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

"How unintentionally cruel it can be to make someone else responsible for your sense of self worth." This hit me like a freight train.

how you explain and present ideas in this video is incredible. seriously amazing job.

I walked over the game design courses of my school and one of the classrooms were watching this video

When I first played The Beginner's Guide, and the only time, I very slowly came to realize what the meta text was, and I had a very visceral feeling of "I'm an asshole for playing this." Upon further reflection I'm aware of how enormously stupid it would be for Davey Prime to basically put copywritten work up on Steam, not to mention just unfathomably not self-aware the ending monologue would be, if what Davey the Narrator is saying, I still felt like I was invading *someone's* privacy. Whether Koda is real, or Koda is Davey, or Koda doesn't exist, playing it felt like I was violating another person's very creative spark, which is kind of why I both hate and love this game. Just something to ponder.

Can I just say: I love the irony of making a game all about the impossibility of truly knowing an artist through their work, and making it something that basically tempts authorial analysis at every turn.

Wish my teachers would've played the Beginner's Guide/watched this video. Nothing I hated more in literary classes than talking about what "definitely must've been going on inside the mind of the author, based on their work". Maybe he just likes making prisons.

after almost 5 years this is still my favourite video on youtube. nothing had topped it so far. its what motivated me into language studies, and i cant thank you enough. so, i wish you a good day and a good life.

Me: well, this is gonna be interesting. *opens the video* Video: we're gonna spoil the ending for "Sopranos" for some reason, so don't say I didn't warn you. Me: goddamnit. *closes the video*

I actually ended up writing Davey via that email address he gives at the beginning of the game. It was more a cathartic exercise for me than a legitimate attempt to reach the creator. Afterwards, I ended up reading a blog entry about how much of the game could be interpreted as celebrity worship. The kinds of people who are obsessed with an artist's work, and because of what they read into it, believe that they are kindred spirits or have some sort of special connection. She mentioned that she'd encountered what Coda must have encountered dozens of times, with fans of hers whom she had not met before, gushing extremely personal stories to her, and how awkward she felt (and sometimes scared) by the extreme one-sided-ness of that relationship. How violating it felt when fans would approach her at conventions using her real name, though they hadn't ever been introduced before and that the person they felt close to was a fictional persona that had a separate name. This immediately made me feel regretful for writing to Davey, since I felt that The Beginner's Guide was, at least in some part, a narrative pointing out the amount of people who felt like they were entitled to Davey's time, simply through the act of "being a fan". In a sense, I feel like I "lost" the game of The Beginner's Guide simply by writing to Davey, even though, at the time, I knew full well that both the Davey Narrator and Coda were, in all likelihood, fictional characters (or at least, mostly fictional). Obviously, any great work is open to interpretation, and that's fine and dandy. You can't be an artist (or at least not a good artist) without allowing your work to be interpreted however people want to interpret it. The more an author tries to play God in their own published world, the more they end up alienating fans. I think about authors like J.K. Rowling who have spent the last decade releasing revisionist pieces to help "explain" her story (which had finished at that point) but which, at the time, weren't important to the characters or the plot of the story.

Love this game. I had a slightly different interpretation. I lost my twin sister before I was born, and I felt like Coda was her, and that my attempts to get close to her, a person I couldn't ever know but someone so similar to me, so intimately bonded with me, were unhealthy on my end. That my desperate attempts for validation from others are really an attempt to get her validation. I know that sounds crazy, I mean I've never spoken to her, but I've agonized over her my entire life. Every room she's not in feels wrong and empty, and family pictures make me deeply sad. But in a way, it reflected that depression I felt, that desire to add meaning to something that didn't have it and a personality to a person I could never know. It was profoundly emotional, but I'm really glad I played it. I think there isn't a correct interpretation. I think that our interpretations of this game are deeply personal to us as people. It helped me let go of my sister a bit, even though I'm never going to be completely okay with her being gone.

My initial take was that Coda and Davey were two parts of the author's personality, with Coda being his creativite, fun side and Davey being his needy, responsible side that held Coda in check, ultimately depressing the author. Interesting to hear other readings

"The next time you hear someone wondering aloud, 'Can games ever be art?', think on the fact that I just spent *half an hour* making sense of [a video game] using [art theory.]" And that was the exact moment I hit the like button, this video is amazing

For the "can games be art?" hypothetical at the very end, I think the Penny Arcade guys said it best a few years ago. "If a hundred artists are working together for over a year, how can the end result of their work be anything other than art?"

