The Stanley Parable's Thematic Sequel

so there's this small incredibly under recognized game that's almost made me delete my youtube channel two times now it's called the beginner's guide like the stanley parable the beginner's guide is an incredibly meta game and for that reason we're going to have to look beyond the game itself too well i think it's best to specify now that i don't know anything about its creator davey reeden all i've said and all i will say about the man is nothing but me projecting my personality onto him a lot of newcomers to my channel might not have seen this side of my content yet but what this channel is really all about is poetic analyses of games that is to say analyzing games in the same way that your english teacher wanted you to analyze poems i want to get to the root of what these games are really all about and as a result of that my channel includes a whole lot of kojima was trying to get across the idea that yada yada this is exactly the thing that ruins somebody's drive to create anyone that exists in the public eye as prominently as someone like hideo kojima or david lynch or indeed davy readen will almost definitely have a part of them that tells them not to risk being too creative a fear of showing more sides of yourself to the public eye even as someone as not famous as me my recent subscriber boom puts some of that same fear into me and really messed with my creative process for a few days well for every stanley parable there are going to be a whole lot of leeches and this is where i come in one way or the other the stanley parable was davy readen putting a piece of himself out into the public eye although to what degree i can't say people like me then made videos about the game calling davey reed and frustrated with the audience's role in the creative process for a man who we all know so little about what a horrible first impression of video like that must be for him say that my video on the stanley parable took off and got a million views suddenly a huge chunk of the game's player base stops seeing the game as a fun expression of the irony inherent to interactive art and start seeing it as some sort of cry for help so before we move on let me put this in huge letters across the screen like all of my poetic analyses this video is about what the beginner's guide means to me not what it means to davey reiden so where were we right like the stanley parable the beginner's guide is an incredibly meta game and for that reason we're going to have to look beyond the game itself to see what sort of conditions it was made under no that isn't right either we're still trying to look at the artist rather than the art but it's meta how can i not look beyond the game files themselves that's literally the definition of look let's just try to decrease the scope of this video a little bit the beginner's guide to me is all about one simple powerful metaphor in my interpretation of this metaphor we have davey reeden playing the role of a person like me someone who lives off the thrill of explaining other people's art even if it was never meant to be explained in such detail he narrates us through his thoughts on the work of a fictional game creator named coda from his first counter-strike map to his very last game this game very much plays out like a lead head video if i were to make a video on all of koda's games it would look and sound a lot like the beginner's guide we start out with this hopeful nostalgic look at the abstractations in coda's first counter-strike map davey remarks on how these nonsensical floating crates break the illusion that this is a real place but that they also give it a personal touch reminding you that the map was made by a person a simple analysis of a simple level but in this analysis he gives us there's one line that makes my skin crawl after having already seen where this game was going a year ago i mean not that they're all fascinating as games but that they are all going to give us access to their creator i want us to see past the games themselves i want to get to know who this human being really is and that's exactly what we're going to do here davey says that he wants to go beyond the game and use the game to learn about its creator this is where an analysis like mine becomes actively malicious unfortunately however it's a line that i have to dance on just about every time i make a video on a specific game no matter how many times i try to bring across the point that this is just my interpretation even if you completely disagree with my video the next time you play bioshock you're gonna see a little bit of my analysis in it and it's inevitably going to warp your perception of the game at least a little bit and if you're really swayed by that video then bioshock becomes a game that's coming from my perspective as much as it is it's creators hearing an analysis like this irrevocably changes the game a little bit and as someone who's very much into archival this can be so harmful if that isn't bad enough for you let's take a look at a possible outcome for a game's creator after me making a video like this for this we'll look at a game that i'm working on on and off silversmoke i don't want to ruin the game for you in case it ever releases so let's just say that it's a horror game about a horror that's very personal to me and that a lot of people can relate to this horror doesn't control my whole life i only think about it like once a day tops but in those brief moments that i am thinking about it it's a very real horror if you didn't have access to the catalog of my thoughts that is this channel and you only played silver smoke you might interpret from it that i'm an incredibly troubled person and that this small momentary horror of mine has put me into a horribly depressive state after all all that you would have seen from me up to this point is something horrible and depressive well maybe i just like to talk about dark things so that i can focus the rest of my mental processing on optimistic thoughts having only played my game you wouldn't have any way of knowing that all you would have seen is the small subtle dark side isolated and amplified to fill out an entire game after all you wouldn't say that the creators of silent hill 2 are depressed just because they made a depressing game well this is very much the trap that davy readen falls into in the beginner's guide he's trying to analyze the creator using his art as a medium rather than just trying to analyze the art for what it is i need to emphasize once more that davey reiden is simply playing a self-titled character in this game when you hear me say davey reeden i'm referring to the in-game character not the real