An Emotional Game - The Beginners Guide by @youloseagain on 3Speak
▶️ Watch on 3Speak --- Welcome to The Beginner's Guide This didn't feel like a game to me. It was an experience of mixed emotions. Throughout this video there is very little talking by myself. It i...
Tags: #hivegaming #gaming #bbh #pimp #alive #cent #pizza
Good evening everyone, welcome to You Lose Again Gaming. Today we're playing the beginner's guide. I've recorded this opening after I played the game, so there is no need for an introduction to the game, the author or developer, creator, speak, talk to you through at the beginning. To me, it's not so much of a game. If you've ever suffered with mental health issues or anything like that, you may find yourself in this game having to pause and take a minute to collect yourself. This video doesn't have a lot of speech or me talking. It's mainly just a creator that talks. I try not to really say too much because I didn't want it to take away from experience. Also, this game really, really affects me a lot. It was a very strange experience. In my eyes, it's not, I've not found it so much to be a game as a, I don't know, something different, an experience, I suppose, that kind of touches on things that I've felt throughout my life and that sort of thing. If, once you've watched this video, you do feel, I don't know, any problems of comfort, or you relate to this. please feel free to message me, I will have to talk to anyone, but there are parts of this where I was pretty much speech at the end of the video, usually I do an outro, and there isn't one, I'm not to lie to you, there's about seven seconds wrong, and I've no idea what to say, so I hope you enjoy watching this, but at the same time take something from it, and that's it, I'm going to play the video now, Hopefully, you can get something from it or, I don't know, just try it out. It is, it can hit you hard, though, so just take it easy if you need, it is best to probably watch it all in one go, and I think if you watch it in stages, you'll probably lose the impact, but the impact is quite harsh, so take it easier on and just go from there. But I say this has got me good this. But I hope you enjoy it and feel free to let me know what you think. Hi there, thank you very much for playing The Beginners Guide. My name is Davy Reiden, I wrote The Stanley Parable, and while that game tells a pretty absurd story, today I'm going to tell you about a series of events that happened between 2008 and 2011. We're going to look at the games made by a friend of mine named Koda. Now, these games mean a lot to me. I met Coda in early 2009 at a time when I was really struggling with some personal stuff, and his work pointed me in a very powerful direction. I found it to be a good reference point for the kinds of creative works that I wanted to make. So just to start you off, this is, I think, the first game he ever made. It's a level for Counterstrike. You can walk around here, by the way. And, uh, mostly it's just... Koda learning the basics of building a 3D environment. But what I like is that even though he starts from the simple aesthetic of a desert town, he then scatters these colorful abstract blobs and impossible floating crates around the level. And of course, it destroys the illusion that this actually is a desert town, and instead this level becomes a kind of calling card from its creator. It's like a reminder that this video game was constructed by a real person. And it kind of makes you wonder. What was going through his head as he was building this? This is what I like about all of Coda's games. 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. So, it's 2008, Coda starts making these games, and he never releases any of them. He doesn't put them onto the internet, he just makes them, and then immediately abandons them, and they sit on his computer forever. And I think he really understood this image of himself as a recluse. At one point, he jokingly renamed his computer's recycling bin to important games folder. So, you know, this was just how he worked. He tended to crank them out one after the other, without even really pausing to try to understand what he had just made, until suddenly one day, he just stopped. In 2011, that was it. He made his last game, and then he hasn't made another one since. And that's why I've taken this opportunity to gather all of his work together, is because I find his games powerful and interesting, and I'd like this collection to reach him, to maybe encourage him to start creating again. And if the people like you who play this also happen to find his work interesting, then I'm sure it'll just send that much stronger of a message of encouragement to Coda. So thanks for joining me on this. If you have a particular interpretation that I haven't mentioned here, or if you just need to get in touch, you can email me at D-A-V-E-E-Y-W -R-E-D-E-N at Gmail.com. Okay, that's about it for introduction. Let's take a look at Coda's first proper game. As each game is loading, I'll show you the date that it was completed. This first one was made in November 2008. 