For my first play-through of the beginner's guide I actually emphasized with narrator. In more ways then one I was him. When he broke down at the end I cried. I followed him, trying to understand his friend's work. I more or less latched onto concepts that reminded me of my battle with depression, of losing friends, needing to feel validated, feeling like whatever I did..it wasn't going to be enough. But at the same time I ignored many of the other game's themes. meaning in a way, like the narrator, I cherry picked what I wanted in my attempt to gain meaning

So if senpai doesn't notice me then I don't exist.

I was supposed to go to bed 4 hours ago but then I ran into your videos and I literally just had the thought that before this I’ve been just listening to the equivalent of junk food whilst being in the verge of diabetics

Hey, so I had this whole thing written out - three paragraphs - but here are the basics: 1. ExtraCredits sent me 2. I like your stuff 3. subscribed

I find it ironic that some people played the game, watched this video, and yet still felt the need to offer the exact kind of authoritative opinion on what Davey Prime intended you to take away from the game that was criticized in both. Generally, unnuanced but cool-sounding theories like "You are Davey" or "You are Coda" or "Coda is Davey Prime" (admittedly I'm over simplifying a touch) which aren't so much surmised from the text, but presupposed and rationalized afterwards, in the exact same way Davey the Narrator does with Coda's games.

Halfway through the game, I thought the final reveal of the game was going to be that Coda killed himself and Davey was beating himself up for not doing anything to stop it. However, to me, it’s clear that Coda and Davey are the same person. Coda is the creative genius part of Davey, the one that makes all these little abstract games for no one else other than himself. Davey represents the part of himself that seeks approval and praise. He decided to start showing people his avant garde games and people really liked them. This caused an internal alienation in himself between Coda and Davey, the part of him that created for creation sake with no intent of receiving any recognition for it, and the part of him that is full of imposter syndrome and desperately seeks approval from others. This ultimately causes a rift between these two personalities and causes Davey to fall into a depression that prevents him from making any more of these types of games. The creative part of him rejects him completely, and it breaks him, thus all he is left with is his imposter syndrome and an inability to create. This is why he released the Beginner’s Guide, it’s his imposter syndrome self doing the only thing he knows how to do: seek validation from others hoping it will re stimulate Coda, the creative part of him.

Something I think we all can agree upon is that Davey Prime is very good at voice acting.

There is no deeper meaning to The Beginner's Guide, it is a true story, Davey Prime killed coda and hid his body in a swamp so he could release his games on steam. This monster can't keep pulling the wool over people's eyes.

Your ability to have a deep read in any work of fiction is incredibly impressive, and you always seem to have a very insightful explination to your points. This video, along with your phil fish and Melee epsiodes, are some of my favorite things to listen to just to hear you explain your point, since you do such a great job of doing that :)

This is such an eloquent, well-thought out video. Is the title a play on The Artist is Present by Marina Abramovic?

this is great, but frankly it's indisputable that jar jar binks is a sith lord.

I don't know why I found that Twitter edit so hilarious.

Your explanation of translating everything into and out of a shared language reminded me of a Douglas Adams quote: “You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself."

I don't think when coda asks Davey to 'stop putting lamp posts in my games' it literally means that Davey edited the games and added the lamp posts, I think it means that Davey's obsession and analysis of Coda's games was shaping the way Coda was creating them, influencing them into being something they had never artistically intended to be in the first place. So Davey thinks that the games needs a structure and some form of uniformity to make them 'work', and this idea and pressure ends up corrupting Coda's creative process, meaning Davey's idea of what is 'right' ends up influencing Coda away from his original artistic vision. The lamp posts are meant to symbolise the unhelpful influence of a player on a game creators artistic process. If it was meant that Davey had literally been editing the games to include the lamp posts, then why wouldn't he have included the lamp posts in the earlier games he showed us? It doesn't quite add up and would make his character inconsistent.

I recently found your channel and... Why the fuck aren't you more popular? High quality content that has something to say and says it effectively

This was like a playable Borges short story

I return to this video every couple weeks. This is perhaps the single most influential piece of critical writing on my thought process regarding the creation and consumption of art. It is often said that the true test of one's understanding of a mode of thought is the ability to explain it to the layperson. Thank you for taking the time to share this with all of us.