life man himself so as he says while talking about this first map of codas he wants to learn more about coda by looking at his games well next up we move on to coda's second game whisper this chapter of the beginner's guide seems more focused on establishing a bit more of davey's character in all of this he says all sorts of lines that sound like something i would say and i think that we should talk about his games for what they are rather than for what they're not we get the first occurrence of the three dots and the first prison this maze this is the first thing that hints at least to davey that these games are somehow connected after all that we get this idea of sacrificing ourselves to save others which will play a major role in later games but i won't be analyzing coda's games much here the focus is on the beginner's guide as a whole davey actually fixed up this game he added in a proper ending where the player dies when they walk into the beam then he speculates a bit about why coda didn't fix the ending as it originally appeared this during this scene devi says with no hint of speculation what koda was thinking when he made this he says that this ending's immersion breakage is the human element that coda likes to put in his game so much harking back to the previous level where he said the same thing about the floating crates in that level it sounds like it's just davey's perspective on this idea but in this level davey frames it as if he knows exactly what's going on in coda's head he says with no confirmation from coda that this idea of breaking the fourth wall and getting across thematic ideas through this experimental abstract game design is what led him to create his next set of projects to be honest this seems like a safe assumption to me after all if coda didn't see any appeal in this glitch and whisper he would have fixed it so far though this is more or less fine we're not speculating on koda's character much at all more so on his tastes however this does further emphasize a bit of what we heard in the last level davey is more interested in analyzing the creator than he is the game which is going to turn out to be his downfall by the end of this story as for a youtuber like me who really does try to separate the art from the artist it's impossible for me to say that i can look at a work of art decide what it means to me and not project that viewpoint onto the creators a great example of this is my video on the stereofidelic's discography where i basically attempt to analyze the duets relationship problems by analyzing their music under the thin guys that i'm really talking about two characters that the duet made up history repeats itself i guess anyways so far so harmless but pretty soon we're going to get a look at how this type of analysis can be incredibly harmful to a person's creative energy and much more in the meantime however we get to see the first in a series of much more blatantly artistic games by coda starting with backwards this is just a simple little game with a simple little message as davey says it works because it gets in and out so quickly so boom now we know that this koda guy is one of those artistic game creators who doesn't care at all if his game has any mainstream appeal or challenge or fun fact or anything so long as it says something i can get with that and so can davey by the look of things however this now means that davey needs to start interpreting these games more he now sees coda's games as something that have a real message about coda well let's move forward to our next game entering it's basically just a joke game you walk through the woods and you see a sign that says you are now entering and that's it the most you could interpret from this is that it's coda entering this phase of making more artistic games like backwards then we get another game nonsense in nearly every direction this is like most of coda's games something that could be thrown together in a matter of hours it's a creator spending a fraction of his time to express some stressful part of the creative process it's no different than during my mgs4 video when i added footage of myself editing the video to the button mashing sequence as little easter egg referencing how tedious video editing can be this is just a tiny fraction of coda's creative energy but davey is treating it like it's a reason to be worried about coda well as ready set fish tells us this idea of feeling separated from his creative energy is something that kota liked to work with seemingly he just felt like it would be something that he could relate to he could go and make great games all day but when he's lying in bed he might still be worried that he isn't being as creative as he could be that's a perfectly normal part of the creative process i feel that when i go to bed as i'm sure basically every creator does nothing to be concerned about just a simple expression of part of the creative process that isn't discussed very much that's all but davey doesn't see it that way he wants to look further into this than was intended and figure out something about coda that really isn't there to learn i'm beginning to feel like a broken record so let's summarize a bit over these next couple of games koda just continues with this idea that it's more important that his games be relatable to him than anyone else we even hear about coda and davey getting into arguments over whether or not a game needs to be playable to be worth making davey thinks they do need to be playable but koda disagrees simply because he's making these games for himself he can play something like notes and know that he isn't depressed for making this he's just dealing with the low points of his creative process well davey doesn't see it that way he sees it as coda actually being depressed and there's a very real reason for him gravitating to that mode of thinking it's a reason that's impacted almost every video i've ever made i'll just let him explain it i just felt so strongly that if i could have connected with him but if i could have somehow made his work my own that i would finally be once and for all happy it was that i needed to see myself in someone else i needed to be someone other than me but he stopped and left and it felt somehow like i had failed davey's character is jealous of coda's artistic integrity he's trying to understand these games just so that he can feel an ounce as creative as koda was this is incredibly relatable to someone like me who's made a passion out of doing exactly what davey's character is doing as he narrates this game but it gets darker it gets more relatable and it gets more troubling i'm the reason that you stopped making games aren't i it's