to undermine those thoughts. There are demo versions where the player has no chance to experience the intended game by Coda because of Wreden skipping parts of it by himself without the player being asked while on the other side there are also parts of the game where the player is asked whether if he/ she wants to see beyond the surface of the intended gameplay area. But as already mentioned in general the player can´t really explore the game by himself/herself because he/she always depends on the narrator and what he thinks is important in the demo. So, while the main goal of the game should be to investigate who Coda is the player rather discovers how Wreden´s perspective on Coda is. But this again leads to an unclear experience for the player as he/she can`t interpret Codas work without Wreden`s estimations.
In Even pornstars die version 2 the player is asked to pick furniture to be placed into the room but instead of putting in what the player decided the game rather just puts the furniture back in that was inside the room in the first version of the game leaving the player angry for ignoring his or her decisions. Again, The Beginner´s Guide shows off that a computer game lives through the aspect of interactivity which when not being able to be played out leads the player to a negative experience.
Related Research Approaches
Reflexivity on the Medium
The Beginner´s Guide reflects upon the medium in different parts of the game. Not only does the game provide a metacommunicational space in which the player is led back to an extradiegetic space or more likely the real world by presenting the narrator as Davey Wreden the actual developer of the The Beginner´s Guide and Stanley Parable as the playable character of the game but also happens to present many different experiences of self-reflexivity on the medium video game itself.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Vgl.: Bernhard, Rapp: Selbstreflexivität im Computerspiel.Theoretische, analytische und funktionale Zugänge zum Phänomen autothematischer Strategien in Games. Konstanz 2007.
- ↑ Kirchmann, Kay: Zwischen Selbstreflexivität und Selbstreferentialität. Überlegungen zur Ästhetik des Selbstbezüglichen als filmischer Modernität. In: Ernst, Karpf; Doron, Kiesel; Karsen, Visarius (Hrsg.): Im Spiegelkabinett der Illusionen. Filme über sich selbst. Marburg 1996.
- ↑ Vgl.: Johan Huizinga (Autor), Andreas Flitner (Hrsg.): Homo ludens. Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel. Reinbek 2009.