This actually helped me a lot to understand my Communications class. Even though that wasn't your intention, thank you! You've sent me on a lot of interesting thought experiments.

MY GOD, THis is the most beautiful video I've ever seen. You have to be some kind of mind god or something. I remember watching this for the first time months ago, I was drawing something, I don't remember what, and was half asleep. I was previously watching Jacksepticeye play this game and I saw this video in the suggestions so I clicked on it kinda expecting it to be some no-thought-at-all-opinionated-nonsense but BOY was I wrong! I was just listening at first taking occasional glances at my phone. But then the part about how the "tree" in someone's head is always going to be different than the teller's (your) tree so I picked up my phone and decided to actually listen to the video. I honestly fell head over heels with it and subscribed but I did what I always do and decided not to watch any of your other videos because I didn't see any other games I was into, so I eventually decided to unsubscribe and forgot about it. Then while I was watching a no commentary playthrough of it (the game) I saw this video and thought to myself "Hey, isn't this that cool video that had the tree thingy in it? Might as well watch it even though I've seen it already." And I've fallen in love all over again, It's just SO GOOD. After I'm done with this beast of a comment (Sorry, by the way.) I am going to go to your channel and watch more of your videos. Thank you and bonne chance!

This was the best possible use of my lunch break ever

Excellent video, very well put. There needs to be a distinction made between interpreting an author's possible intention with a work, and diagnosing them or imposing some hidden agenda upon them. One needs to be just a little humble and realize people are more complex than to be entirely defined by their work. A horribly depressing game could reflect a deeply depressed author sure, but could also just be inspired of a rainy day, or one event from their life that no longer affects them but left them with an evocative memory, or maybe a strange dream that simply sparked an idea which grew and evolved, or could even be inspired of several other games, movies, books which left a strong impression on the author. My interpretation of The Beginner's Guide is no doubt affected by my own experience, being a game developer myself. I feel Davey Wreden wanted to express to the player some personal issues he his having about validation and work, and how the success of the Stanley Parable might have perhaps irreversibly transformed him. Maybe he remembers caring very little about validation, awards, but now that he has had such an intense taste of it, maybe it feels like the artist he used to be has become so alien to the artist he is now, that he may as well be another person. So he made a game that shows what a relationship between his current self and someone like a (perhaps idealized) version of his past self might look like. How he looks to force meaning and art onto things to fit neatly in with the Artist role he is given, where his past self was just creating for fun. How he now seeks attention and validation, where his past self made countless games he had never even shown anyone. Maybe he can't even imagine creating something for himself alone anymore, maybe he genuinely feels like that would be a waste of time, but remembers a time when he would have not felt that way, and finds that change in himself to be troubling. Now, is that what the actual intention was? I can't be sure. I think that is all supported and alluded to in the text (one game has the player, just freed from a prison, literally speak to their past self who is still captive. The narrator also several times alludes to "having a dialogue with only yourself" and presents this as being unhealthy), but not really in any unambiguous way, and my reading of it is no doubt affected by my own past experiences. Maybe that reading, just like Wreden Narrator's reading of Coda's work in the beginner's guide, really says more about me than about the author.

I can't agree with you more. You can't use the book as the way to read the author.

"We need to go deeper"

My personal interpretation aas different at first. But the more I thought about it, the more it began to become a clear message. Since Davie used his own name and identity at the start. I couldn‘t help but assume that he‘d want us to do what he did to the Koda person. He eroded the abstract narrator to make it hard not to interpret it being about him. And to me at least what I got was that Koda‘s games are personal games Davie made probably before the stanley parabel and when making the beginner‘s guide, he probably realized that he wanted to tell a more personal story in the new game but as he did he ran into a spiral of struggle that I as an artist also deeply relate to. Davie is showing us these games a friend of his made but this friend is only expressed through the games. Koda is pretty much the games. It‘s what we get to see of that person. And Davie is telling us what it all means while by doing so he‘s also taking away our own agency to interpret it. It feels like a commentary on how ppl talk about art. And Davie reading into them this way also is something a game dev can‘t avoid by sharing games. And there‘s issues that can hurt. Having to squander a big part of a game cause it‘s too tedious or confusing. There‘s all these nuances and barriers he changes for us to progress. But it also comes off like he‘s showing us personal games he made for himself while struggling to come to terms with how vulnerable that is. And how painful it is to see ppl interpret it in ways that may not apply to your own intent. It feels like a study of learning to be yourself in your art. And showing yourself in your art. And how difficult that is. And how you want to stop cause you start having bad feelings about it and about the fact that your privacy is being invaded by yourself chosing to put it out there. It‘s the plight of making art that is personal. Painfully personal. And maybe the Beginners guide was in a way about Davie trying to make a more personal game by showing us a collection of private games he made for himself to make us learn about him while also simultaniously showing us how difficult that is for him. And I relate to that. Be it from a real place or a fictional one. I mean the game‘s just great in how it lets us see into a world with basically a tour guide who ends up at the end getting into personal beef with the art itself because of the way he explains it to us. But that‘s just my take on it. As an artist. It‘s a really imteresting game and I do love it. Even though it is so meta and confusing.

