@@leowong8777 Local man analyzes comment about "Local man analyses commentary about "local man analyzing game about futility of game analysis, having existential crisis.", having existential crisis.", is having an existential crisis.
+btd0ja After reading this comment I am convinced that you love fried chicken irl. I learn more about you through your work. Wait aren't I making the same mistake as errant signal? OH MY GOD *mental breakdown, followed by watching of inception*
To see Errant Signal analyzing this, to see him battle with the idea that he is no better than Davey in the game, seeing the flashbacks to his earlier videos as he is condemning the same behavior is eye-opening. This video really lets us see the person behind this channel, his personal insecurities and shortcomings. His realization that all along, he's been assuming things about the people behind the games he's been discussing, and now it's making him disgusted with himself. This video is a truly beautiful view into the mind of one of my favorite UA-cam creators.
I can really see through this comment the kind of attitude that the commenter had, feeling as if he cracked the code behind the video. The author of said comment seems like a regular davey, probably with the same problems and insecurities.
It was rather brilliant. Because on one hand, I knew what he was going for... and on the other... I have this lingering doubt of "wait... maybe it wasn't... all just for the benefit of the ending."
Ryoga Hibiki Personally, I think he does. I've never seen Davey as a bad person, just somebody who made a mistake because he just wanted to like himself.
Im not sure if that break down at the end was supposed to be a parody of the break down in the game or if he was serious. Oh I think I get the point now.
Or wait, am I just projecting myself into you when I interpret what you did there? Does that make me a bad person? I thought that by watching your videos, I got to know you a bit, so I could now tell what you meant, I mean really meant, with the end of that video. But maybe I'm just forcing my own interpretation onto your creative work. Am I bad for doing this? - I got to think about this.
+Matthias J. Déjà I think Campster is actually female (and possibly Davey). That's why she edits herself in as a figure in the video game. But we as an audience don't really know her, so we assume gender only further highlighting how little we ultimately understand from the content he/she produces. Whoa.
+Motorsagmannen _"there is no victory to be had here, only self reflection"_ - And is coming to a comprehension of *that* 'a victory'? :P (although there may be no floor....Still, shall we dance?)
except it's in the opposite direction: the author is implicitly being validated by demonstrating a bad read of the author's works. Granted that "bad read" may itself be a straw man.
+InverseAgonist Except not because the implied conclusion of The Beginners Guide is the same conclusion Barthes comes to; trying to get into an author's thoughtspace is overly esoteric and anyway totally pointless; rather than playing these pointless onanistic games of armchair psychologist/ghost biographer we should just focus on what the work says to us.
+Owen Frederick It seems to come to half the conclusion, as Franklin suggests by calling it nihilistic. _Beginner's_ expresses contempt for the idea that we can derive real knowledge about the intentions or inner life of an author from his/her work but it doesn't actually affirm the value of art as something we can productively talk about in terms of what it internally means. Any attempt to see past the narrator's malarkey in order to at least understand what the story itself says is rendered null and void in such a way that resists anything other than a meta-rhetorical reading.
+InverseAgonist +Owen Frederick Exactly. There's no way presented to actually know what the "right" read of Coda's works would have been. Its impossible to look at the games they created an accurately say what any of them objectively meant. Game-Davey's mistake was thinking he could suss out that "objective truth" at all, or at least by primarily communicating with Coda through his games. If game-Davey had simply accepted that Coda didn't make those games out of some deep personal connection to them but rather on larks and whims and out of an appreciation of aesthetics, he could have instead focused on what the content of the works meant to him, personally. He could have liked the idea of glitches producing unexpectedly meaningful results, or how you can hide things that may be personal to you outside the view of a player, or even how he'd never want to work on a single concept for as long as Coda did on the little prisons. But he could have done all of that without reading it as insights into Coda.
+Owen Frederick You're confounding a valid read of the author's message with speculation about the author as a person: 2:20 This isn't a simple dichotomy of "speculate about the author" vs. "the game only means what it means to you". First of all, interpreting the game as saying something about the author is still *an interpretation of the game*; so it's not a dichotomy because the two aren't mutually exclusive. Secondly: Interpreting a work through *known* facts about the author's life is still relevant and valid. Interpreting a work through the lens of prior works of the author is valid; and not all interpretations of a work are equally valid. By contrast: The game (through the narration of Campster, I haven't played it) seems to indicate a sort of extreme case of the "death of the author": 1) Significant overreach in the scope of speculation 2) Blatant disregard for the integrity of the work, in an effort to reach a foregone conclusion. The message (again, filtered through Campster's narration) seems to be that this is a *bad* thing, and that the author hasn't so much "died" as "been murdered". It's fair to say Farenheit 451 was about censorship, even if Ray Bradbury felt it was about the dumbing down of America. It might even be fair to read the book and say that Bradbury was pessimistic about our future. It's not valid to say Farenheit 451 was about the moon landing being staged, no matter how much you might have felt that to be the case.
Holy shit, this video is essentially The Beginner's Guide, translated from the video game medium into the video medium. This kind of paradoxical meta-analysis of art is really very interesting for me, because I tend to see things in that relatively nihilistic view that, while it's all well and good to share your opinion about someone's work, there are as many worldviews as there are people to comment on it, and what you're doing doesn't amount to much. Definitely subscribed ;)
When I was playing this game, I was playing it from Coda's viewpoint. I was suspicious for some reason, early on, that Davey's viewpoint might be warped or mistaken. So... I tried seeing what Coda was trying to say. Not who he was, or what he felt, but what he was saying about society, about people, about how they end up trapping themselves, given all of the prison elements, and, when I remembered an interview about how the creator originally felt that The Stanley Parable was a game about connecting and isolation, how there was this underlying theme of failure to connect or communicate. Now that I type this, this is a hilarious and deep irony. But then... it got to the Tower, and the signs that Davey was overstepping his bounds became... disturbingly blatant to me. He said that he never shared these games, but then Davey goes and does this. Then I realized that he was doing this NOW. And while there was a ton of other warning signs I missed, the Tower was when it became too strong to ignore, especially when I realized that Davey was missing something that was being said by the games, although before the reveal I thought it was a message of how it takes time and patience to understand someone (the numbers puzzle). And then I saw the message about how Davey should stop adding lamp posts, and I just had to stop. I just... stood there, in that virtual space. I lost all respect for Davey. I could no longer trust him. But I kept listening. Not to blindly trust what he said, but to read in between the lines of what he said to see what was being shown to me, about what was really being SAID. ...I think, ultimately, we're meant to have the same breakdown Davey did. I think, at the game's end... ... Well, maybe that was so, maybe not. For me, Davey became a reflection of myself. About my own desires to 'help' people. About how I couldn't 'stop'. I stopped and questioned whether I sought external validation because I agreed so much and the answer I came up with was 'I might.' About how the disease tells me at the same time to show everyone so I can be validated by the few that matter, and yet to show no one because they'll hate me and see how ugly I am. I could even see myself getting worried about someone by reading too much into something, not believing them, and then forever violating that trust by trying to give others a reason to validate them. ... I could be wrong. But I wouldn't be surprised if, at the game's end, it's meant to be a reflection of ourselves.
Here is the thing. Art and by extension games are released to the public. We as people (the public) are shaped by our own personal experiences and thought processes and therefore when we look at art in any shape of media, we project said things onto their works. If an art piece is trying to say one thing but we as people interpret it another way than so be it. The wonderful thing about art is that it allows people to think about it and reflect said art unto their own personal lives. For example, if I read a book about an old man and his redemption of his life before he dies, I would immediately think about my Grandfather. He certainly is not the greatest person who ever lived but through a character in a story, I could easily project my grandfather onto the character thus personalizing the story and give a different meaning to myself than the author originally intended. The author themselves may have intended to tell the story of their spouses grandpa, or the old man down the street but through my own personal experiences I have muddled the story into a story about a person that the author did not actually talk about. To say that your opinion is wrong because it reflects yourself and not the authors original intentions is selfish. If you wanted a story that poetically masturbated your own feelings and have it be only interpreted it in that way, than why did you even release the work in the first place? You (Errant Signal) as a critic are a person who has an opinion that is being shared via UA-cam. It is perfectly acceptable to do this. Your opinion may be vastly different or even straight up incorrect, but as a critic you are free to share your views and opinions that may or may not involve interpreting the creator and their work. If the creator of a game thinks that people are interpreting them self incorrectly, than they personally should tell you about themselves; and if they think that their work is being interpreted wrong, they should either tell us what they meant to portray or let the audience be wrong in the hopes that a select few get what you were trying to say and be satisfied with that.
+Yersinio Pestis You hit the nail on the head, sir. It is remarkable that this game made the critic critique himself as much as the game. Even if that was just a clever meta joke on his part.
+Yersinio Pestis ^this there is nothing wrong with finding different interpretations or a personal interpretation to a work, even if you're a critic. Hell, I'd say that ought to be a part of the critique, the ability or tendency to share or project your own experiences with relations to the game (or artwork). It's like when art critics look at a Van Gogh and say: the colors feel really warm, and remind me of the shortness of life and the finite quality of happiness. They could be wrong. Maybe Van Gogh's sunflowers were merely summery flowers and that's that. But the critic added more to that by giving his own view of the flowers and what he immediately associates them with. That, in part, is what makes critiques interesting. We can compare our own views and interpretations with them. The other half of what makes a critique a critique is, of course, criticism, in the sense that the medium has achieved its goal (e.g. a film uses editing techniques correctly, the game isn't glitched, a children's book is entertaining for children). The Beginner's Guide is the kind of game where you can't help but interpret it your own way. It's a personal game begging for a personal definition. Maybe I'll agree with your interpretation, maybe I won't, but either way we get somewhere.
+Yersinio Pestis Ding ding! Yes absolutely correct! Please pass go and collect $200. The reality is that art is *subjective*. Even if your interpretation of a piece goes against the authors original intent, that doesn't make your interpretation any less valid. A critics job is to share with the audience how the work made _them feel_ personally. And you can't tell somebody else what they felt about something. It's like saying, "No you didn't feel that way! I know you think you felt that way, but your opinion is actually wrong!".
That's nice and all but you're simply pointing out the problem with the phenomena at it's core. This is someone's work, it has a purpose, it has a meaning and it was created for a singular purpose(minus the art house crap that simply capitalizes on said phenomena) you're willfully ignoring the work and interposing your views to change it into what you want it to be instead of simply experiencing it for what it is. It's willful ignorance, this work doesn't resonate with me and I can't understand it's basic meaning so I'm going to just ignore it all and make up my own storie. FFS south parks already covered this shit and people still keep this idiocy up. Going to this comment section is just like being back in my advanced English class all over again, a lot of idiots who can't understand what their presented with and vehemently defending their right to ignorance.
Joke? Joke?! C'mon you heartless pleb; that scripted pouring out of true Campster's emotions was a gateway to who he _really_ is. Why would he leave it in the video after hours of post production if he didn't want us to accept it at face value? He is unfolding before our eyes, all you have to do is _look hard enough_ and you'll find.
I'm going to insert my own lamppost here and say that Davey is REALLY good at fucking with people's minds in a very meta way that's beyond the typical "showing the game mess up and talking directly to you" (see also: Pony Island). By choosing to put his real name into the game, he's made it paradoxical to really talk about the game. Also, I want to make "inserting a lamppost" a term for criticism.
Seven years later, can confirm. Even after Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, I keep coming back to The Beginners' Guide. Something about the game is just very engaging in the way it asks question and to this day we still ask ourselves questions about this game that there might not even be an answer to. Davey putting in his name to be a character certainly helps keep that illusion intact. When the fourth wall between a game medium and the author doesn't exist, can you really dissociate the message you learned from this game from who Davey was? Yet ironically the game also counterclaims that assumption of the author is a dangerous thing, which is exactly what the last leg of the game was trying to do. Just like Davey was trying to understand and psychoanalyze Coda, to this day we were doing the same thing to Davey.
I did kind of want to slap the people who thought it was real though and were trying to convince people not to play it in order to protect the guy's work. It's like, hello everyone, this is the person who made the Stanley Parable we're talking about. Why do you think this game is real?