1. WISPER machine has to be shift destruction. This game is called Escape from Whisper, and it's one of the more generic games you'll see from Coda. Okay, so you can shoot. I can't hear any sound. Let's carry on. Oh, here we go. It kind of looks like this game was abandoned mid-development. For instance, you have this gun, which you'd think would indicate that there are supposed to be monsters or enemies somewhere, but then clearly there are no enemies anywhere. You can't even reload the gun when you run out of bullets. But ultimately, we don't really know. Maybe Coda thought that actually it was complete the way that it is. And I think that we should talk about his games for what they are, rather than for what they're not. Enemy Force Visualized, beginning to the definition. I love how you can see the bottom of the universe from this room. Apparently, the Space Station has a labyrinth on it. I... Sure, I don't know. There's really no reason for it that I've ever been able to discern, so in the interest of time, I'm just going to skip you on past it. Oh, I want to play in here. Or, if you'd really like to solve the labyrinth, you're welcome to do that, too. No, it's not bother. Okay, this is the part that's interesting. The game has this narrative about the whisper machine, and how it has to be turned off, and then you get to the engine room. save us all that beam is powering the whisper machine we could disrupt it by introducing a great enough heat signature if you your body could stop the bean it's so much to ask but for all of our lives would you do it could you give yourself okay so why aren't they giving yourself? I've just a bearded it man what's going on Hereby do die, here we go. Let me pause here for a second. What you just experience, stepping into the beam and then dying, is probably what Coda had initially intended when he was developing this level. But when he first compiles and plays it, something goes wrong. There's a bug somewhere, and this is what happens instead. Okay, so we just go again, yeah. Off we go, people. Oh, what the? Okay, pretty stars. Oh, so we could have actually done the labyrinth. The beam causes you to start floating. And this is an important moment for him. Because, yes, this is technically a glitch, but Koda identifies something human about it, like how small it makes you feel in the face of this larger chaotic system. Or this floating could be the afterlife, a peaceful place, juxtaposed against all of the hysteria that you've just had to traverse. I don't even know. I have no idea what he was thinking, but what's clear is that after making this, something lodges itself in his brain. He wants to do more of these really weird and experimental designs. So he stops work on this and moves on to a stream of tiny little games that go in all sorts of directions. Let's go ahead and take a look at the first game he made after leaving this one behind. Yep, in this game you can only walk backwards. Novel idea, I guess. So it's a short and relatively minimalist experiment combining motion and narrative. It is less advanced than the previous game, but actually it seems to be more focused, more complete. Code is trying to give it a unique voice rather than simply basing it on a pre-existing trope. Up stairs we go. I have no idea. It's a short little thought, it says what it wants to say, and then it ends. Didn't need anything more than that. Which to me is why it works, because it gets out quick. Okay, next one. Okay, so we can walk forward on this one. Now entering what? Okay, you can't go on the grass. Nope, don't see anything on the back inside. And that's it! Okay, the meaning of this game won't be cleared just yet. Please be patient with me for a few more games, and I promise you'll see what makes it interesting. Oftentimes, Koda would put bizarre titles like this one at the start of his games. I wish I'd known him at the time that he was making these early games. He would really only talk to me about his work as he was making it. Once he stopped work on a game, like, that was it, it was dead to him. And I don't agree with that at all, but what are you going to do? Okay, up the big stairs. Okay, we're slowing down. What's going on? Not a backwards one. Once you've been slowed to an absolute crawl, the door at the top of the stairs opens. So why, if Koda's not showing these games to anyone, why bother opening the door at all? Well, to show you, I'm modifying the game here, so that when you press enter, it'll bring you back up to full speed so you can enter the door for yourself. And go! Ooh, speed tag. Okay. A room that's warm, and nice, and filled with little ideas for games. You run a shop inside, that is brilliant that one. Koda would often tell me that he didn't mind if people thought of him as cold or distant. He said that he knew that he was actually a vibrant and compassionate person, but