Anyone else get some background flickering around 21:45? Maybe just a weird render?

Back again, trying to think of something relevant for the comment. The reason I watched again is because I recommended this video to my mother, who was the person in my life who originally got me into writing as a way to process my emotions when I was an angry teenager. I feel she'd find this video interesting, and whenever I recommend a video to someone I go and watch it again in case they have any questions. Like to have it fresh on my brain, and I guess I also engage in imagining myself as someone new to the video. In that way I'm looking for things that might need additional explanation before the question is asked. Fascinating how many authors I know who have anxiety, and had to serve an abusive figure in their life. They spend a lot of their time imagining someone else's needs.

dude when you said "i'm the author and you're the audience" at like 12:00 my brain went off the r a i l s

this video helped me a lot to give me words for the seperation of 'author' and 'narrator'. as a content creator who grew up posting online as a kid, i unknowingly saw myself (the author) and my own narration (my content) as one and the same for the longest time, causing complications with my self identity. that distinction is something that i'd only made recently, but this video helped give me the words for it, and further understand how to deal with it.

Oh my god a whole essay on my favorite game. Subbed.

I understand the whole “who cares” thing. Technically yes he did “When we are in the same room, I feel physically ill”-R to Davey prime. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. This game truly isn’t about Coda, or R, or the Davey’s. It’s about

This is the second time I've watched this, the first time being a few months ago. I got to say, I really appreciated how in depth you were when analyzing the relationship between author and reader. Often times, I feel uncomfortable when reading a story or account of something, but I haven't before had the tools to describe precisely what part of the pipeline of the telling of the story I'm at odds with. Thank you very much :)

As a songwriter, I really appreciate that bit about how imperfect the act of conveying ideas necessarily is. This bunch of frequencies in these arrangements somehow makes me feel something? Something I can't really identify. And I write what I enjoy listening to and just hope others will latch on too, because shared general similarity among humans. I often feel like more of a chaos magician than an art scientist. I don't really figure out so much as feel. Even what can be figured out is so clumsily sitting atop a giant mound of so many shrugs that can never be unshrugged. It's pretty fun honestly. :)

Simmel's sociological works never quite clicked until I watched this. Your breakdown and your use of pictures and the examples you present make the complex metaprocess of storytelling so much more intuitive!

When Coda said "would you stop adding lampposts to my games?" I think he meant that more in a metaphorical sense, that Davey was interpreting a point to the game where there is none. Maybe Davey forced that on the people he shared the games with, and that's why Coda is saying that. Maybe the lampposts mean nothing and Coda just thought they looked cool.

imgur.com/GNcFSG9 you have these 2 weird black frames in the middle of the video? i think they're errors but that would require extrapolating my meaning of the text to your intentions, whoa

This video is just amazing. It's like, it just went into my mind and overtook and destroyed whatever other interpretations I may have had of the game. Which is a bit worrying... But then again, I watched the video with my own interpretations of what you said and what you meant to say, right? Hmm. Anyway, I feel like your interpretation is going to become very popular, and then it's gonna be that thing where it splits in two of people who agree and people who think the 2nd most plausible explanation is true and whatever, nevermind me.

This video honestly perfectly describes the issues I have with writing. No matter how well I may write something, there will always be someone who will completely miss the point.

Using clips from Exit Through the Giftshop and Synecdoche New York immediately tells me that you know exactly what you're talking about with this game. I'm only 10 minutes in but I already know that you "get it" in a way that many other videos about this subject matter don't.

isnt coda a music term for repeat? real davey made a game from his old prototypes/experiments?