As an artist, its the opposite face of the coin friend trust me I'm left with my own arguments with koda. But why I think this may be one of my favorite narratives ever conceived. It is a game that to play is to look at yourself in some way. And in a lot of ways I feel like koda. Afraid to share my work that people will make assumptions about my person, yet wishing that maybe, someone can see something I've made and see a part of me. But the only way we can ever see anything is through the lense of our own selfish understanding of the world. When I play The Beginner's Guide, regardless of whether Koda is or isn't just Davey, I still see a struggling artist. Someone who wants to create things but also in being someone who creates things makes things that are maybe painful or even sad, but doesn't want to be judged as a person for making that kind of thing. And whether your ending was serious or an example of what makes this game so good, I think that is the biggest thing anyone can take away from this game. To play beginner's guide is to have to face yourself. To play a game where you either empathize with koda, or with Davey, the two make a fundamental opposite, the rationale, or the emotional. The two are opposites that struggle to understand one another, that struggle to comprehend eachother, and that at the end of the day, may never be able to, because they are such different ideals, and different thought processes. This video is the kind of discussion I want games to have, and while I understand your sentiment, remember, you still have your own reasons for creating anything. Because don't you worry. I find myself scaryingly similar to koda with regards to creating anything, even if Davey bastardized his work, even to the point that one level I have done in my own work. This is a game of pure empathy, and I think it's beautiful.
Personally, I found this game fascinating mainly because of the very distinct and powerful response it provoked: It makes you feel complicit with what you gradually realize is (ostensibly) a gross violation of another individual's will. I always like to see games experimenting with new perspectives and evoking specific feelings that are hard to convey in other art forms (which don't have such direct engagement and player involvement). I'm sure there are yet other interesting yet overlooked corners of the human psyche that could also be surfaced by creative design and player choice.
+thejobloshow I think that is really only partially true. People will always form their own connections to artistic work and thus will form their own ideas as to what that work means, that is simply how people are. Still, with that said, the author of the work is still the root of its actual meaning. The audience's projected meanings can't really change the fact that the work itself came from a specific person who is in a specific frame of mind and is doing the work with specific intent. The whole idea of the "death of the author" is a interesting one but it leads to a somewhat unhealthy relationship between the artist (who actually created the work based on their own experiences) and the consumer who wishes (at least those who subscribe to "death of the author) to insinuate themselves into the creative process without actually doing any of the work. In my own experience, I can listen to a song, watch a film, play a game, or look at a painting and experience my own responses and perhaps even find my own meaning for the piece. Still, I understand that the meaning I place on such things is my own and has no real impact on the actual authors intent.
+Michael Holmes Yeah, I think that's true. I'd like to add that most artists try to convey their intent in such a way, that even if you interpret a work in your own way, you are bound to closely follow the original meaning. This is pretty much the basis for tragedy, satire and strongly cathartic works, that rely on the author's intent predicting the audience's reaction. It's not easy to write a tragedy, because as the author you're constantly dry-eyed. And when writing a comedy, you won't necessarily be laughing. I forgot who originally said this, but I remember the words of one writer who remarked "writing means conveying the truth through lying." Basically, the artist teaches people something and gives them fuel for emotions and thought through subtle, almost deceitful means. Or at least, that's how I see it. I'm sure that there are plenty of artists out there who see things differently :P
+thejobloshow I think the game is arguing that meaning is personal and does not translate at all. Not only can we not understand the author's intent but also our interpretations have value only to ourselves. By critiquing a game, choosing certain features to try to draw meaning, the critic is forcing their interpretation on others. I think my counter-argument is that as humans we all share certain characteristics, beyond that our shared cultural features allow us to communicate complex ideas. The ability to communicate is predicated on shared interpretation. Although that communication i never perfect, it means that in all probability our interpretations of artistic works will draw some similarities in the meaning. Critique and interpretation have value because they are acts of communication and creation of shared meaning just as much as they are statements of our own personality. Its about what we have in common rather that what divides us.
Now I feel like an idiot for thinking for a second that the narrators breakdown was real. Or am I gathering from your text something you didn't truly intend? Oh god here we go...
God fucking damnit. That ending forces the viewer to take the point of the reviewer and "inject their own lampposts" or simplify you based on your work. It's a never ending "fuck you" to whoever is watching. A paradox where no one wins. I enjoy a good thought experiment but not one that ends up with me being an asshole either way.
I laughed literally out loud every time Chris found the game poking at him in particular. Bravo for making an already meta game that much more meta and funny because of it. It must be weird being a part of the game-design human centipede instead of just reviewing it.
So you've read Douglas Hofstadters autobiography as well? I do believe you put in a lamppost in the beginning though, changing the meaning of the work to suit your own, personal, view of what it should represent and mean.
Now that I've finished the episode, I want to say: I love this show. I don't want it to end. I realize that the comments made at the end of the video were very likely not meant to be taken as real thoughts by you, but I cannot say for certain either way. In any case, this episode is one of your best, and I really am glad that you covered The Beginner's Guide. Of the two interpretations given, I can't help but wonder if Davey intended the player to go down, to a degree, the same path that Video-Game-Davey did to Coda, but directed towards the real Davey. I wonder if it was meant to show our own inadequacies and insecurities as we try to puzzle out a solution to something that might not have one, and have VGDavey act as a mirror to us. I can say for certain that when you said at the end of the video that you had to "rethink what [you] were doing with the show" (paraphrase), I immediately worried that that meant that it was coming to a close. (1/2)
(2/2) I am not afraid to say that I do fear the ending of things that matter to me, regardless of how small they are. Conclusions are necessary, but horridly final things, and as such I have come to abhor them. My own insecurity, played out by your video. Perhaps that's the point. Or, perhaps that's just my lightpole. I'm just surprised that this episode got to me the way it did.
+Daniel O'Dette reading your comment I don't think you entirely understood the point of this review. But maybe I'm reading too much into your comment... I... I don't know what to make of it. I'm confused. I'm just going to go I think...
Blatantly we must accept that The Beginner's Guide is possibly the most masterful piece of criticism ever released, the height of the "walking simulator", and one of the single greatest games of all time.
I think the end of this video made the point far better than the game ever did ;) But seriously. This game's like 12 steps ahead of you at all times. You can't talk about the meta bits, because the meta bits are already talking about _you_.
Dude, you have a lot of comments on gaming channels for several years now. They're always insightful, or funny, or at least a consise perspective on whatever the topic of the video is. I feel like Ive gotten to know you thru all the shared experiences of streams and videos and content I know we've both watched. All the jokes and memes and analysis. So please, how about tonight you don't lock your door so we can finally meet? So we can finally be together.
That ending literally had me smiling so hard because dammit you wove that aspect of the game so masterfully into your video good job. Just subscribed :)
analyzing what a text communicates and analyzing what the author intended by that message are two very different things though, because what the author thinks their story means is just as much a projection of themselves onto the text as what the critic thinks. the text by itself is just words, and words are nothing without people to interpret them
Davey could make a hell of a psychological horror game if he wanted to. He seems to almost accidentally orchestrate these perfectly uncanny, somethings-not-right feelings in the player. Turning the corner from that state into straight up horror would be easy and very effective.
That ending was brilliant. Perfectly summarized the feeling that I had after finishing The Beginner's Guide. (And now I"M projecting my own feelings onto YOUR video and OH GOD I HAVE TO STOP)
Videogame Davey *is* anti-critic, but that doesn't mean he's correct in feeling that way. As much as it is possible to read too far into a work, I think it's important to keep two ideas in mind: 1) authorial intent is not the be-all end-all of how a work gets read. If an author intends for something to be read one way and an audience member sees it totally differently, that's not a problem. So long as they took something away from the experience, even if it wasn't exactly what the author had in mind, that's a positive thing. 2) high-level critique of any medium is important because it helps the medium to evolve. Starting discussions helps both critics and creators learn more about how audiences felt about a given work, which is important knowledge they can use to create more interesting and engaging works in their own medium.
"Hostile to critics" is, I think, a pretty accurate and succinct summation of this game. The entire piece seems to exist solely to say "You don't know me, man! You could stare at my work for the rest of my life and never 'get' me! I am the creator, you are the observer! Don't ever try to blur that line again, or you'll risk looking like a fool!"
Great video. Finally a proper game analist. Funny thought: this isn't by far the first time people thought that an art piece was real when in fact it was fiction (Wells' radio alien invasion for example) and that in turn can show us one important thing. In a span of a few decades simple ones and zeros have arrived to a point of true artistic form. The Begginers' Guide is one of the first serious video game art pieces. It show that not only are video games capable of telling a compelling human story, they are so good at it that we can be tricked into thinking that it actually happened.
I like the exaggerated breakdown at the end. it mimics the game and also gets the viewer to consider the possibility that by making a judge of your character from this video they too are just as bad as Davy. its turtles all the way down
You keep doing what you do mate! You are one of the few people who really put some thought into their work, even tho you may sometimes project your own personal insecurities into it. Seeing people really think about or interpret your work rather than just plainly talk about its graphics or controls or whatnot, is one of the biggest honors a game-designer can get. This show brings a lot of value to the table for players and developers!
This is a straight-up trippy meta mindfuck. I appreciate how you articulate the reflection you see in Davey's character, and still give a really great read on the game in its own right, in as much as you can detach your self. Great channel dude, keep crushin it!
+Michael Tuttle The two works have a lot in common. Both are works annotated by an unreliable narrator who "stole" the work from the real genius and cast their own interpretation on it, based upon a completely one-sided and mistaken reading of the relationship between the "narrator" and the "author". But if you go further, one reading of Pale Fire is that the "narrator" is actually the "author" writing in a separate voice, to cast a different light on the work and as a coping mechanism to deal with the pain of the subject (loss of a child). In much the same way, Davey is both Creator and Commenter, Coda and Davey. And in presenting the work and a flawed commentary on it, the work is more complex and thought-provoking than the fictional "original work" itself.
Michael Tuttle I'm sad that nobody acknowledges more, because I feel like it was a conscious inspiration, it borrows so much from it!(albeit reutilizing it in another medium, of course)
you actually had me at the end there for a moment. It's a really clever way to end the episode by making the viewer ask the same questions that you're agonizing over, but directed at themselves. The question i asked myself that broke the illusion for me however was "how many takes did it get to get the breakdown scene?" I was directed here by extra credits and have loved the few vids of yours that i've watched. can't wait to get to the rest.
Well, it seems that discussions and reviews of this game are "meta' because the game itself is like that. The reviews, because of the way the game is, are a sort of like a part of the Beginner's Guide. It's weird.
I give you internet validation for a good commentary. And you clearly put a lot more thought into who you are as a reviewer than like 99% of internet reviewers of ANY medium, not just games.
First, I'd like to say its very clever how your analysis of The Beginner's Guide mimics the structure of The Beginner's Guide itself (right down to the mental breakdown at the very end). Very clever! Though I think a valid escape from the existential crisis at the end is to accept that every game we play (and how we play them) reflect more on us than the developer. For instance, I personally considered the narrative to be a metaphor for an individual trying to find meaning out of a meaningless universe (which I guess makes coda a stand-in for God?). In this way, the game's theme is consistent with that of The Stanley Parable in which all of the player's choices are ultimately meaningless (The end is never the end...). Although it is interesting that real life Davey has followed up a game filled with nothing but choices with a game that contains virtually no choices at all. After all of this however, I must remind myself that I am indeed adding lampposts to the end of a work that ultimately does not belong to me. However, perhaps my unique play-through and my own interpretations do in fact belong to me? And in that way critics and interpreters are valid in any personal interpretations so long as they accept that those views are their own? And by extension any interpretation of the universe is valid so long as they are self contained? There is a lot to think about here and I would love to hear anyone's thoughts, just to remind myself that I'm not alone :)
We can only try to understand other people by comparing them to ourselves, so I don't see a problem with interpreting meaning onto a work based on personal assumptions. The danger lies in editing the work to make a specific point without acknowledging your own bias or directing the viewer to the source material.
Laughing out loud from the ending! :) On a more serious note, I personally think your work is different from the horrible projections of fictionalised-Wreden because you work from the text, not trying to figure out the person who made it. Even in your Blendo Games episode, you talked about the techniques Chung uses, never trying to extrapolate things about him. Keep up the good work!
