Recommending games -- especially video games -- to the audience I know I have is difficult. It’s something akin to trying to cross a language barrier between two romance languages. They sound so similar, and some of the words are recognizable, but without truly immersing both sides of the conversation in a single vocabulary, it just doesn’t work. To illustrate this, one apocryphal story I read once was someone was turning in a game-design doc and the reviewer asked, “Why do you have the player use the WASD keys to move? What’s wrong with the arrow keys?”
So, of course, the second time I write about something I like, it’s going to be a video game that uses WASD keys to move.
The Beginner’s Guide (2015) by Davey Wreden is an interesting beast. It falls under the game category of “Interactive Narrative Experiences” or “Walking Simulators,” where there isn’t really any danger to the player character and instead focuses on the story the game is trying to tell. The first notable walking simulator was thechineseroom’s Dear Esther (2008), a Half Life 2 mod that told the story of an anguished man exploring an island of his own creation while narrating his experiences to the titular Esther. Dear Esther actually caused controversy when it first came out. Critics said that, because the player didn’t interact with anything, Dear Esther couldn’t be described as a “game” at all, and was more like a “movie you walk through.” That’s why last week I teased “a game that could be a movie.”
But there’s more to it than that, these days. Walking simulators are largely defined by this sense of exploration. Campo Santo’s Firewatch (2016) has players exploring a national park, Fullbright’s Gone Home (2013) explores a family home, and Wreden’s other work with William Pugh, The Stanley Parable (2011), explores a gamespace and the nature of choice, something William Pugh would further explore in his absurdly titled game: Dr. Langeslov, The Tiger, and the Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (2015).
So what does The Beginner’s Guide explore? Well, it explores a relationship. In this game, Davey Wreden narrates his way through some of his friend’s video games, telling stories along the way detailing how these two people interacted before the latter stopped making games in 2011 (that’s not a spoiler, it’s literally in the first bits of narration in the game).
Why do I like it? That’s a trickier question. Answering goes into a small amount of spoilers, so if you’d rather go in completely blind, it’s $10 and about an hour and a half long. You can find it here.
Ready? Okay.
So the big message of the game -- at least as far as anyone can agree about -- is that it’s dangerous to insert your own interpretation into someone else’s work. It defies the concept of Death of the Author, instead almost deifying the creator, making only their viewing of a thing canon and nothing else. The problem then arises that the game very much invites its players to form their own interpretation of events. Again, Davey Wreden narrates this game, and Davey is a real person, which means that, throughout the game, the player is invited to form their own interpretation of Davey.
But if the player was just forming an image of a person, that wouldn’t be a very good story. It would be all buildup and no payoff. So expectations have to be subverted. People’s version of other people change drastically. But again, we know Davey is a real person. He gives the player his email address at the beginning of the game. And it’s this disconnect that I think makes the game clever. It’s the way that the game builds trust with someone speaking with authority that maybe they don’t have. On the first playthrough, it’s a surprise. But on each subsequent playthrough, the cracks begin to show. The game advertises itself as “the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand.” What it does not say is whether that person is Davey, his friend, or you.
Again, I previewed The Beginner’s Guide as “a game that could be a movie,” and that is true. Most of the elements translate over well to film, in my opinion, even more than other games in its genre (The Stanley Parable, for instance, is so tethered to video games that even the attempt to switch mediums would be a pretentious mess). But I also said “(but shouldn’t be?)”, because while it would work, it also would mean pushing away the viewer. The narrative works in part because the player is interacting with it. It puts you on a rug, and then pulls it away.
-F
Next time on Raindrops on Roses: A children’s book for adults.
Nice. Enjoyed!
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