I made this comment 7 Years ago. I was 14, and I didn’t quite understand the beginners guide.

I've always seen Death of the Author as prime reading material for any critic. You do have to understand its context; authorial theory was the primary medium of criticism in those days, and Barthes just wanted to destroy that line of thinking. But the important message is, you, the reader, are powerful. You do not have to read something the way the author wanted you to. You do not have to interpret the author's intentions. The text has no author anymore, it is the text, and any context is simply your own construction. Anything you read in it is true. If you find something that changes your mind, then you weren't wrong, you just constructed a new truth. That too was my take-away from Beginner's Guide. Whether Coda exists or not is meaningless. Because he, literally and figuratively, didn't make these games. Davey the Narrator made them by presenting them to us, and then forced an interpretation onto us. He's an unreliable author.

i think im too dumb to watch this

Ian: "All the information you're going to get is in the book or, rarely, in supplemental materials." J.K. Rowling: "lmao"

Ugh thank you. I remember the first day I played this game and the feeling I got when the game was over. I was shook. It affected me physically for 2 days. Still one of my favorite games ever made

I know this is an old video, but it was a wonderful essay on the nature of the artist and their audience. I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

This guy has a Ph.D. in mindfuck.

coming back to this video every so often because i just love it so much

I know that this comment will be lost in time on this video, but Davey and him have very similar voices. Thought that Davey was talking about his game at first

One of my greatest achievements in gaming will always be finding my way through that damn labyrinth before I got teleported to the end in my first ever playthrough.

So, apparently David Chase totally WOULD do that.

Heavy Meta is my favourite genre of music

Great video as always, but I can't help but feel you missed a key aspect of storytelling: visual storytelling. To use your analogy of the tree in your yard, if we're talking about a text format, you'd absolutely be correct. But since this is a video, you showing that stock photo of a tree is what I, and possibly other viewers, think that tree looked like, ignoring or otherwise not taking into account your description. Davey the Narrator isn't analyzing or interpreting text, he's interpreting visuals, as well as gameplay mechanics. That's something that transcends language in a lot of ways, but brings its own limitations. I'd be very interested to hear how someone who doesn't play video games felt about this game, if they understood it, at least some of the more jargon and video game specific moments and ideas.

I've been wanting to make video essays, and stuff like this is why. It presents all this complex stuff rooted in postmodern and linguistic theory, etc, but in a way that makes it accessible that Foucault and Barthes never really did (at least translated into English). I've been reading more into philosophy, especially as it relates to art criticism and historiography, especially because that's what I'm studying in college rn. I definitely want to work on writing insightful and accessible introductions to complex topics, while trusting that the audience can digest, and further interpret and think about these ideas. You do that wonderfully in this video.

You need to be far more popular than you are. I adore your work. I've come back to this episode time and time again. I've shown this episode to dozens of people. You. Are. Amazing. I hope you continue to release episodes of your critical analyses. :)

You wanna know what's really sad? I had to look up a video (and stumbled upon this one) right after playing the game to get a better informed interpertation of what I just experienced, rather than letting it sink in for a while and create the interpertation myself. I guess that shows how insecure I am when it comes to creating my own interpertations cuz I unconsciously know mine won't be as good or deep as someone else's. Funny how imposter sydrome gets passed around us unintentionally or unknowingly. That said, this video did introduce me to the idea of how a narrative is constructed and conveyed through storytelling and author(s) that wrote it. I never really got that deep into thinking critically on this subject so it was refreshing to gain this knowledge and seeing things from this new perspective. I guess in a funny way, this video both helped and hurt me.

It's amazing that RU-vid still hasn't learned that I want to see this channel's videos. I've watched the Phil Fish and Melee videos at least 5 times each, yet I still have to actively check your channel to see if you've posted new videos; which inevitably causes me to be months late to each one.

I had a friend where our friendship was basically The Beginner's Guide, plot beat from plot beat, emotion to emotion. You can imagine my reaction when I related with Davey, even during the final level's reveal. The Beginner's Guide is the only game I've ever cried to after watching multiple times, and it's the only game I'd recommend everyone play at some point. It's not even a game, it's just experiencing life.

Ian, your insight never ceases to enlighten me and enrich me. Haven't finished but it's already terrific and passionate. So weird- I made a really similar post about this game just two days ago!