that it takes time to really see that. It can be a very slow climb to get there. That's quite a good one as well. Oh, I didn't catch all, though. Well, this is new for Coda, it's an actual puzzle. Go ahead and see if you can solve it. Um, alright, well, close it from here. Nope. That sneaky, that, I like it. Don't forget that solution, because we're going to see this puzzle again soon. We're going to see it a lot. So that seems to be it, right? You walk down a corridor, you solve a puzzle, you get to the end. Simple enough. Now I'm going to modify the game again, so that when you press enter, it'll remove all of the walls from this room. Wow. How about that? There was more to it than we had any way of knowing. I actually find it funny that this game comes after the stairs game, since they essentially convey the opposite idea. So, uh, in the stairs game, A dull exterior concealed or rich interior, and then, in this level, a dull interior hides this fantastic outer world. Either way, I think that the point is the same, is that most of the time you don't get to know what you're missing, or even that you're missing anything. That's not your role as a player. So if your role here is not to understand, then what is it? Jump off the edge? Nope. Back into the dark ago. Aha! So, this, combined with the entering game from earlier, tells us that Coda believes his games are connected somehow. It could even be that the Stairs game and the Puzzle game are literally connected in between this and the entering game. There's a bigger picture that all of his games are meant to play a role in, some larger meaning that we won't be able to grasp until we've seen all of them. and once we have, we can step back and start to understand what exactly that bigger picture is. Jesus, that's a bit bright. Let's talk about video game development for a second. Every video game runs on what's called an engine, which determines what the game can and cannot do. So in other words, the engine is a set of tools for game development. To make all of these games, Coda is using an engine called Source. Like all engines, Source has certain things that it does well, and it has certain things that it does poorly. One of the things that it does very well is boxy linear corridors. That's why so many of Coda's games are set in these large, flat, empty rooms, is just because he's working with what the engine does well. The tools available to the creator shape what kinds of creative work they're going to end up making. You might consider paying attention to the architecture in Codas games, to... Notice how they seem to stem from an engine that's very good at producing linear boxy corridors. Okay, that's a horrible sensation. Oh god, right. Ooh. That makes me feel sick. Oh, still well. Oh, there's like an invisible thing there. Let's keep going. This prison, funny enough, in Koda's original design, the doors stayed shut for a full hour before letting you go. If you don't mind, I think we're gonna skip that. This is something that he and I used to argue about a lot, you know, whether a game ought to actually be playable, whether it means anything if no one can get through it. And I would always defend that, you know, all this work goes into the game, why not make it playable and accessible? And so we just got into heated arguments over it, and there was one time that after one of these conversations, he went home, and a day or two later, he sent me a zip file entitled Playable Games that was full of hundreds of individual games, each of which was just an empty box that you walked around in, and nothing else. Believe me, I played every single one of those just to find out if there was like a gag hidden somewhere. It's the puzzle again, with the exact same solution as the last time. There's still no clear indication of what makes this puzzle so special that Koda is going to return to it over and over. But I promise, I'll share with you my interpretation very shortly. I really want to know if this COA is actually a real person. It's kind of worrying that they have the same sort of ideas of quirky things that I'd probably have, which is a bit, I don't know, a bit odd. Here, Koda begins using a kind of dial -on system, that he fashioned out of the engine's chat capabilities. Use the one, two, three buttons on your keyboard to respond. and so we make one last descent down to the final floor of the level. It's a lamp post. Okay, I can't tell you quite why, but for some reason, Koda fixates on this lamp post. it's going to appear at the end of every single one of his games from here on out. I'll tell you what I think. I think that up to this point, you know, he's been making really strange and abstract games with no clear purpose, and maybe you can only float around in that headspace for so long. Because now he wants something to hold on to. He wants a reference point. He wants the work to be leading to something. He wants a destination. which is what this lamp post is, it's a destination. We're