Brilliant. This was brilliant. Also, honestly, I wanted to say that your videos have totally helped me cope with the fact that I don't have as much time to play games as I used to or would like to, and that I really enjoy your unique perspective on video games. I realize that you were just being very meta, but still. :)
After playing Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger And The Terribly Cursed Emerald I really have a new appreciation for both the Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide. I'd love to see a video about it sometimes, just to get your perspective.
Fantastic analysis. Your work gets better and better with each episode. And I like how you have a "nervous breakdown" at the end of your video the same way Davey has a breakdown at the the end of the game. I hope that was just an act to make a point and that you're not actually questioning what you're doing. Because you're doing a good job; there's nothing you need to "figure out".
Whoa...major case of deja vu here. A lot of this struggle with how to ethically and accurately interpret a text brings to mind the New Criticism and reader-response approaches to literary criticism. The former removes the author and all external material to address only the text; the latter acknowledges the presence of the critic and focuses on their struggle to make sense of the text. I like that you incorporate both in your videos, with a preference for RR.
Dude, you've boiled this down to a paradox of crazy proportions. There's always more than one selfish reason to do something good and there's always more than one genuine good reason to do something bad. Everyone has a reason for doing what they do, the answer doesn't come from outside, but from within. You KNOW why you do this. You don't need to show how good and genuine you are. Nobody is good, in that sense.
The interesting thing is that Psychology - as a science - has sort of wrestled with the same basic concept. (At least, by my understanding - my memory may be faulty on this stuff, to be honest.) The concept this stuff seems to stems from - the idea that perceptions and biases and all that are going to effect how you perceive results. The solution for at least some psychologists was to embrace that bias with a new branch of Qualitative Psychology, stuff that couldn't be broken down into simple numbers. Stanford Prison experiment is a fairly good example - you can break bits and pieces of that experiment down into numbers, sure, but the overarching point of it can't be broken down. To understand the results, you need to see everything - including the biases of both participants and researchers. In essence, Qualitative Psychology didn't shy away from the bias, and in fact pretty much embraced them - in so far that a science can, anyway. And the thing is, in terms of post-modern game analysis, embracing your bias - painting a bit neon glow on it so that people can take it into consideration - is so easy you can do it in a single word. Or two, or three if you want. Hell, even without really thinking, you did it yourself, Errant, right near the end of the... well, ending. "I don't know." It's that simple. That single three word phrase turned a bias analysis of a video game into a proclamation about how this is YOUR bias analysis of a video game, and that there are many like it - and many unlike it - but this one is yours. That simple three word phrase - and its two word counterpart "I think", and its one word counterpart "Maybe" - immediately places you on a level of self-awareness above David. (The narrator David, not the actual David - Although maybe that DOES make you more self aware then actual David too, all things considered?) It's an admittance that there are dozens, if not hundreds of ways to analyse a fair number of games - not all of them logical, not all of them possible - and that this perception, the one you're going into detail in, is the one that you - and your biases painted by your own experiences and such - most agree with. And maybe others don't, and that's fine. You're making judgments about the game and perhaps by extension the author, yes, but you're lampshading (lamp-posting?) the fact that it is YOUR judgments. Not the absolutely definitive correct answer, just the answer you think seems most correct, given your biases which you embrace rather then deny. But then, that's just how I see it. I might perhaps be missing a bigger picture. But then, if we're not able to get rid of our biases, and hanging lampshades (or lamp posts) on them isn't enough to save our analysis from this perceived quagmire, what are we supposed to do? Just... not do them at all? I honestly think we're be poorer for it if we took that route.
I found the beginners guide to be a thoughtful, insightful ride that really moved me. I am surprised to hear there was some controversy about people thinking that coda was a real person, and that people thought davey was stealing their work. I would assume that can only be from people who haven't played his previous work, and that his work is crafted to make you feel the way he wishes you to feel. I look forward to his next work.
I actually didn't realize Davey (The narrator) was being evil from the labyrinth part, because I could see the end of it by the time he said "I'll just skip it" XD
This is really good, I wish I could recommend this to more people, even being willing to look back on your own work with the ideas that the game proposes. I don't know if the last part was purely satirical or if it had some truth behind it, but in case of the later, please don't stop making these, we need critics like you.
Wow. I've been binging this channel over the last couple days, and I have been hooked. But the last few seconds here, that was quite beautiful. Thank you.
I actually saw a bit of myself in Coda. Both Davey's fictional Coda and the actual Coda that told Davey to leave him alone. Partly because, when I played The Beginner's Guide, I was deep inside a creative rut with my own writing (just like the game where you destroy the creation machine) and was incredibly frustrated. I hadn't really written anything for a long time, over a year. I was just about ready to give up. To be honest, the game didn't help with that or change it, and drove me into an even deeper rut where I almost considered deleting my writings and forgetting about my "stupid, childish ambitions". Fortunately, I didn't. Instead, I binge watched some television series that I hadn't watched yet. One of them was Game of Thrones. Halfway through it, I ended up going on a two week long trip with my family, giving me plenty of time to stew over the events and writing of the show. That really re-sparked my creativity, and I'm back in the saddle writing again. The other way I saw myself in Coda was near the end when he was telling Davey to leave him alone and to stop reading in to what he made. I had enrolled in a creative writing class during my rut to attempt to force myself back into writing. Bad idea. Everyone would interpret my writing in a certain way. For example, the whole class grew concerned when I wrote a poem about a man who commits suicide because his wife died. People would routinely request that, in my second drafts, I should tie up any ambiguities in my stories, or make the story _mean_ something [to them], or whatnot. They wanted me to write _for_ them. They weren't satisfied with what I wanted to write and would constantly stick their grubby little fingers into my creation in order to "normalize" it. They wanted neatly wrapped up stories that had a clear point and no unsolved mysteries at the end. I grew to hate writing for that class, and would routinely only do the bare minimum work in order to eke out a passing grade. I was tired of my classmates and teacher trying to put lampposts in my work.
Great video. I like the little joke at the end where you go crazy just like game Davey does. Art is a language. If I say a sentence, such as "I don't like you", out of context, then you can interpret it in a number of ways. Some people may say that any interpretation you make of my sentence is just you projecting and it's your fault that you feel the way you do, because your interpretation is not my intention. Others, myself included, would say that regardless of how you interpret it, if my intention was not achieved, I have failed to communicate. If for example, I was being sarcastic, but you didn't take it that way, I screwed up. So when we look at this sort of game that questions who you are to project onto a game by interpreting it, I say that the game is doing a disservice to itself and to art. It's asking to forfeit the nature of language in order to remove responsibility on the part of the artist for any shortcomings. He's basically saying "don't interpret my games because you don't know me so you're just claiming to know who I am". But art is always a snapshot of the time frame in which it is conceived. Some films, including The Shining, do this deliberately. I've made analyses videos for David Lynch who is notoriously a film-maker who reveals what's on his mind through his work, and is also notoriously a director who leaves things to interpretation. When making a meta-commentary game like this, and when making a passion project with no interference from outside forces (a development team, producers, publishers, etc), it's inevitable that you are capturing something about yourself and putting it out on display for the world to judge. You can't back out once you do something like this. In other words - if your game says something about you and everybody sees it, you can't back out and say "you don't know me!", you just have to accept that if you sent the wrong message, you failed to communicate. At a certain point, after you literally insert yourself as a character in your game, you have to accept that *all* of that character is part of who you are, because that character was written by you 100%. The words came from your mind and it speaks with your voice and shares your name. And if the character wasn't properly interpreted, maybe it's because you didn't do a good enough job. Of course, I'm just projecting because I haven't played the game. I'm basing my view on this video's view of the game's view of an imaginary character.
Personally, I've always felt this was the real value of art- you CAN'T understand the full breadth of a person from their art but the artist can put you, at least for a moment, into a very specific headspace. To capture, briefly, a precise emotion or sensation that you and the artist share. It tells you nothing of the artist, specifically, but it opens up a valuable insight to yourself. Your read of a work becomes a means of exploring yourself, and how the headspace of that work contextualizes your own world. I don't think these criticisms are invalid for overreaching the bounds of a work because deconstruction doesn't need to be about accuracy. It should be about understanding something and how it affects you.
So, as a inspiring game developer, and as someone who heavily relates to Coda, I feel the need to comfort you on this situation. Before I was a game developer I was a comic book artist. Comic books was my passion. I loved it. I did it everyday, and it was something I was good at it. Until I went to college. And then everything changed. College costs a lot of money, as you may imagine. Because of this there was a lot of pressure to succeed at my job. I had to make straight As. I had to be the best in my class. I had to impress people. And I did. I won awards for my work. However, in the midst of always needing and wanting validation, I lost myself. I lost myself to the need to be "successful" in order to pay off college debt and housing. I became obsessed with attention. I constantly checked my twitter, tumblr, and facebook to see if I got my followers. I always needed more page views or fans. This made me miserable. I was a mess because I was never good enough. No matter what I did, I never got the approval from my family and friends that I truly wanted. I never lived up to the image I thought they had of me. So, I had a mental breakdown. Even though I had thousands of fans, I went onto the internet and took it all down. I quit comics and stopped posting all of my original work online. For months I just dew for myself. I just focused on me and my own needs. Because of that, I am the happiest I've ever been. This happens to a lot of artists, if not all of them. A lot of artists have people in their lives who demand they make their art public. People who can't draw, write, or make games, like to pressure people who can. They envy their talents, and want them be famous for their own personal reasons. In doing that, they do often cross a line and invade the artist's personal space. What I am saying is, you're not Davey. Yes, he made a lot of parallels to your work, but you never did what he did. You never took games, went into their coding, changed it, and uploaded it online. You never pushed game developers to put their work out there when they didn't want it. All you did was celebrate what gamers gave you. You did your job and there is nothing wrong with that. If you ever review my games, I'd be honored. It would be cool for someone like you to take my work seriously. Most game developers like hearing what critics have to say. A lot of them like their work to be analyzed. It's cool and interesting. So, don't sweat it, dude. I think this video game was more so a rant about the creative process. I think it was just a dialogue of stuff that happens behind game development.
Are there seriously people thinking that this was real? Like at the start I was thinking: oh, like a documentary? But after the 100s Prison game it should become obvious that this was just another thing he made up.
I appreciate that little joke you slipped in at the end, with you pretending to wrestle with the validity of analysis in the same way that Davey does, after already stating how ridiculous it would be that someone would publish work with them having a break down in it. Gave me a chuckle.
Beautifully made! I love this game, I played it several times and it's genius, one of my most favourite games ever! :) And this video really nails why The Beginner's Guide is so great. Perfect. :)
Finally a The Beginner's Guide analysis I can get behind of. One that takes the game as it is: a very on point meta-fiction that points out the contradictions of a form of art and the impossibility of discerning one absolute discourse out of it. I felt like shit when I played it, like everyone else. But hey, now I know I'm not the only one who felt like shit because everything seemed pointless.
when I thought Coda was real, I actually thought the inclusion of women (considering Coda was framed as a depressed male) and how Coda 'maybe just likes prisons' could have been a hint into gender dysphoria of Coda. Making these games could have just been an outlet for him to deal with that prison. But since he's not, I've then pondered if Coda functions the same way Socrates functions in some of Plato's stories, which as Coda puts 'says more about 'Davey' than himself' (fictional Davey). Because if there really is no Coda, because real Davey was lying? Who's to say fictional Davey doesn't also know that? Maybe fictional Davey also made all the levels and therefore uses Coda as a buffer, because he really wanted to share this with people but was too afraid to have 'his' name on it? maybe the 3 dots represents the female reproductive system, maybe the lamppost is an unwanted phallic symbol? The only way out is sincerity? The final level is one that does not want to be played and is 'the tower'? With that said I am not assuming anything about the real Davey, as I think this game is about learning to be more critical in games, and the the original analysis comes from an unreliable source, so where do we go from there? Maybe that says more about me? (not really) Or maybe I jus need to lay off the bong water?
the game can definitely be read as (at least in part) being about gender dysphoria and being trans, and I remember hearing somewhere that there used to be more dialogue that made it more explicit Even how it is currently, I still think it’s fairly explicit that Coda’s meant to be a trans woman, and it’s how I’ve always read it
F*ck the song at the beginning hit me so freaking hard! Beginner's Guide is so amazing! I've shown this game to my husband and my mom, and all of us have had a different experience with it. I wanted to be able to covey who I am through my work, the way Davey tries to do with Coda. I have Aspergers, so I wanted my work to give people insight into how my brain works. And then the end absolutely snuck up on me; made me cry. My husband had seen himself in Davey, how he doesn't like himself and fears that he's imposing himself on the people around him the way Davey does to Coda. I just... the game made me feel things. And I really appreciated that.