20:54 - 21:28 sorry but i can't help but mention how too many people do not reach or even try to consider this final part of the process. heck, too many people don't even know it could be done and when it _should_ be done. they only register that communication especially in media will never be perfect, but they don't go further to process how there are roles in the interaction and how the quality of understanding _also_ depends on how well they're fulfilled. idk if i explained that properly, but i've always thought there was something missing in how some others engage in media and this finally made it click

this is my knowledge and thought drug. kimme moar

"The Beginners Guide" is just roasting everybody who says what games mean, what it is trying to tell you.. Wait, I just talked about what the game means and roasted myself.

I understand Coda, as someone who makes a bunch of personal ARGs and puzzles just to try and understand my own emotions better, I wouldn’t know how to feel about someone showing those to people.

2:35 i dont believe koda stopped making games, he kept making games and stopped showing them to davey, but since davey didnt want to face the truth he believed that koda just stopped entirely

Aaaand subscribed! Thank YOU Extra Credits!

Sometimes the algorithm blesses you with these beautiful videos.

While really eye-opening, because I haven't heard the idea of these "private languages" the part one felt almost cruel. You made me feel genuine connection, through internet, two years after you did your part of it, explaining how inperfect that said connection is and always will be. And I can never explain how that experience was for me, precisely for the reason you said to make me feeling that way.

I had mixed feelings about The Beginner's Guide when I discovered it. At first I hated it because I conflated Davey Narrator with Davey Prime and wondered why someone would make such a cruel game, but I soon after realized that they were different. The main message that I've gotten from it is not to assume you know what is going on in someone's head. Just because you react to a situation or express an emotion in a certain way doesn't mean that someone else with a similar "symptom" (i.e. building prisons in games) is going through the same thing. I'm not trying to say I'm right and you're wrong, in fact I agree with the interpretation expressed in this video while also having my own. I think half the fun of interpretation is bouncing your own off of that of others', which is why these kinds of videos and conversations exist. Thank you for making this video that not only adds to my interpretation of the game, but two years later gives me a void to tell my own experience to.

I think it's kinda profound that Davey keep referring to Coda as he while oftentimes the "narrator" in Coda's games is she. Sure you can read this however, maybe it's that Davey genuinely missed a big part of who his friend was and they're actually putting themself into the game etc etc. But in the context of this video, it's just that the narrator is not the same as the author. Coda in real life is different than the Coda expressed in their games, we don't see the real Coda, we only see what's expressed in their games but Davey takes all that and applies it to the real Coda. He's so deep he doesn't even seem to see the changed gender as something strange when it comes to his theories hes passing as proof, but I think as a player that's what put the first seeds of doubt into my mind. We don't know Coda. We know our interpretation of the character Coda created. Davey thinks that character is Coda himself. It's not.

I don’t know why, but I keep coming back to this video.

I think David Prime as you labeled him is really just trolling us all by cleverly crafting a narratives that almost begs a deeper look while simultaneously making fun of the fact that people assume art and different types of media always have a deeper meaning. The game is about how we might feel smart and deep and somehow noble by looking beyond the face value of a work but the reality is most of the time we are just over analyze insignificant details and projecting our own psychological baggage to fabricate some profound message that isn't there. Also pointing out that finding dark themes like mental illness in these analyses make us feel compassionate and progressive and let us brag about that but it's usually more about our ego than actually helping those in need. I think the game itself it really is a troll, sucking you in with an emotional story we can all identify with only to smack us in the face with the realization that it's all meaning less. we've been fooled into becoming more emotional invested then the game really deserves, like he is telling us to stop taking everything so seriously and just enjoy it for what it is. It's a catch-22 because you can't analyze the game at all without exhibiting the exact behavior it is critiquing and basically proving his point. Even right now the very fact I felt a strong need to post a comment interpreting what the game means to me is exactly what he's talking about.

*slow claps" That was very well put together. Normally a lot of videos that go into the details about communication and the philosophy of ideas tend to lose me in their complexity, but your arguments came through very clearly and gave me something to think about on top of my own thoughts about The Beginner's Guide. Great job.

Jesus Christ your explanation of language is amazing holy crap. I’m just going to ponder language forever now. Thank you for making this it blew my mind and I’m not even done with the video yet

Hey Innuendo. Does this mean you'll be uploading more frequently again? I love your videos.