going to see it in the work as well. His games are just going to become a lot more cohesive, a lot more fully developed, with more of a clear idea behind them. And as we go, that idea will get clearer and clearer and clearer. Light at the end of the tunnel, sort of. Thoughts behind it, maybe. So first off, I'm sure you can deduce this, but this game is not connected to the internet. All of the notes that you're gonna see have been written by Coda. This was actually the first game of his that I ever played. This was shortly after I met him at a weekend game jam in Sacramento, where I grew up. I saw him working on this very level, and it was just so different from anything that anyone else was doing, so right away I was like, I have to be friends with this person. In retrospect, I think I was probably a bit too bushy trying to get his attention. I was overenthusiastic. But he was very gracious about it and very patient with me. And I cooled off eventually. Feel free to skip over any of these notes if they're not doing anything for you. Nothing extra is going to happen if you read all of them. Either way, to me, they convey a sense of loneliness. I see this person who's filled with thoughts and... feelings, and beliefs, and has no way to express them, except as scattered and unheard voices in a game that wasn't meant to be played. But it's ironic, isn't it, that in playing this game and seeing how alone Coda often felt, that we get to know him better and actually kind of connect with him. And I have to be honest with you, this idea is really seductive to me, that I could just Play someone's game and see the voices in their head and get to know them better and have to do less of the messy in-person socializing? I could just get to know you through your work. I think this is why I always liked Dakota's games so much, is because it felt like they let me have that connection. I felt as though he was inviting me personally into his world. And then I feel less lonely, too. I like things. Oh, so. Is it like an internal argument with yourself? At the end of this level, we're going to see the puzzle again. And here, I'll tell you what I think the puzzle means. Each of these games represents an idea that was on Coda's mind at the time that he was making it. And the puzzle is a way of closing the door on a previous chapter of his life before moving on to the next one. I could agree with that reason that door, I suppose. Closing off a part of your life, yeah. In each of his games, after exploring a theme that, you know, he might find difficult, Coda can then place this puzzle that he knows has a reliable solution, he understands exactly how it works, and so it gives him a simple mechanism for moving on. And because there's this dark area between the doors, a space between spaces, before you move on, you get to pause. Just for a moment, a few seconds to reflect on and let go of the events that led you here. To step back and connect the pieces together, to grasp at that elusive bigger picture. Oh, it's a tight reactor. Okay, this one is tough. It's gonna kind of just spin its own wheels for a few minutes. Hang with it. the whole game, and there's nothing that's particularly interesting about it. You just walk to the end of a hallway. Except, for some reason, Koda gets really fixated on this prison that has all of this modern furniture. And I don't know why, but he decides he needs to revisit this prison. He's going to start over, use the same assets, turn it into something else. Okay, cool, here's version two. Tesla Conals. There's a bit more to this one, but still it's not really communicating anything. It's kind of just weird for weirdness's sake. So, okay, he throws it out and starts over. This time he comes at the prison idea from a different direction. Of course, now the table is gone and you can't begin the chain of events to escape. Here's a version where there are no bars, but you can't actually get to the well. And then a version where the inside of the prison is the outside and the outside is the inside. Let me just blink you real quick through a few more of these. I mean, he really unloaded on this prison idea. There's nearly a dozen of them. Personally, I think it's awful to watch this, to see a person basically unraveling through their war. And for what? Like, at what point do you just go, eh, maybe there are game ideas other than this prison that I could be working on? But Coda doesn't have that voice telling you to stop, that particular mechanism of defense against yourself. Without it, you just spiral. And so he keeps going and going and going and going, and going, and then he hits on something. And he likes it. And that's it. He's done. He stops making prisons. This is the very last version of the prison game that he created, and the reason I think it works is that the prison is not actually in it. And so this is what Koda wants, is to be able to talk to someone, to share what's on his mind, and to get some good advice from someone who…