Transcript
Hey Hey folks, Dave here. Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I’m going to be discussing The Beginner’s Guide for those who have played it. If you are worried about spoilers (and this is a 90-minute game that has quite an impactful narrative revelation), please pause the video, and play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.
I’d like to start this off with a quote by Ed Smith over at Kill Screen on The Beginner’s Guide.
“Everyone wants to look like they “get” games, or that they respect art, but ultimately their displays are hollow since they’re more interested in intellectual credibility than actually just speaking honestly about and enjoying the work.”
This quote may not have had the emotional impact that the end of The Beginner’s Guide does, but it affected me on a much deeper level. Such a quote brings into question the purpose of what I’m doing. Am I writing about games simply because I love games and want to express this love, or am I looking for intellectual validation? “Oh that Dave guy, he writes some smart stuff about games.” Heck, one of my favourite things is to share work I find intellectually stimulating or funny with others, to see reactions. I attach myself to the work I share, and get a measure of joy when someone reacts positively to it. I am aware that the work is created by another person, but I gain a measure of satisfaction from being the person who let someone else know about a piece of art I enjoy. It’s safe to say that I was very sympathetic and understanding of Davey Wreden’s motives and plight during this game.
It would also be disingenuous to say that I don’t enjoy the creation of these videos. Unlike sharing work, my criticism is the combination of two hobbies: playing games, and writing about games. Actually throw in voiceover and video editing in there as well. Basically, I found a way to turn playing videogames into its own form of artistic expression. Some people see critics as parasitic, attaching themselves to art to serve their own ends, but criticism is indeed its own artform. It’s part interpretation, part translation, and a whole lot of guess work. Half the fun of writing about games (or any art really) is choosing the angle you’re going to be writing from. Most often this choice is dictated by the uniquely human experience of the writer. I tend to focus on my emotions and choices when playing games, but then fall into discussing aspects of the games themselves I find interesting. It goes to show that with any piece of art, the finished product might not have been able to meet the artist’s intention.
It’s entirely possible to read The Beginner’s Guide as being anti-critic. Davey isn’t just walking us through the games of Coda, he has altered them to suit his pre-determined conclusions. His blatant disregard for the wishes of his friend lead to the game’s conclusion, and shows a lot of what I’ve just discussed turmoiling around in Davey. This need for external validation by sharing the work of another is one thing, but what about actually changing the art itself? Critics often are criticised themselves for the connections some make to support an interpretation, but there is a difference. An interpretation that causes any audience to think that the critic is stretching themselves past breaking point to justify said interpretation; such an interpretation can be argued, ridiculed, or ignored. It invites discussion and response just like a piece of art does. If you change the art to make your point however, well The Beginner’s Guide takes the position that there is a real problem with that and it can do a lot of harm to the artist.
Coda is not making games for an audience, he is making games for himself, and he has chosen to share them with a small group of people, Davey being one of them. That the games are mostly unplayable on purpose is part of the art that Coda is making. This is a dilemma that might be unique to videogames. Not only a piece of art that can’t be finished, or that forces the audience to spend more time than they thought they were going to, but a piece of art that can be changed by another person to circumvent these problems (if you even see them as problems in the first place). If someone makes a 5-hour long movie filming a streetlamp, an audience member can fast forward it, or if it’s on YouTube, skip around. This doesn’t change the original video in any way. If you share that video with only one friend, they could edit it before sharing it with others. They could add sentences to your written story, they could change your painting with their own brushstrokes. Writing this now I wonder if The Beginner’s Guide is making a comment how once art is made it no longer belongs to the artist, or perhaps that’s only true when an audience is introduced, even if that audience is only one person. It does seem to take Coda’s side on the matter though. Like the relationship between artist and audience cannot coexist alongside friendship.
I don’t think The Beginner’s Guide is anti-critic however. As said earlier, Davey isn’t just interpreting Coda’s work, he is changing it. He is effectively making his own work on top of Coda’s and then reading into it to make himself feel validated as the audience of this game agrees with his views. That is if you believe what Davey is telling you. One of the core questions of the game that has been discussed a lot is how much of the game is actually real. Is the Davey Wreden of The Beginner’s Guide a fictional character, or is this an actual depiction of a betrayed friendship between two game designers that took place in the years around 2010? If the answer is anywhere on the spectrum between these two positions, then how much can we believe, and why? There are a lot of inconsistencies with the story. For instance, if The Tower was Coda’s final game, what is Davey playing in the epilogue, and how many of Coda’s games didn’t he show us to support his own findings. How many games didn’t Coda send to Davey? What if there never was a Coda to begin with, in reality or fiction? Why does The Tower seem to be Davey in real time when he needed to have played through the game to change it for you as the player?
While The Beginner’s Guide isn’t anti-critic, I think it speaks to the dangers of trying to understand an artist as a person from their artwork. You can gain glimpses into what they were thinking or feeling at the time they created the work, but even speaking to them about it won’t likely give you the whole story. The university game is the best example of this. You never know what other people are going through, why they do what they do, and why they create what they create. As a critic, the best you can do is interpret and make a case for a point of view. Since the criticism is filtered through your unique life experience (especially if you enjoy writing from a subjective viewpoint), then those that are the audience for your criticism encounter the same problem in understanding you as a critic from what you wrote. It’s interpretation all the way down.
Thanks for watching.
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