(Rant) The Beginner's Guide

So, I finally came around to buy and play The Beginner's Guide.
The game that a lot of YouTubers, Gamedevs, and just creative people in general have been talking about for years. The reason I got it was cuz some YouTube I watched who are usually pretty practical and logical recommended it if you were stuck or unmotivated to work.

Short story: I got nothing from it and am more pissed at the experience than anything else. It's just a made-up sob story about how fans can ruin a creator. I didn't need to spend money to figure out that. What about that? Is it supposed to give me motivation? That I am supposed to figure out that all the fans of my stuff are assholes? Oh yeah, giving me so many reasons to want to draw more.

Long story: The game is a made-up story about the creator of the story showing us games made by a friend of his. And how he was a selfie prick who wanted the friend to keep making things for him. He threw up all those classic ideas of: "I felt closer to the dev when playing them." "There must be more reason behind these games" and so on.
At the end of the story, the creator tells us that he is the reason the dev friend doesn't make any games anymore. He pushed the dev and saw his game in a different light and thought the dev was depressed just cuz the dev liked making prison games (Hey, I can see that connection when it comes to people looking at porn artists: "They must be crazy/fucked-up/strange cuz they are drawing xxx").

So can someone tell me how this whole story about someone being an asshole to a creator is supposed to make me want to create more or be motivated? xD

All and all this was just a rant about a game I have heard about for years now and it turned out to just be a "deep story" with no real substance or meaning to it. Nothing I could write on the wall and share with someone if they are unmotivated.
I am pissed now, thank you game for making me feel not unmotivated but annoyed xD
I am gonna fuck off and do something else to make me feel less annoyed, hope you all have a better day than me.

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Added:	3 weeks ago 22 Jan 2025 16:42 CET

5 Comments on this Journal

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FeralFelix

3 weeks ago

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Fr that's also the impression I got by the end of the game, the fake comments section was kinda nice? But by the end you're like oh no thank you 😅

bahamutdragons

3 weeks ago

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I 100% agree, and it was short enough that I ended up refunding it all those years ago. I'm sure the developer did quite well either way.

But frankly, what I hated was that it was presented as "real", but the creation process and the results didn't feel "realistic" to me, they felt made up for the story beats. It also had horrible leaps of logic. Just a bad game all around, I remember being really angry at how popular this game was and how people related to it. Just feels like one more point of disconnect with the population at large.

rump

2 weeks, 6 days ago

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I think The Beginner's Guide is a great example of a game you either love or hate (like Marmite), because I absolutely loved the game when I played it... 8 years ago? Has it been 8 years? Jesus.

Not only am I a sucker for "tech demo" environments, which imo are done beautifully in The Beginner's Guide. They feel like real tech demos and aesthetically they look nice too.

I don't think the game has no meaning or substance behind it - the narrator's motivation might ultimately be a little bit plain, I do like that the story rug pulls you. For most of the game the narrator is the only voice you hear and you blindly trust his explanations because the dev isn't there to tell you otherwise.

That made me think about my relationship with stories / games etc. in general. Bias of authors might leave out parts of stories they deem not important or come to the wrong conclusions, but you tend not to question those too often while reading. The character's motivations, sure- but the author?

And personally, the game resonated with me because back when I played it I focused too much on pleasing others and being anxious people wouldn't like me - and the whole "stop deciding how I feel" thing at the end felt almost directed at me. Definitely made me cry, lol.

I will admit that it helps that I played it back when the game just came out and nobody knew what was going on. People didn't know for sure yet whether or not this game was real and if it was the actual dev mourning his past behavior. Knowing it's a fake story now can definitely hurt the experience, I think. It's why I won't ever play it for a second time.