It was funny to see Errant Signal so confused by this game. For me it was a beutiful story with themes I haven't seen explored before and helped me piece toghether some thoughts that were floating in my mind for quite a while. Simply put, as I see it, Coda was wrong, Davey was wrong too, and it's okay to be wrong. Coda was blind to the fact, that when you share your work with someone that person in some sense becomes a co-author, the only way to keep it belonging to you and no one else is not allowing anyone near it. Yet he showed up on that game jam, he allowed Davey to look, to talk to him, to become his friend, he was sending Davey his games, listened to what he had to say, and then he got upset that his vision was interfering with his "creative machine", hated the lamp posts, despised the idea of Davey adding (by himself or by indirect influence) something of his own into his games. Refusing to accept the consequences of his choice to share his work with Davey, Coda started to push Davey away from him, as a result Davey lost his balance and in a desperate attempt to fix things betrayed Coda's trust, making it even worse. So Coda blamed Davey for his mistake, and Davey made a follow-up mistake, both refused to understand each other, losing the chance to forgive each other and fixing their friendship. So my message to Errant Signal would be to continue to do what he's doing - providing interesting perspectives on games that deserve attention. If the game is there, he's free to see what he sees in it (everyone is, actually), tell others about it, and if it isn't what the author meant, tough shit, now it is in some way.
+Vladimir Samsonov I love this! It is interesting to think about Coda's mistake and motivations because we just have nothing but a broken window to see his character through. Maybe he was kind of a dick :)
Maxben L not quite a dick, at least not intentionally, just someone who doesn't know what he wants, and while he kinda wants two things that oppose each other: to be left alone with himself and his creativity "untainted" (boo-hoo my games don't need to be what people identify as games!) and to open up, be liked and accepted and be able to share his work and fight his insecurities (recycle bin as his game folder) through other people's appreciation of his work, he can't make up his mind and repeatedly refuses to pay the price and accept the consequences of either. Instead of at least seeing it as a problem, his problem, he blamed it all on Davey. Ironically Davey's bad reaction helped him to make up his mind and decide to keep to himself.
Errant Signal, my favorite video game philosopher / curator. I've not played Beginner's Guide, but this video was a real treat and makes me want to play it for myself. Ultimately that is why your analysis is important to me.
Works of art are emotional objects, or at least they are capable of containing avenues to emotional expression, either via the author of the work projecting emotion onto the work in question, or via viewers/players/critics/whathaveyou experiencing the work and responding to it emotionally. Every person has a unique viewpoint on the world around them, literally, since no two pairs of eyeballs can occupy the same space at the same point in time, meaning it's expected that different people respond differently to the same work of art, and that different people create art differently from others. Since every viewpoint is unique, communicating that viewpoint has merit because, if effectively conveyed, others can understand what makes said viewpoint unique, broadening their knowledge base and opening their eyes to the true diversity (emotional or otherwise) on display in humanity. Video-game David(?) got completely absorbed in this aspect of reality, and took it a step further....
....by modifying the original work to reflect his own personal viewpoint, at the expense of the original creator. This is key, I intuit, to understand the text of the game in this context I have put forth (and, yes, I understand why others might raise an eyebrow at that statement in the context of the video above, but I'll work with that limitation). In this context, the game seems to speak about the nature of creation, in that the majority of creative work (including the huge amounts of non-professional work) is focused or supported by fan-made works idolizing a particular creative work, via fan fiction/artwork/games/whathaveyou, and exposes the limits said obsessive drives to idolize/add to/modify/work with the creative work is, which points out how on some level such efforts are disrespectful to the original creators... and yet, the folks who engage in this "fandom" often do so out of intense passion, passion that would be socially commended if put towards most anything else....
+mralbum3256 ....These people pour their heart and soul into their "remixes" and "tributes" in an attempt to legitimize and venerate the original work and their creators, to give back some of the positivity they may have gained by engaging/listening/whatever with the creative work in the first place, much like how David(?) modifies Coda's games, in a sense. I personally suspect that this desire to reciprocate the positivity back to the original creators is why Kickstarter and Patreon are seen as such runaway successes as a business model, to such an extent that even mining companies are looking into crowdfunding as a legitimate fundraising model. Then again, I'm just one perspective on the matter in a sea of potential perspectives. I sincerely hope it gives you some thought if you think of this subject in the future. Sincerely, Mr. Album
No joke I had the same flashback to your video about Brendan Chung's work at the same point, right at the start of TBG. That's great, and I love your introspection here. And yeah, the idea that someone took this game's narrative literally is just mind-bendingly stupid for a person who gets paid for their opinions.
You made some excellent points in the Doom/Quake episodes about how the tone illuminated aspects of the devs personalities. And them communicating that tone was hugely valuable to all the players who love the games, as is the case with a tonally powerful book, and I'd watch this or analysis by Rock Lee Smile because you _are_ more knowledgable about these things and have insight I wouldn't, it's ok to feel good, and/or proud of that. I've heard you speaking before on your past reviews, maybe you should go back and edit, touch up, some that you are least happy with.
Interpreting and giving your own meaning is what art does, once you create something and is out there it is up to the spectator, reader, listener, player to give meaning to it, the creator also has his own interpretation of his or her work but you have to understand that different people different ways of looking at the world will have different interpretations of it, and that's the beauty of it, someone might thing is the worst piece of trash and someone will think is the epitome of human creativity. With that said, game creation, bottom line, is a job, and as a job you want to make a profit out of it, does this means you should create things that resonate or appeals to as many people as possible? Maybe something that you know critics will love and make noise about it? Where does that leave you as a creator? What if what you want to make doesn't makes a profit but you love it anyway? To me all interpretations are valid in this case it means what it means to you.
As for the critic thing, people like "coda" need critics like that, they help give interpretations to their work and a more educated view of their creations, yes people do praise critics for this interpretations but they help people realize how well crafted that work is, making it more accessible let's say to more people.
Just the most blatantly ignorant comment I've seen, at least the others are trying to defend their own views yours is simply a giant jerk off about how you are all that matters and creators are simply spectators in their own work. Seriously South Park did this shit to the point where even the most moronic of individuals could get the point of why the death of the author is an asinine phenomena.
@@justincanu9153 i mean, some authors say that a work can be interpreted any way you want. if something doesn't have a soild single meaning, does it just..not matter ... let's just never think about anything now i guess
The thing I think is important about The Beginner's Guide is it is a game which is designed to make you feel - to make you look into yourself. I had absolutely NONE of that "Critics Remouse" feelings going through my head until I listened to The Jimquisition episode discussing it. I came out of the game thinking about my mistakes in past relationships and how I would have to make sure I did better in the future. I also came out thinking about wanting to create more Art and the fact I haven't made anything in 5 years is just a lull in my creative process.
+Pemphro It would be hilarious if Campster at the end of the video rattled of the standard review tropes "Also, graphics are quitte good, sound design subpar, ending could be better, 8/10 would play again."
I don't pretend to know where you should take the show, but as a consumer of your work I'd appreciate it if you kept making things. The artifacts (videos) you've produced have been catalysts to a great deal of thought in my life and I value them.
You may have been two-faced in how you made this video ultimately reflect the narrative structure of The Beginner's Guide, but I think therein lies the ultimate takeaway of the game: recognizing hypocrisy. The game leaves you with that catch-22 where you're a hypocrite either way, but I think what matters more is your ability to recognize and acknowledge that hypocrisy. But this isn't the same kind of hypocrisy as a politician engaging in the very acts he publicly condemns, because that is a wholly intentional act. This is the kind of hypocrisy that the average person engages in on a daily basis, and yet to try to rid ourselves of that hypocrisy is itself a thoroughly damaging act. Thus all we can do is fall back on a sense of humility and understand that we cannot be perfect, but we can always strive fore something better. And before anyone says it, yeah, I'm doing the same thing as both of them. Well all do it. So there's no point sending the finger around in a circle.
pretty meta in my opinion, the observer/consumer is just as much an artist as the creator. yes in a different way, but in order to see art instead of just a picture game book or anything really the observer needs to give it that certain spark, in a way she/he himself becomes the artist. that is why im interested in critiques, it gives me the oppertunity to see a piece of art in a different light. so yes i think the existence of critics is not only justified but a great thing. and although i can understand the urge to stay in control of your own work, in which youve invested so much of yourself, and i think we should respect that to a certain extent i believe that as soon as we come to the understanding that everything anyone ever says about anything art related is alsways speculation, interpretation, and projection. we will never know for certain what most pieces of art 'truly' meant, when they were created, but we can know what we make of them, exchange our thoughts, and in the process become part of the work and artist ourselves.
Not sure if you're serious towards the end there, but it seems like a struggle with a false problem. Since when was receiving validation for criticism a bad thing? We enjoy that criticism and it takes effort to put together. A lesson learned about not trying to self-project or read too deep is valuable, but it doesn't make criticism as a whole defunct.
Local man analyzes game about futility of game analysis, has existential crisis.
Local man analyses commentary about "local man analysing game about futility of game analysis, having existential crisis.", having existential crisis.
@@leowong8777 Local man analyzes comment about "Local man analyses commentary about "local man analyzing game about futility of game analysis, having existential crisis.", having existential crisis.", is having an existential crisis.
omg the ending was just brilliant ROFLMAO
Existential crisis explains this game superbly
A meta-commentary about meta-commentaries about meta-commentaries.
Meta commentaryception ?
+btd0ja Do we need to get the inception noise up in here?
+btd0ja After reading this comment I am convinced that you love fried chicken irl. I learn more about you through your work.
Wait aren't I making the same mistake as errant signal? OH MY GOD
*mental breakdown, followed by watching of inception*
+btd0ja it goes even further because of the metacommentaries on the metacommentaries in the comment section.
+btd0ja The End is Never The End is Never The End is...
To see Errant Signal analyzing this, to see him battle with the idea that he is no better than Davey in the game, seeing the flashbacks to his earlier videos as he is condemning the same behavior is eye-opening. This video really lets us see the person behind this channel, his personal insecurities and shortcomings. His realization that all along, he's been assuming things about the people behind the games he's been discussing, and now it's making him disgusted with himself. This video is a truly beautiful view into the mind of one of my favorite UA-cam creators.
+Philip Johansson and with that comment you are Davey too
+James Lees and you too
I can really see through this comment the kind of attitude that the commenter had, feeling as if he cracked the code behind the video. The author of said comment seems like a regular davey, probably with the same problems and insecurities.
+Holden AHHHHHHHHHHHH
,
As soon as I noticed what kind of ending this video was going for, I had a big smile on my face.
lol me too.
"Ooohhhh I think I see where this is going. Niice.
+kaef0rkind "oh god he's breaking down"... wait a sec
Same huge grin
+kaef0rkind That wry grin that starts small and spreads from ear to ear :D
It was rather brilliant. Because on one hand, I knew what he was going for... and on the other... I have this lingering doubt of "wait... maybe it wasn't... all just for the benefit of the ending."
"Villain most in need of a hug"
Does he need one? Sure. Does he deserve one? That's a different question with a probably different answer.
That or I think I know Davey but I don't.
Ryoga Hibiki Personally, I think he does. I've never seen Davey as a bad person, just somebody who made a mistake because he just wanted to like himself.
Yes
of the year award
Im not sure if that break down at the end was supposed to be a parody of the break down in the game or if he was serious. Oh I think I get the point now.
ahahaha
Remarkably poetic, isn’t it?
I'm not sure if this comment was just a joke about the meta nature of the video, or if they were being genui...
Hold on a second.
I absolutely love what you did there in the end. So great!
Or wait, am I just projecting myself into you when I interpret what you did there? Does that make me a bad person? I thought that by watching your videos, I got to know you a bit, so I could now tell what you meant, I mean really meant, with the end of that video. But maybe I'm just forcing my own interpretation onto your creative work. Am I bad for doing this? - I got to think about this.