So, I watched your alt right playbook a while ago and really liked it. Then years later I played (more like "experienced") The Beginners Guide. I then searched for an analysis to see what others thought and you pop up again! Glad to see you've also experienced this and I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about it.

I can't explain how much I love the fact that this video made such an impact on me while being about a game that was about the interpretation of someone who did not create a game about said game, and also that I am now doing the exact same thing by leaving a comment. ...ABOUT A PERSON TALKING ABOUT A PERSON WHO *implodes*

Back again after reccomending to a writer friend after we spent an hour discussing how being a creative person has changed in the last couple decades. It was a fun discussion and they seemed enthusastic about the reccomend. See ya next year for my annual rewatch :3

I just found this video, and that thing about providing blueprints through language for people to build things within their own mind, was legit the topic of my final paper for one of my English classes at my City College. I essentially called that the fundamental nature of all teaching, all language, all literature, all storytelling. Right up to the whole 'there's a separate thing that exists in reality that transmits the blueprint to people, that exists wether the author planned it's content or not.'

That tree part was weird coming from the perspective of knowing dendrology

I love this video and now I'm really sad I wasn't really in a place to appreciate The Beginners Guide when it first came out but I'm gonna go play it now, and try to keep up with more meta games in general.

I've a simpler theory. The author wanted to tell his audience to stop trying to find a definitive, ''correct'' intepretation of his work. This is what Davey does by forcing his interpretation onto Coda's work and then fails miserably at it by the end, that's the central theme of Beginners guide after all. Coincidentally, this is exactly what a lot of people tried to do with Davey's previous game, The Stanley's parable. A lot of his audience argued over one definitive, ''objective'' interpretation of his game (so much so that Davey had a depressing episode in connection to this argument, he even wrote a blog about it), instead of accepting that the only definitivne meaning art has is the one you find for yourself. And the author hammers in this message with the powerful the ending scene of the Beginners guide - it's meaning is entirely up to you.

Oh god, I’m very early on in this video but… Charlotte Bronte, after losing her three remaining siblings (Branwell, Emily and Anne) one after the other, published a book of Emily and Anne’s poetry. But she edited their poems - sometimes these edits were grammatical, sometimes they protected her sisters privacy, but sometimes they actively made the poems worse or seemed to come from a misunderstanding of the intent of the poem. There’s a real sense of “I know best” in her editing, similar to how you describe Davey’s perspective in the beginning. I find this heartbreaking… Oh, Charlotte… you lost so much. (From Juliet Barker’s The Brontes)

In case anyone is wondering what the little guitar snippets between segments are from, in order, they're the tracks Andrei, Iambic 9 Poetry, Every Day I Love, I Fulcrum. All from Squarepusher's album, Ultravisitor.

I realize that the message you are communicating because of and illustrated by The Beginner's Guide isn't actually simple, but it felt that way watching your video. That was a clear, vivid, informative, and entertaining presentation. I think I now have a better framework with which to consider the relationships between what happens in the author's head while creating a work, the work itself, what happens in _my_ head reading it, and what happens in any other person's head when they read it.

Fuck man, I just wanted to know what happened to koda and Dave after all these years and I got hit by a philosophycal truck, I really wasnt expencting that much of meta and meaning

Now I'm really curious who the former 13th most pretentious person on RU-vid was XD P.S. The long wait was a little scary but this video makes it multitudes beyond utterly worth it. Every time I see one of your videos I think "Okay, there's no way he's going to be able to make an even more meaningful and profound point next time," and I'm always proven wrong.

Because I too am painfully pretentious, I saw The Beginners Guide as Davey Prime interpreting "Pale Fire" by Vladimir Nabokov as a video game. Both works share themes of an absent creator and a narrator who inserts themselves between the work and the audience, and the narrator proves to be the reason (explicitly or implied) that the creator is absent. Pale Fire has a clearer fourth wall - the book is fiction, the narrator isn’t Nabokov - but I think if we step well outside the meta, then The Beginner's Guide has one as well. It's just constructed of copyright law. I make the comparison not to accuse Davey of plagiarism or being unoriginal, btw. Pale Fire is one of the greatest novels ever written, and that The Beginner's Guide so successfully translates it to a completely different medium is a prime example of video games as art.

“If this mean this, and this means this, so this _might_ mean this?” Sounds like algebra