The Beginner's Guide: A Subjective Idea

  There are few things that I can say I'm genuinely in love with, and it's taken me over two years to really think about and find the right words I want to say about this, but here I go. I hope this lives up to what I hope and expect from myself.

  The Beginner's Guide, (TBG), was released onto the Steam store on October 1st of 2015 without much explanation. The only details anybody really knew for a fact was that it was created by Davey Wreden under the studio name Everything Unlimited Ltd. The indie game is Wreden's follow up to his heavily praised piece The Stanley Parable, (TSP) - And by 'heavily praised', I'm saying Wreden went from an unknown game designer to basically what I can only describe as the Messiah of game-based storytelling overnight.

  I would call TBG an experience, to say the least. The game supposedly combats struggles that Wreden faced during the release of TSP; so much attention drawn to one person in such a short period of time, a spotlight that he found almost impossible to escape because finally he was given exactly what he'd been craving. To be adored and idolised, to be questioned and studied in such a way that he could offer his thoughts on everything he'd always wanted to talk about.

  By writing this article and by bringing attention to this game once again, I am desecrating the very message TBG is trying to send. But as somebody who has spent what ought to be described as an unhealthy amount of time thinking about this game, I'm willing to take that step. Besides, I'm almost certain there's still a small part of Wreden that revels in being examined.

  The game for me centres on two ideas:

• Creating and sharing in hopes of reaping some form of external validation to feed the desperate need to be liked and appreciated. And encompassed within that, being content with the belief that what you have created is good and worth the effort it took to make it, regardless of who sees it and what they ultimately think.
• The Artist is Absent.

  As a writer and somebody that used to make games in college, the connection I feel with TBG is fierce. I am in a constant looping struggle of desperately needing to create something for myself, to give me purpose, and then ultimately sharing it with the world. It's like keeping a secret. Don't tell anyone and the secret is safe. It should be as simple as that. But the desire to keep my own secrets is constantly battling the overwhelming, insatiable appetite that can only be satisfied with praise and approval. It's like a cyclic nagging in my head telling me to send what I produce into the world in hopes that other people will like it too, because if they don't then I've wasted my time and I need to be better. This frame of mind is exhausting, and it's dangerous. It is because of this that I related so intensely with the theme of the game.

  The Artist is Absent, (TAIA), is a concept that I have been continuously enamoured and humoured by throughout my writing career, and I noticed specific parts of it interwoven into the game's story. It's hard to talk about relatively to TBG because by saying, 'TBG is about the absence of an artist,' I am then contributing to the concept itself. I am making that assumption because it has never been clarified by Wreden himself. Making the assumption that you understand what the artist meant to do without actually knowing it concretely is TAIA. Imagine; you've been making all sorts of assumptions and telling everybody you could find exactly what a certain thing meant, and then suddenly you're confronted directly by the creator who then tells you flat out that you're either wrong, or there simply is no meaning. That is the absence of an artist.

  The fact that I am telling you all this, the fact that I researched this game enough to somewhat understand the point, (I think... at least I hope), is me taking part in TAIA, which I hate. If you ever studied literature in English class, you might recognise what I'm talking about. 'Yes, the curtains were blue, but what does that mean? Could the author be attempting to cleverly reference an underlying melancholia through the colour of the curtains? Maybe the blue represents an oncoming state of calm that the reader is yet to realise!' Or maybe the curtains were just fucking blue. There is no way to know the meaning behind someone's work unless an artist tells us outright, so why are we so obsessed with plastering an interpretation on something as if it were fact?

  This then cleverly loops back to my previous point. Praise. The excessive need to feel positively validated by some external source because we're so desperate to be told that we're good, that we're right and that what we come up with is brilliant. I've done my best to really avoid the plot because if there's anything you take from this post, it's that I want you to go play the game yourself, or watch a playthrough of it and make up your own mind. The ironic part is that it's impossible not to speculate on the real meaning, which is exactly what the game is telling us not to do. The sheer enigmatic nature of The Beginner's Guide can only be likened to the cat that wants you to pet it and then scratches you two minutes later for doing so, but... it was worth petting that cat, right?

  I'm going to include a couple links here at the bottom for people interested in digging deeper. Until then, see you guys next week.

Davey Wreden: Playing Stories - Aalto University Games Now! (Lecture)

The Artist is Absent: Davey Wreden and The Beginner's Guide

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
10/11/2017