+Matthias J. Déjà I think Campster is actually female (and possibly Davey). That's why she edits herself in as a figure in the video game. But we as an audience don't really know her, so we assume gender only further highlighting how little we ultimately understand from the content he/she produces. Whoa.
+Matthias J. Déjà there is no victory to be had here, only self reflection
+Motorsagmannen Self-reflection is pretty important :c
+Motorsagmannen _"there is no victory to be had here, only self reflection"_
- And is coming to a comprehension of *that* 'a victory'? :P
(although there may be no floor....Still, shall we dance?)
First time I've seen echos of "the death of the author" concept in a video game before
except it's in the opposite direction: the author is implicitly being validated by demonstrating a bad read of the author's works.
Granted that "bad read" may itself be a straw man.
+InverseAgonist Except not because the implied conclusion of The Beginners Guide is the same conclusion Barthes comes to; trying to get into an author's thoughtspace is overly esoteric and anyway totally pointless; rather than playing these pointless onanistic games of armchair psychologist/ghost biographer we should just focus on what the work says to us.
+Owen Frederick It seems to come to half the conclusion, as Franklin suggests by calling it nihilistic. _Beginner's_ expresses contempt for the idea that we can derive real knowledge about the intentions or inner life of an author from his/her work but it doesn't actually affirm the value of art as something we can productively talk about in terms of what it internally means. Any attempt to see past the narrator's malarkey in order to at least understand what the story itself says is rendered null and void in such a way that resists anything other than a meta-rhetorical reading.
+InverseAgonist +Owen Frederick
Exactly. There's no way presented to actually know what the "right" read of Coda's works would have been. Its impossible to look at the games they created an accurately say what any of them objectively meant. Game-Davey's mistake was thinking he could suss out that "objective truth" at all, or at least by primarily communicating with Coda through his games.
If game-Davey had simply accepted that Coda didn't make those games out of some deep personal connection to them but rather on larks and whims and out of an appreciation of aesthetics, he could have instead focused on what the content of the works meant to him, personally.
He could have liked the idea of glitches producing unexpectedly meaningful results, or how you can hide things that may be personal to you outside the view of a player, or even how he'd never want to work on a single concept for as long as Coda did on the little prisons.
But he could have done all of that without reading it as insights into Coda.
+Owen Frederick You're confounding a valid read of the author's message with speculation about the author as a person: 2:20
This isn't a simple dichotomy of "speculate about the author" vs. "the game only means what it means to you".
First of all, interpreting the game as saying something about the author is still *an interpretation of the game*; so it's not a dichotomy because the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Secondly:
Interpreting a work through *known* facts about the author's life is still relevant and valid. Interpreting a work through the lens of prior works of the author is valid; and not all interpretations of a work are equally valid.
By contrast:
The game (through the narration of Campster, I haven't played it) seems to indicate a sort of extreme case of the "death of the author":
1) Significant overreach in the scope of speculation
2) Blatant disregard for the integrity of the work, in an effort to reach a foregone conclusion.
The message (again, filtered through Campster's narration) seems to be that this is a *bad* thing, and that the author hasn't so much "died" as "been murdered".
It's fair to say Farenheit 451 was about censorship, even if Ray Bradbury felt it was about the dumbing down of America. It might even be fair to read the book and say that Bradbury was pessimistic about our future. It's not valid to say Farenheit 451 was about the moon landing being staged, no matter how much you might have felt that to be the case.
Holy shit, this video is essentially The Beginner's Guide, translated from the video game medium into the video medium. This kind of paradoxical meta-analysis of art is really very interesting for me, because I tend to see things in that relatively nihilistic view that, while it's all well and good to share your opinion about someone's work, there are as many worldviews as there are people to comment on it, and what you're doing doesn't amount to much. Definitely subscribed ;)
When I was playing this game, I was playing it from Coda's viewpoint. I was suspicious for some reason, early on, that Davey's viewpoint might be warped or mistaken. So... I tried seeing what Coda was trying to say. Not who he was, or what he felt, but what he was saying about society, about people, about how they end up trapping themselves, given all of the prison elements, and, when I remembered an interview about how the creator originally felt that The Stanley Parable was a game about connecting and isolation, how there was this underlying theme of failure to connect or communicate.
Now that I type this, this is a hilarious and deep irony.
But then... it got to the Tower, and the signs that Davey was overstepping his bounds became... disturbingly blatant to me. He said that he never shared these games, but then Davey goes and does this. Then I realized that he was doing this NOW. And while there was a ton of other warning signs I missed, the Tower was when it became too strong to ignore, especially when I realized that Davey was missing something that was being said by the games, although before the reveal I thought it was a message of how it takes time and patience to understand someone (the numbers puzzle).
And then I saw the message about how Davey should stop adding lamp posts, and I just had to stop. I just... stood there, in that virtual space. I lost all respect for Davey. I could no longer trust him.
But I kept listening. Not to blindly trust what he said, but to read in between the lines of what he said to see what was being shown to me, about what was really being SAID.
...I think, ultimately, we're meant to have the same breakdown Davey did. I think, at the game's end...
...
Well, maybe that was so, maybe not.
For me, Davey became a reflection of myself. About my own desires to 'help' people. About how I couldn't 'stop'. I stopped and questioned whether I sought external validation because I agreed so much and the answer I came up with was 'I might.' About how the disease tells me at the same time to show everyone so I can be validated by the few that matter, and yet to show no one because they'll hate me and see how ugly I am.
I could even see myself getting worried about someone by reading too much into something, not believing them, and then forever violating that trust by trying to give others a reason to validate them.
...
I could be wrong. But I wouldn't be surprised if, at the game's end, it's meant to be a reflection of ourselves.
this was fantastic thank you
I thank you so much for this
Here is the thing. Art and by extension games are released to the public. We as people (the public) are shaped by our own personal experiences and thought processes and therefore when we look at art in any shape of media, we project said things onto their works. If an art piece is trying to say one thing but we as people interpret it another way than so be it. The wonderful thing about art is that it allows people to think about it and reflect said art unto their own personal lives. For example, if I read a book about an old man and his redemption of his life before he dies, I would immediately think about my Grandfather. He certainly is not the greatest person who ever lived but through a character in a story, I could easily project my grandfather onto the character thus personalizing the story and give a different meaning to myself than the author originally intended. The author themselves may have intended to tell the story of their spouses grandpa, or the old man down the street but through my own personal experiences I have muddled the story into a story about a person that the author did not actually talk about. To say that your opinion is wrong because it reflects yourself and not the authors original intentions is selfish. If you wanted a story that poetically masturbated your own feelings and have it be only interpreted it in that way, than why did you even release the work in the first place? You (Errant Signal) as a critic are a person who has an opinion that is being shared via UA-cam. It is perfectly acceptable to do this. Your opinion may be vastly different or even straight up incorrect, but as a critic you are free to share your views and opinions that may or may not involve interpreting the creator and their work. If the creator of a game thinks that people are interpreting them self incorrectly, than they personally should tell you about themselves; and if they think that their work is being interpreted wrong, they should either tell us what they meant to portray or let the audience be wrong in the hopes that a select few get what you were trying to say and be satisfied with that.
+Yersinio Pestis You hit the nail on the head, sir. It is remarkable that this game made the critic critique himself as much as the game. Even if that was just a clever meta joke on his part.
+Yersinio Pestis ^this
there is nothing wrong with finding different interpretations or a personal interpretation to a work, even if you're a critic. Hell, I'd say that ought to be a part of the critique, the ability or tendency to share or project your own experiences with relations to the game (or artwork). It's like when art critics look at a Van Gogh and say: the colors feel really warm, and remind me of the shortness of life and the finite quality of happiness.
They could be wrong. Maybe Van Gogh's sunflowers were merely summery flowers and that's that. But the critic added more to that by giving his own view of the flowers and what he immediately associates them with. That, in part, is what makes critiques interesting. We can compare our own views and interpretations with them.
The other half of what makes a critique a critique is, of course, criticism, in the sense that the medium has achieved its goal (e.g. a film uses editing techniques correctly, the game isn't glitched, a children's book is entertaining for children).
The Beginner's Guide is the kind of game where you can't help but interpret it your own way. It's a personal game begging for a personal definition. Maybe I'll agree with your interpretation, maybe I won't, but either way we get somewhere.
+Yersinio Pestis Ding ding! Yes absolutely correct! Please pass go and collect $200.
The reality is that art is *subjective*. Even if your interpretation of a piece goes against the authors original intent, that doesn't make your interpretation any less valid. A critics job is to share with the audience how the work made _them feel_ personally. And you can't tell somebody else what they felt about something. It's like saying, "No you didn't feel that way! I know you think you felt that way, but your opinion is actually wrong!".
That's nice and all but you're simply pointing out the problem with the phenomena at it's core.
This is someone's work, it has a purpose, it has a meaning and it was created for a singular purpose(minus the art house crap that simply capitalizes on said phenomena) you're willfully ignoring the work and interposing your views to change it into what you want it to be instead of simply experiencing it for what it is.
It's willful ignorance, this work doesn't resonate with me and I can't understand it's basic meaning so I'm going to just ignore it all and make up my own storie.
FFS south parks already covered this shit and people still keep this idiocy up.
Going to this comment section is just like being back in my advanced English class all over again, a lot of idiots who can't understand what their presented with and vehemently defending their right to ignorance.
+LittleJimmy835 just want to point out that opinions by their very nature are wrong, an opinion that isn't wrong is a fact.
i hate being the obvious point-out-the-joke person so i'll keep it vague but: the ending was gold
+Woot100 Yeah, it was great :D
Joke? Joke?! C'mon you heartless pleb; that scripted pouring out of true Campster's emotions was a gateway to who he _really_ is. Why would he leave it in the video after hours of post production if he didn't want us to accept it at face value? He is unfolding before our eyes, all you have to do is _look hard enough_ and you'll find.
@@xFREEEDO Are you, then, interepreting this commentary?
gold pure gold
@@xFREEEDO you too are brilliant
I'm going to insert my own lamppost here and say that Davey is REALLY good at fucking with people's minds in a very meta way that's beyond the typical "showing the game mess up and talking directly to you" (see also: Pony Island). By choosing to put his real name into the game, he's made it paradoxical to really talk about the game.
Also, I want to make "inserting a lamppost" a term for criticism.
Seven years later, can confirm. Even after Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, I keep coming back to The Beginners' Guide. Something about the game is just very engaging in the way it asks question and to this day we still ask ourselves questions about this game that there might not even be an answer to.
Davey putting in his name to be a character certainly helps keep that illusion intact. When the fourth wall between a game medium and the author doesn't exist, can you really dissociate the message you learned from this game from who Davey was? Yet ironically the game also counterclaims that assumption of the author is a dangerous thing, which is exactly what the last leg of the game was trying to do.
Just like Davey was trying to understand and psychoanalyze Coda, to this day we were doing the same thing to Davey.
I think one of the best things about the beginners guide is that in the way it was presented...we believed it was real
I did kind of want to slap the people who thought it was real though and were trying to convince people not to play it in order to protect the guy's work.
It's like, hello everyone, this is the person who made the Stanley Parable we're talking about. Why do you think this game is real?
Wait, the Stanley Parable wasn't real?
yeah the stanley parable is fake. it's not a real game it doesn't exist sorry
Catheriiine 🤦🏽♂️ you missed the point of the video it could be real and I'm being just like davey right now analyzing you 😩😩😩
As an artist, its the opposite face of the coin friend
trust me I'm left with my own arguments with koda. But why I think this may be one of my favorite narratives ever conceived. It is a game that to play is to look at yourself in some way. And in a lot of ways I feel like koda. Afraid to share my work that people will make assumptions about my person, yet wishing that maybe, someone can see something I've made and see a part of me. But the only way we can ever see anything is through the lense of our own selfish understanding of the world. When I play The Beginner's Guide, regardless of whether Koda is or isn't just Davey, I still see a struggling artist. Someone who wants to create things but also in being someone who creates things makes things that are maybe painful or even sad, but doesn't want to be judged as a person for making that kind of thing.
And whether your ending was serious or an example of what makes this game so good, I think that is the biggest thing anyone can take away from this game. To play beginner's guide is to have to face yourself. To play a game where you either empathize with koda, or with Davey, the two make a fundamental opposite, the rationale, or the emotional. The two are opposites that struggle to understand one another, that struggle to comprehend eachother, and that at the end of the day, may never be able to, because they are such different ideals, and different thought processes.