because of what i did i poisoned it for you i don't think i ever told you this but when i took your work and i was showing it to people it actually felt it felt as though i were responsible for something important and valuable and the people who played them they treated me like i was important they really listened and cared about what i had to say even though i was showing your work it was i felt good about myself finally for a moment while i had that i liked myself yep that's the long and short of it when i make a video explaining what i think firewatch is all about all i'm really doing at least from this perspective is packaging up someone else's work as my own you guys tell me that i'm right on the money with my analysis of the game and boom i get dopamine then next time i play through the game i'm half thinking about the game itself and i'm half thinking about my video on the game suddenly through some crazy mental gymnastics i've managed to practically put myself on the developer team for the game all in my own head it gradually begins to feel like i was a part of the creative process for this game i liked so much and as imaginary as that is it's such a good feeling but you also have to imagine how that must make the creators a firewatch feel knowing that even if it wasn't my intention i'm essentially trying to steal some of the credit for their accomplishment and give it to myself sure some people might say that my videos make people appreciate a game more but others might say i'm just a leech personally i disagree with that viewpoint and i'm almost certain that it isn't a self-defense mechanism on a fundamental philosophical level i don't think that someone is a leech for doing what i do but it's a viewpoint that's well worth considering nonetheless and all the precautions i've taken while writing this essay are a result of that consideration as i've tried to ever since i first played the beginner's guide i'm going to continue taking extreme care not to say kojima was trying to get across the fact that yada yada yada and make sure to instead say kojima's message to me says that yada yada yada because whether this game agrees with this viewpoint or not i really don't know i'm always going to be of the belief that art is special purely because it's so delicate any random guy like me can get their muddy footprints all over a piece of art by making a video like this that delicacy however is what makes art special sure i might break a piece of art with a video like this but art exists to be broken every work of art and even art as a whole is to me ultimately about the individual viewer it's about the inherent subjectivity of the human experience i might see the beginner's guide as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls that someone like me has to avoid but at the same time it might also be davy reiden learning to accept that someone like me is an inevitable part of the art world maybe he's learning to accept this cycle of people taking his art and making it their own after all he's the one narrating the game playing the role of the people that i think this game is being so critical of so with that in mind maybe he's simply saying yeah you know what as soon as it goes public my art isn't really my art anymore maybe me releasing my artist just me kicking out of the nest to go and become its own thing again though we can't possibly know what was going on in the head of davy reedon when he made this and ultimately i don't think we should even try to know at least not from an analytical standpoint the reason that the story to this game ultimately ends up being so tragic is simply because davey's character obsesses over coda instead of over coda's games the character seemingly decided that art isn't about the viewer and is instead about the artist because of this he feels incredibly inadequate when he first encounters the tower coda's final game he isn't trying to analyze coda's games he's just trying to analyze coda if he were to just play through koda's games and discuss what they mean to him he wouldn't be having this issue here his analysis would be 100 correct at least to him after all he knows himself better than anybody but since he's trying to talk about what they mean to coda he'll never have a perfect 100 correct analysis he'll feel inadequate forever he'll feel like a failure until he moves on past this viewpoint even as i'm 9 pages in i'm still trying to figure out what exactly this essay is is it just me rambling on about a bunch of negative thoughts that this game gave me or is there a real lesson here something i can take away from this game and use to my advantage to not fall into the same trap that our narrator fell into i think that there is creating an analysis on someone else's work of art is an inherently messy thing you just can't do it cleanly instead you have to make someone else's art your own through your analysis of it you have to lean into this role that some people would call parasitic you have to firmly adopt the philosophy that once you put out a piece of art it's no longer yours bioshock doesn't belong to ken levine and irrational games anymore it belongs individually and perfectly equal measure to the millions of people who've played it every player got their own personal version of bioshock that was in some abstract way made to them i got my own experience with bioshock that i reflected my own personal views and beliefs off of just as you did and the next player did you really need to adopt this philosophy to stay sane doing what i do if you try to analyze ken levine's version of bioshock you'll never get it right and you'll know that your analysis isn't 100 correct you'll go crazy you need to genuinely believe that the art you observe becomes your own through the simple act of observing it that a work of art genuinely does stop being about the creator as soon as you get your hands on it so while i still haven't written an analysis of the beginner's guide by davey reiden i hope that you've enjoyed my analysis of lead heads the beginner's guide [Music] you said let me prove that i'm brave let me keep going but the cave goes for miles and miles and miles and you are so tired but i know that you're strong

Channel: Leadhead

Views: 219,753

Rating: 4.9478559 out of 5

Keywords: the, stanley, parable, beginners, guide, ultra, deluxe, dlc, console, port, analysis, deiscussion, ending, explained, postmodern, sad, depressing, meta, metanarrative, story, reveal, essay, poetic, video, explaination, secret, meaning, crows, crows crows crows, narrator, walking, sim, simulator, discussion, happy, death, of, author, an

Id: bKy9F56lTQ0

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020