This video is the kind of discussion I want games to have, and while I understand your sentiment, remember, you still have your own reasons for creating anything.
Because don't you worry. I find myself scaryingly similar to koda with regards to creating anything, even if Davey bastardized his work, even to the point that one level I have done in my own work. This is a game of pure empathy, and I think it's beautiful.
Personally, I found this game fascinating mainly because of the very distinct and powerful response it provoked: It makes you feel complicit with what you gradually realize is (ostensibly) a gross violation of another individual's will. I always like to see games experimenting with new perspectives and evoking specific feelings that are hard to convey in other art forms (which don't have such direct engagement and player involvement). I'm sure there are yet other interesting yet overlooked corners of the human psyche that could also be surfaced by creative design and player choice.
Once your work is out there, its meaning is no longer yours.
+thejobloshow I think that is really only partially true. People will always form their own connections to artistic work and thus will form their own ideas as to what that work means, that is simply how people are.
Still, with that said, the author of the work is still the root of its actual meaning. The audience's projected meanings can't really change the fact that the work itself came from a specific person who is in a specific frame of mind and is doing the work with specific intent.
The whole idea of the "death of the author" is a interesting one but it leads to a somewhat unhealthy relationship between the artist (who actually created the work based on their own experiences) and the consumer who wishes (at least those who subscribe to "death of the author) to insinuate themselves into the creative process without actually doing any of the work.
In my own experience, I can listen to a song, watch a film, play a game, or look at a painting and experience my own responses and perhaps even find my own meaning for the piece. Still, I understand that the meaning I place on such things is my own and has no real impact on the actual authors intent.
+Michael Holmes Yeah, I think that's true. I'd like to add that most artists try to convey their intent in such a way, that even if you interpret a work in your own way, you are bound to closely follow the original meaning. This is pretty much the basis for tragedy, satire and strongly cathartic works, that rely on the author's intent predicting the audience's reaction. It's not easy to write a tragedy, because as the author you're constantly dry-eyed. And when writing a comedy, you won't necessarily be laughing.
I forgot who originally said this, but I remember the words of one writer who remarked "writing means conveying the truth through lying."
Basically, the artist teaches people something and gives them fuel for emotions and thought through subtle, almost deceitful means. Or at least, that's how I see it. I'm sure that there are plenty of artists out there who see things differently :P
+thejobloshow
I think the game is arguing that meaning is personal and does not translate at all. Not only can we not understand the author's intent but also our interpretations have value only to ourselves. By critiquing a game, choosing certain features to try to draw meaning, the critic is forcing their interpretation on others.
I think my counter-argument is that as humans we all share certain characteristics, beyond that our shared cultural features allow us to communicate complex ideas. The ability to communicate is predicated on shared interpretation. Although that communication i never perfect, it means that in all probability our interpretations of artistic works will draw some similarities in the meaning. Critique and interpretation have value because they are acts of communication and creation of shared meaning just as much as they are statements of our own personality. Its about what we have in common rather that what divides us.
+thejobloshow All art is communication. All communication is two way. :)
+thejobloshow Lucas never figured that out with Star Wars but I think other creators did watching it from the outside.
Now I feel like an idiot for thinking for a second that the narrators breakdown was real. Or am I gathering from your text something you didn't truly intend? Oh god here we go...
*Comments so Errant Signal feels validated
God fucking damnit. That ending forces the viewer to take the point of the reviewer and "inject their own lampposts" or simplify you based on your work. It's a never ending "fuck you" to whoever is watching. A paradox where no one wins. I enjoy a good thought experiment but not one that ends up with me being an asshole either way.
+Veto2090 Anyway, if you're actually reading this, keep making videos because I like your fucking lampposts
I laughed literally out loud every time Chris found the game poking at him in particular. Bravo for making an already meta game that much more meta and funny because of it. It must be weird being a part of the game-design human centipede instead of just reviewing it.
It's So Meta, Even This Acronym
So you've read Douglas Hofstadters autobiography as well?
I do believe you put in a lamppost in the beginning though, changing the meaning of the work to suit your own, personal, view of what it should represent and mean.
*I S M E T A*
Now that I've finished the episode, I want to say: I love this show. I don't want it to end. I realize that the comments made at the end of the video were very likely not meant to be taken as real thoughts by you, but I cannot say for certain either way.
In any case, this episode is one of your best, and I really am glad that you covered The Beginner's Guide. Of the two interpretations given, I can't help but wonder if Davey intended the player to go down, to a degree, the same path that Video-Game-Davey did to Coda, but directed towards the real Davey. I wonder if it was meant to show our own inadequacies and insecurities as we try to puzzle out a solution to something that might not have one, and have VGDavey act as a mirror to us.
I can say for certain that when you said at the end of the video that you had to "rethink what [you] were doing with the show" (paraphrase), I immediately worried that that meant that it was coming to a close. (1/2)
(2/2) I am not afraid to say that I do fear the ending of things that matter to me, regardless of how small they are. Conclusions are necessary, but horridly final things, and as such I have come to abhor them. My own insecurity, played out by your video.
Perhaps that's the point. Or, perhaps that's just my lightpole. I'm just surprised that this episode got to me the way it did.
+Daniel O'Dette reading your comment I don't think you entirely understood the point of this review. But maybe I'm reading too much into your comment... I... I don't know what to make of it. I'm confused. I'm just going to go I think...
Blatantly we must accept that The Beginner's Guide is possibly the most masterful piece of criticism ever released, the height of the "walking simulator", and one of the single greatest games of all time.
I think the end of this video made the point far better than the game ever did ;)
But seriously. This game's like 12 steps ahead of you at all times. You can't talk about the meta bits, because the meta bits are already talking about _you_.
Dude, you have a lot of comments on gaming channels for several years now. They're always insightful, or funny, or at least a consise perspective on whatever the topic of the video is. I feel like Ive gotten to know you thru all the shared experiences of streams and videos and content I know we've both watched. All the jokes and memes and analysis. So please, how about tonight you don't lock your door so we can finally meet? So we can finally be together.
@@MrBritishNinja I'm flattered and aroused, but ultimately unsure how to respond.
That ending literally had me smiling so hard because dammit you wove that aspect of the game so masterfully into your video good job. Just subscribed :)
analyzing what a text communicates and analyzing what the author intended by that message are two very different things though, because what the author thinks their story means is just as much a projection of themselves onto the text as what the critic thinks. the text by itself is just words, and words are nothing without people to interpret them
*R E M O V E P O S T M O D E R N I S T S*
Davey could make a hell of a psychological horror game if he wanted to. He seems to almost accidentally orchestrate these perfectly uncanny, somethings-not-right feelings in the player. Turning the corner from that state into straight up horror would be easy and very effective.
That ending was brilliant. Perfectly summarized the feeling that I had after finishing The Beginner's Guide. (And now I"M projecting my own feelings onto YOUR video and OH GOD I HAVE TO STOP)
This is mind-blowing... First video I see on this channel and I hope it's not the only one that is so well written.
Videogame Davey *is* anti-critic, but that doesn't mean he's correct in feeling that way. As much as it is possible to read too far into a work, I think it's important to keep two ideas in mind:
1) authorial intent is not the be-all end-all of how a work gets read. If an author intends for something to be read one way and an audience member sees it totally differently, that's not a problem. So long as they took something away from the experience, even if it wasn't exactly what the author had in mind, that's a positive thing.
2) high-level critique of any medium is important because it helps the medium to evolve. Starting discussions helps both critics and creators learn more about how audiences felt about a given work, which is important knowledge they can use to create more interesting and engaging works in their own medium.
When you realise that the entire video is actually the beginners guide condensed into
"Hostile to critics" is, I think, a pretty accurate and succinct summation of this game. The entire piece seems to exist solely to say "You don't know me, man! You could stare at my work for the rest of my life and never 'get' me! I am the creator, you are the observer! Don't ever try to blur that line again, or you'll risk looking like a fool!"
“I wanna know how to be a good person” is giving BIG Bojack Horseman vibes. “I need you to tell me I’m a good person. Tell me I’m good.”
Might be my favourite video essay on UA-cam Ever
Great video. Finally a proper game analist.
Funny thought: this isn't by far the first time people thought that an art piece was real when in fact it was fiction (Wells' radio alien invasion for example) and that in turn can show us one important thing. In a span of a few decades simple ones and zeros have arrived to a point of true artistic form.
The Begginers' Guide is one of the first serious video game art pieces.
It show that not only are video games capable of telling a compelling human story, they are so good at it that we can be tricked into thinking that it actually happened.
I like the exaggerated breakdown at the end. it mimics the game and also gets the viewer to consider the possibility that by making a judge of your character from this video they too are just as bad as Davy. its turtles all the way down
You keep doing what you do mate! You are one of the few people who really put some thought into their work, even tho you may sometimes project your own personal insecurities into it. Seeing people really think about or interpret your work rather than just plainly talk about its graphics or controls or whatnot, is one of the biggest honors a game-designer can get.
This show brings a lot of value to the table for players and developers!
Don't Worry Campster, Even without the review thing, you're still the 4th best contributor on spoiler Warning,
+damanorelse Savage!
Savage.
This is a straight-up trippy meta mindfuck. I appreciate how you articulate the reflection you see in Davey's character, and still give a really great read on the game in its own right, in as much as you can detach your self. Great channel dude, keep crushin it!
Nabokov does something similar with Pale Fire. A critical analysis of a poem... "and it's all about me!!"
A fun read, if you get the chance.
+Michael Tuttle The two works have a lot in common. Both are works annotated by an unreliable narrator who "stole" the work from the real genius and cast their own interpretation on it, based upon a completely one-sided and mistaken reading of the relationship between the "narrator" and the "author". But if you go further, one reading of Pale Fire is that the "narrator" is actually the "author" writing in a separate voice, to cast a different light on the work and as a coping mechanism to deal with the pain of the subject (loss of a child). In much the same way, Davey is both Creator and Commenter, Coda and Davey. And in presenting the work and a flawed commentary on it, the work is more complex and thought-provoking than the fictional "original work" itself.
Michael Tuttle I'm sad that nobody acknowledges more, because I feel like it was a conscious inspiration, it borrows so much from it!(albeit reutilizing it in another medium, of course)
I'm SO glad someone else realizes this!
you actually had me at the end there for a moment. It's a really clever way to end the episode by making the viewer ask the same questions that you're agonizing over, but directed at themselves. The question i asked myself that broke the illusion for me however was "how many takes did it get to get the breakdown scene?"
I was directed here by extra credits and have loved the few vids of yours that i've watched. can't wait to get to the rest.
Why did this have to be the first video of yours I watched. Fucking meta
Well, it seems that discussions and reviews of this game are "meta' because the game itself is like that. The reviews, because of the way the game is, are a sort of like a part of the Beginner's Guide. It's weird.
I give you internet validation for a good commentary. And you clearly put a lot more thought into who you are as a reviewer than like 99% of internet reviewers of ANY medium, not just games.
First, I'd like to say its very clever how your analysis of The Beginner's Guide mimics the structure of The Beginner's Guide itself (right down to the mental breakdown at the very end). Very clever!
Though I think a valid escape from the existential crisis at the end is to accept that every game we play (and how we play them) reflect more on us than the developer. For instance, I personally considered the narrative to be a metaphor for an individual trying to find meaning out of a meaningless universe (which I guess makes coda a stand-in for God?). In this way, the game's theme is consistent with that of The Stanley Parable in which all of the player's choices are ultimately meaningless (The end is never the end...). Although it is interesting that real life Davey has followed up a game filled with nothing but choices with a game that contains virtually no choices at all.
After all of this however, I must remind myself that I am indeed adding lampposts to the end of a work that ultimately does not belong to me. However, perhaps my unique play-through and my own interpretations do in fact belong to me? And in that way critics and interpreters are valid in any personal interpretations so long as they accept that those views are their own? And by extension any interpretation of the universe is valid so long as they are self contained?
There is a lot to think about here and I would love to hear anyone's thoughts, just to remind myself that I'm not alone :)
Your reviews are still the best on youtube. Don't dumb yourself down and don't follow trends. Keep it up!
We can only try to understand other people by comparing them to ourselves, so I don't see a problem with interpreting meaning onto a work based on personal assumptions. The danger lies in editing the work to make a specific point without acknowledging your own bias or directing the viewer to the source material.
Youve added more light and an appreciation for beauty to my life. I think that's enough.
Laughing out loud from the ending! :)
On a more serious note, I personally think your work is different from the horrible projections of fictionalised-Wreden because you work from the text, not trying to figure out the person who made it. Even in your Blendo Games episode, you talked about the techniques Chung uses, never trying to extrapolate things about him.
Keep up the good work!
Brilliant. This was brilliant.
Also, honestly, I wanted to say that your videos have totally helped me cope with the fact that I don't have as much time to play games as I used to or would like to, and that I really enjoy your unique perspective on video games. I realize that you were just being very meta, but still. :)
...People actually couldn't realize this is fiction?
I kind of assumed it was a generally true story with vague recreations of coda's games to avoid copyright issues.
After playing Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger And The Terribly Cursed Emerald I really have a new appreciation for both the Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide.
I'd love to see a video about it sometimes, just to get your perspective.
This is why I love this channel.
Fantastic analysis. Your work gets better and better with each episode. And I like how you have a "nervous breakdown" at the end of your video the same way Davey has a breakdown at the the end of the game. I hope that was just an act to make a point and that you're not actually questioning what you're doing. Because you're doing a good job; there's nothing you need to "figure out".
Is this a "hommage" to the narrative style of the game, or is this really a sad realisation while talking about a fictionnal sad realisation ?
See what you did there
+Ilyas M
Man, this video got so fucking meta, that it's leaking on to the comments
+Ilyas M Do you really see what he did there? or are you placing your lampposts?
+Ilyas M Either way, I really want to give mr. Campster a hug
Don't read into it.
Whoa...major case of deja vu here. A lot of this struggle with how to ethically and accurately interpret a text brings to mind the New Criticism and reader-response approaches to literary criticism. The former removes the author and all external material to address only the text; the latter acknowledges the presence of the critic and focuses on their struggle to make sense of the text. I like that you incorporate both in your videos, with a preference for RR.
Dude, you've boiled this down to a paradox of crazy proportions. There's always more than one selfish reason to do something good and there's always more than one genuine good reason to do something bad. Everyone has a reason for doing what they do, the answer doesn't come from outside, but from within. You KNOW why you do this. You don't need to show how good and genuine you are. Nobody is good, in that sense.
I'm so glad you covered this game! I loved playing it and hearing your take on it as a game critic made it all that much better.
BRILLIANT STUFF ERRANT! An analysis worthy of the game.
that was one of the best reviews i have seen in my life, thanks
The interesting thing is that Psychology - as a science - has sort of wrestled with the same basic concept. (At least, by my understanding - my memory may be faulty on this stuff, to be honest.) The concept this stuff seems to stems from - the idea that perceptions and biases and all that are going to effect how you perceive results. The solution for at least some psychologists was to embrace that bias with a new branch of Qualitative Psychology, stuff that couldn't be broken down into simple numbers. Stanford Prison experiment is a fairly good example - you can break bits and pieces of that experiment down into numbers, sure, but the overarching point of it can't be broken down. To understand the results, you need to see everything - including the biases of both participants and researchers. In essence, Qualitative Psychology didn't shy away from the bias, and in fact pretty much embraced them - in so far that a science can, anyway.
And the thing is, in terms of post-modern game analysis, embracing your bias - painting a bit neon glow on it so that people can take it into consideration - is so easy you can do it in a single word. Or two, or three if you want. Hell, even without really thinking, you did it yourself, Errant, right near the end of the... well, ending.
"I don't know."
It's that simple. That single three word phrase turned a bias analysis of a video game into a proclamation about how this is YOUR bias analysis of a video game, and that there are many like it - and many unlike it - but this one is yours. That simple three word phrase - and its two word counterpart "I think", and its one word counterpart "Maybe" - immediately places you on a level of self-awareness above David. (The narrator David, not the actual David - Although maybe that DOES make you more self aware then actual David too, all things considered?) It's an admittance that there are dozens, if not hundreds of ways to analyse a fair number of games - not all of them logical, not all of them possible - and that this perception, the one you're going into detail in, is the one that you - and your biases painted by your own experiences and such - most agree with. And maybe others don't, and that's fine. You're making judgments about the game and perhaps by extension the author, yes, but you're lampshading (lamp-posting?) the fact that it is YOUR judgments. Not the absolutely definitive correct answer, just the answer you think seems most correct, given your biases which you embrace rather then deny.
But then, that's just how I see it. I might perhaps be missing a bigger picture. But then, if we're not able to get rid of our biases, and hanging lampshades (or lamp posts) on them isn't enough to save our analysis from this perceived quagmire, what are we supposed to do? Just... not do them at all? I honestly think we're be poorer for it if we took that route.
I found the beginners guide to be a thoughtful, insightful ride that really moved me. I am surprised to hear there was some controversy about people thinking that coda was a real person, and that people thought davey was stealing their work. I would assume that can only be from people who haven't played his previous work, and that his work is crafted to make you feel the way he wishes you to feel. I look forward to his next work.
I actually didn't realize Davey (The narrator) was being evil from the labyrinth part, because I could see the end of it by the time he said "I'll just skip it" XD
I have waited SO LONG to watch this one. I'm glad I did. You're one of the best.
This is really good, I wish I could recommend this to more people, even being willing to look back on your own work with the ideas that the game proposes.
I don't know if the last part was purely satirical or if it had some truth behind it, but in case of the later, please don't stop making these, we need critics like you.
Wow. I've been binging this channel over the last couple days, and I have been hooked. But the last few seconds here, that was quite beautiful. Thank you.
I actually saw a bit of myself in Coda. Both Davey's fictional Coda and the actual Coda that told Davey to leave him alone. Partly because, when I played The Beginner's Guide, I was deep inside a creative rut with my own writing (just like the game where you destroy the creation machine) and was incredibly frustrated. I hadn't really written anything for a long time, over a year. I was just about ready to give up. To be honest, the game didn't help with that or change it, and drove me into an even deeper rut where I almost considered deleting my writings and forgetting about my "stupid, childish ambitions". Fortunately, I didn't. Instead, I binge watched some television series that I hadn't watched yet. One of them was Game of Thrones. Halfway through it, I ended up going on a two week long trip with my family, giving me plenty of time to stew over the events and writing of the show. That really re-sparked my creativity, and I'm back in the saddle writing again.
The other way I saw myself in Coda was near the end when he was telling Davey to leave him alone and to stop reading in to what he made. I had enrolled in a creative writing class during my rut to attempt to force myself back into writing. Bad idea. Everyone would interpret my writing in a certain way. For example, the whole class grew concerned when I wrote a poem about a man who commits suicide because his wife died. People would routinely request that, in my second drafts, I should tie up any ambiguities in my stories, or make the story _mean_ something [to them], or whatnot. They wanted me to write _for_ them. They weren't satisfied with what I wanted to write and would constantly stick their grubby little fingers into my creation in order to "normalize" it. They wanted neatly wrapped up stories that had a clear point and no unsolved mysteries at the end. I grew to hate writing for that class, and would routinely only do the bare minimum work in order to eke out a passing grade.
I was tired of my classmates and teacher trying to put lampposts in my work.
Great video. I like the little joke at the end where you go crazy just like game Davey does.
Art is a language. If I say a sentence, such as "I don't like you", out of context, then you can interpret it in a number of ways. Some people may say that any interpretation you make of my sentence is just you projecting and it's your fault that you feel the way you do, because your interpretation is not my intention. Others, myself included, would say that regardless of how you interpret it, if my intention was not achieved, I have failed to communicate. If for example, I was being sarcastic, but you didn't take it that way, I screwed up.
So when we look at this sort of game that questions who you are to project onto a game by interpreting it, I say that the game is doing a disservice to itself and to art. It's asking to forfeit the nature of language in order to remove responsibility on the part of the artist for any shortcomings. He's basically saying "don't interpret my games because you don't know me so you're just claiming to know who I am". But art is always a snapshot of the time frame in which it is conceived. Some films, including The Shining, do this deliberately. I've made analyses videos for David Lynch who is notoriously a film-maker who reveals what's on his mind through his work, and is also notoriously a director who leaves things to interpretation. When making a meta-commentary game like this, and when making a passion project with no interference from outside forces (a development team, producers, publishers, etc), it's inevitable that you are capturing something about yourself and putting it out on display for the world to judge. You can't back out once you do something like this.
In other words - if your game says something about you and everybody sees it, you can't back out and say "you don't know me!", you just have to accept that if you sent the wrong message, you failed to communicate. At a certain point, after you literally insert yourself as a character in your game, you have to accept that *all* of that character is part of who you are, because that character was written by you 100%. The words came from your mind and it speaks with your voice and shares your name. And if the character wasn't properly interpreted, maybe it's because you didn't do a good enough job.
Of course, I'm just projecting because I haven't played the game. I'm basing my view on this video's view of the game's view of an imaginary character.
Personally, I've always felt this was the real value of art- you CAN'T understand the full breadth of a person from their art but the artist can put you, at least for a moment, into a very specific headspace. To capture, briefly, a precise emotion or sensation that you and the artist share. It tells you nothing of the artist, specifically, but it opens up a valuable insight to yourself. Your read of a work becomes a means of exploring yourself, and how the headspace of that work contextualizes your own world. I don't think these criticisms are invalid for overreaching the bounds of a work because deconstruction doesn't need to be about accuracy. It should be about understanding something and how it affects you.
That ending was so fucking meta and great
So, as a inspiring game developer, and as someone who heavily relates to Coda, I feel the need to comfort you on this situation.
Before I was a game developer I was a comic book artist. Comic books was my passion. I loved it. I did it everyday, and it was something I was good at it. Until I went to college. And then everything changed.
College costs a lot of money, as you may imagine. Because of this there was a lot of pressure to succeed at my job. I had to make straight As. I had to be the best in my class. I had to impress people. And I did. I won awards for my work. However, in the midst of always needing and wanting validation, I lost myself. I lost myself to the need to be "successful" in order to pay off college debt and housing.
I became obsessed with attention. I constantly checked my twitter, tumblr, and facebook to see if I got my followers. I always needed more page views or fans. This made me miserable. I was a mess because I was never good enough. No matter what I did, I never got the approval from my family and friends that I truly wanted. I never lived up to the image I thought they had of me.
So, I had a mental breakdown. Even though I had thousands of fans, I went onto the internet and took it all down. I quit comics and stopped posting all of my original work online. For months I just dew for myself. I just focused on me and my own needs. Because of that, I am the happiest I've ever been.
This happens to a lot of artists, if not all of them. A lot of artists have people in their lives who demand they make their art public. People who can't draw, write, or make games, like to pressure people who can. They envy their talents, and want them be famous for their own personal reasons. In doing that, they do often cross a line and invade the artist's personal space.
What I am saying is, you're not Davey. Yes, he made a lot of parallels to your work, but you never did what he did. You never took games, went into their coding, changed it, and uploaded it online. You never pushed game developers to put their work out there when they didn't want it. All you did was celebrate what gamers gave you. You did your job and there is nothing wrong with that.
If you ever review my games, I'd be honored. It would be cool for someone like you to take my work seriously. Most game developers like hearing what critics have to say. A lot of them like their work to be analyzed. It's cool and interesting.
So, don't sweat it, dude. I think this video game was more so a rant about the creative process. I think it was just a dialogue of stuff that happens behind game development.
Are there seriously people thinking that this was real? Like at the start I was thinking: oh, like a documentary? But after the 100s Prison game it should become obvious that this was just another thing he made up.
I appreciate that little joke you slipped in at the end, with you pretending to wrestle with the validity of analysis in the same way that Davey does, after already stating how ridiculous it would be that someone would publish work with them having a break down in it. Gave me a chuckle.
RIP Errant Signal, we hardly knew yee
Easily the greatest piece of media created for this channel yet. How will you ever top this? ;-)
Beautifully made! I love this game, I played it several times and it's genius, one of my most favourite games ever! :)
And this video really nails why The Beginner's Guide is so great. Perfect. :)
This is, hands down, the perfect way to analyse and reflect on this game.
Haha jesus christ - there's metacomments about the metavideos on the metagame. There's like seriously a metaton.
+Nazareadain maybe there's a metaphor somewhere in there too...
+Mercanary artist if you pause at 11:37, you can faintly see a picture of Metatron
OH YES
It isn't meta enough until you IRL wink to camera.
Finally a The Beginner's Guide analysis I can get behind of. One that takes the game as it is: a very on point meta-fiction that points out the contradictions of a form of art and the impossibility of discerning one absolute discourse out of it.
I felt like shit when I played it, like everyone else. But hey, now I know I'm not the only one who felt like shit because everything seemed pointless.
when I thought Coda was real, I actually thought the inclusion of women (considering Coda was framed as a depressed male) and how Coda 'maybe just likes prisons' could have been a hint into gender dysphoria of Coda. Making these games could have just been an outlet for him to deal with that prison.
But since he's not, I've then pondered if Coda functions the same way Socrates functions in some of Plato's stories, which as Coda puts 'says more about 'Davey' than himself' (fictional Davey).
Because if there really is no Coda, because real Davey was lying? Who's to say fictional Davey doesn't also know that? Maybe fictional Davey also made all the levels and therefore uses Coda as a buffer, because he really wanted to share this with people but was too afraid to have 'his' name on it?
maybe the 3 dots represents the female reproductive system, maybe the lamppost is an unwanted phallic symbol? The only way out is sincerity? The final level is one that does not want to be played and is 'the tower'?
With that said I am not assuming anything about the real Davey, as I think this game is about learning to be more critical in games, and the the original analysis comes from an unreliable source, so where do we go from there?
Maybe that says more about me? (not really)
Or maybe I jus need to lay off the bong water?
the game can definitely be read as (at least in part) being about gender dysphoria and being trans, and I remember hearing somewhere that there used to be more dialogue that made it more explicit
Even how it is currently, I still think it’s fairly explicit that Coda’s meant to be a trans woman, and it’s how I’ve always read it
@@catgirlforeskin Stop projecting, Soyjack. Same goes for the op.
F*ck the song at the beginning hit me so freaking hard! Beginner's Guide is so amazing! I've shown this game to my husband and my mom, and all of us have had a different experience with it. I wanted to be able to covey who I am through my work, the way Davey tries to do with Coda. I have Aspergers, so I wanted my work to give people insight into how my brain works. And then the end absolutely snuck up on me; made me cry. My husband had seen himself in Davey, how he doesn't like himself and fears that he's imposing himself on the people around him the way Davey does to Coda.
I just... the game made me feel things. And I really appreciated that.
It was funny to see Errant Signal so confused by this game. For me it was a beutiful story with themes I haven't seen explored before and helped me piece toghether some thoughts that were floating in my mind for quite a while.
Simply put, as I see it, Coda was wrong, Davey was wrong too, and it's okay to be wrong. Coda was blind to the fact, that when you share your work with someone that person in some sense becomes a co-author, the only way to keep it belonging to you and no one else is not allowing anyone near it. Yet he showed up on that game jam, he allowed Davey to look, to talk to him, to become his friend, he was sending Davey his games, listened to what he had to say, and then he got upset that his vision was interfering with his "creative machine", hated the lamp posts, despised the idea of Davey adding (by himself or by indirect influence) something of his own into his games. Refusing to accept the consequences of his choice to share his work with Davey, Coda started to push Davey away from him, as a result Davey lost his balance and in a desperate attempt to fix things betrayed Coda's trust, making it even worse. So Coda blamed Davey for his mistake, and Davey made a follow-up mistake, both refused to understand each other, losing the chance to forgive each other and fixing their friendship.
So my message to Errant Signal would be to continue to do what he's doing - providing interesting perspectives on games that deserve attention. If the game is there, he's free to see what he sees in it (everyone is, actually), tell others about it, and if it isn't what the author meant, tough shit, now it is in some way.
+Vladimir Samsonov I love this! It is interesting to think about Coda's mistake and motivations because we just have nothing but a broken window to see his character through. Maybe he was kind of a dick :)
Maxben L not quite a dick, at least not intentionally, just someone who doesn't know what he wants, and while he kinda wants two things that oppose each other: to be left alone with himself and his creativity "untainted" (boo-hoo my games don't need to be what people identify as games!) and to open up, be liked and accepted and be able to share his work and fight his insecurities (recycle bin as his game folder) through other people's appreciation of his work, he can't make up his mind and repeatedly refuses to pay the price and accept the consequences of either. Instead of at least seeing it as a problem, his problem, he blamed it all on Davey. Ironically Davey's bad reaction helped him to make up his mind and decide to keep to himself.
Errant Signal, my favorite video game philosopher / curator. I've not played Beginner's Guide, but this video was a real treat and makes me want to play it for myself. Ultimately that is why your analysis is important to me.
Works of art are emotional objects, or at least they are capable of containing avenues to emotional expression, either via the author of the work projecting emotion onto the work in question, or via viewers/players/critics/whathaveyou experiencing the work and responding to it emotionally. Every person has a unique viewpoint on the world around them, literally, since no two pairs of eyeballs can occupy the same space at the same point in time, meaning it's expected that different people respond differently to the same work of art, and that different people create art differently from others. Since every viewpoint is unique, communicating that viewpoint has merit because, if effectively conveyed, others can understand what makes said viewpoint unique, broadening their knowledge base and opening their eyes to the true diversity (emotional or otherwise) on display in humanity. Video-game David(?) got completely absorbed in this aspect of reality, and took it a step further....
....by modifying the original work to reflect his own personal viewpoint, at the expense of the original creator. This is key, I intuit, to understand the text of the game in this context I have put forth (and, yes, I understand why others might raise an eyebrow at that statement in the context of the video above, but I'll work with that limitation). In this context, the game seems to speak about the nature of creation, in that the majority of creative work (including the huge amounts of non-professional work) is focused or supported by fan-made works idolizing a particular creative work, via fan fiction/artwork/games/whathaveyou, and exposes the limits said obsessive drives to idolize/add to/modify/work with the creative work is, which points out how on some level such efforts are disrespectful to the original creators... and yet, the folks who engage in this "fandom" often do so out of intense passion, passion that would be socially commended if put towards most anything else....
+mralbum3256 ....These people pour their heart and soul into their "remixes" and "tributes" in an attempt to legitimize and venerate the original work and their creators, to give back some of the positivity they may have gained by engaging/listening/whatever with the creative work in the first place, much like how David(?) modifies Coda's games, in a sense. I personally suspect that this desire to reciprocate the positivity back to the original creators is why Kickstarter and Patreon are seen as such runaway successes as a business model, to such an extent that even mining companies are looking into crowdfunding as a legitimate fundraising model.
Then again, I'm just one perspective on the matter in a sea of potential perspectives. I sincerely hope it gives you some thought if you think of this subject in the future.
Sincerely,
Mr. Album
No joke I had the same flashback to your video about Brendan Chung's work at the same point, right at the start of TBG. That's great, and I love your introspection here.
And yeah, the idea that someone took this game's narrative literally is just mind-bendingly stupid for a person who gets paid for their opinions.
Tucking in for a brilliant video.
This video was such a pleasure to watch! Thank you for making it, and for all your work.
Errant Signal (or anyone else) ever read any Jorge Luis Borges? Always thought some of his stuff was rife with cool ideas for games like these.
You made some excellent points in the Doom/Quake episodes about how the tone illuminated aspects of the devs personalities. And them communicating that tone was hugely valuable to all the players who love the games, as is the case with a tonally powerful book, and I'd watch this or analysis by Rock Lee Smile because you _are_ more knowledgable about these things and have insight I wouldn't, it's ok to feel good, and/or proud of that. I've heard you speaking before on your past reviews, maybe you should go back and edit, touch up, some that you are least happy with.
Interpreting and giving your own meaning is what art does, once you create something and is out there it is up to the spectator, reader, listener, player to give meaning to it, the creator also has his own interpretation of his or her work but you have to understand that different people different ways of looking at the world will have different interpretations of it, and that's the beauty of it, someone might thing is the worst piece of trash and someone will think is the epitome of human creativity. With that said, game creation, bottom line, is a job, and as a job you want to make a profit out of it, does this means you should create things that resonate or appeals to as many people as possible? Maybe something that you know critics will love and make noise about it? Where does that leave you as a creator? What if what you want to make doesn't makes a profit but you love it anyway? To me all interpretations are valid in this case it means what it means to you.
As for the critic thing, people like "coda" need critics like that, they help give interpretations to their work and a more educated view of their creations, yes people do praise critics for this interpretations but they help people realize how well crafted that work is, making it more accessible let's say to more people.
Just the most blatantly ignorant comment I've seen, at least the others are trying to defend their own views yours is simply a giant jerk off about how you are all that matters and creators are simply spectators in their own work.
Seriously South Park did this shit to the point where even the most moronic of individuals could get the point of why the death of the author is an asinine phenomena.
@@justincanu9153 i mean, some authors say that a work can be interpreted any way you want. if something doesn't have a soild single meaning, does it just..not matter ... let's just never think about anything now i guess
@@amacias2012 Well said, Mexican Kyubey.
The thing I think is important about The Beginner's Guide is it is a game which is designed to make you feel - to make you look into yourself.
I had absolutely NONE of that "Critics Remouse" feelings going through my head until I listened to The Jimquisition episode discussing it. I came out of the game thinking about my mistakes in past relationships and how I would have to make sure I did better in the future. I also came out thinking about wanting to create more Art and the fact I haven't made anything in 5 years is just a lull in my creative process.
Fucking genius review that reflects the game itself far too well.
That getaway at the end, though. You just explained why it's hard to critisise and then fake a breakdown. Brilliant. Though kind of predictable.
so like... is it good?
+Pemphro Yes.
+Pemphro No.
+Pemphro YES, IT IS
+Pemphro It would be hilarious if Campster at the end of the video rattled of the standard review tropes "Also, graphics are quitte good, sound design subpar, ending could be better, 8/10 would play again."
+Robbert-Jan merk he is a Very Serious Intellectual Game Critic aka full of himself, so he may not allow himself such rude jokes
This is probably my favorite video on this channel so far. Cheers, dude.
I see what you did there at the end.
I don't pretend to know where you should take the show, but as a consumer of your work I'd appreciate it if you kept making things. The artifacts (videos) you've produced have been catalysts to a great deal of thought in my life and I value them.
You may have been two-faced in how you made this video ultimately reflect the narrative structure of The Beginner's Guide, but I think therein lies the ultimate takeaway of the game: recognizing hypocrisy. The game leaves you with that catch-22 where you're a hypocrite either way, but I think what matters more is your ability to recognize and acknowledge that hypocrisy. But this isn't the same kind of hypocrisy as a politician engaging in the very acts he publicly condemns, because that is a wholly intentional act. This is the kind of hypocrisy that the average person engages in on a daily basis, and yet to try to rid ourselves of that hypocrisy is itself a thoroughly damaging act. Thus all we can do is fall back on a sense of humility and understand that we cannot be perfect, but we can always strive fore something better.
And before anyone says it, yeah, I'm doing the same thing as both of them. Well all do it. So there's no point sending the finger around in a circle.
pretty meta
in my opinion, the observer/consumer is just as much an artist as the creator. yes in a different way, but in order to see art instead of just a picture game book or anything really the observer needs to give it that certain spark, in a way she/he himself becomes the artist. that is why im interested in critiques, it gives me the oppertunity to see a piece of art in a different light. so yes i think the existence of critics is not only justified but a great thing. and although i can understand the urge to stay in control of your own work, in which youve invested so much of yourself, and i think we should respect that to a certain extent i believe that as soon as we come to the understanding that everything anyone ever says about anything art related is alsways speculation, interpretation, and projection. we will never know for certain what most pieces of art 'truly' meant, when they were created, but we can know what we make of them, exchange our thoughts, and in the process become part of the work and artist ourselves.
Not sure if you're serious towards the end there, but it seems like a struggle with a false problem. Since when was receiving validation for criticism a bad thing? We enjoy that criticism and it takes effort to put together. A lesson learned about not trying to self-project or read too deep is valuable, but it doesn't make criticism as a whole defunct.