Newsletter Introduction
Hello. Welcome.
A tiny bit from me this month, and something from a friend of the newsletter. I planned on this chapter being bigger, including a story; but hey, it doesn’t always go like that!
Happy June everyone!
An Update on Life
Back at the summer job and my soccer team made the playoffs.
I signed up for a summer course: Introduction to British Literature II. Will we read Dickens? Will I understand his ‘genius’? Will I feel more or less confident in my appreciation for literature generally?
A short story I’ve been working on will not be ready to share for at least another month, maybe longer. Too bad. Hope I can get it to a good place soon.
The bike and the birkenstocks are out.
I’ve been feeling very torn about the process of becoming published. It still feels like a milestone I would be very proud to achieve, but sadly like something that may never happen. Tackling it feels overwhelming. Maybe it’s a sign I’m not yet ready.
I’m about halfway through reading Anna Karenina. I both enjoy it and find it underwhelming. Plus, I’ve been feeling pulled towards reading more contemporary books. Too many ‘classics’ doesn’t seem healthy.
Running has been going pretty strong, though every single day I wonder how much better it would feel if I ate healthier.
Too often have I been looking at my phone first thing in the morning.
I’ve been taking driving lessons again, and am nervous I will fail my test again. However- I feel more confident that I will emotionally be less devastated by that (very possible) outcome.
Went to Toronto Comics Art Festival for the first time and felt stupid that I had never gone before. It was inspiring to see such a wide range of voices and styles. ‘Could I ever make a comic?’ I asked myself.
Been seeing some friends more, other friends less.
An idea came to me about streaming again, specifically live watching and analyzing random NFB films. Maybe I’ll try it, maybe I won’t. Inconclusive.
I’ve noticed a strong pattern that on days where I write out what I’d like to get done the next day, I usually do those things.
I recently watched Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies and loved it.
There is a growing pile of issues of The Walrus and Harpers that I have not gotten to and its starting to stress me out.
The Switch 2 is out and I can’t decide if I want one.
I feel in genuine need of a vacation. Even a little one.
Last month we did Free Shit’s Favourite Shit and it was the best. Below is a submission that trickled a little too far into ‘essay’ territory to make sense being piled in with a bunch of small blurbs. So I thought I’d give it to you here. Thank you James for writing it!
The Beginner’s Guide (2015)
★ James Elliott Miniou
If you’ve never heard of the video game called The Beginner’s Guide, I wouldn’t blame you. It went under the radar for a lot of people, and while the industry reviews for it are high, the player reviews are decidedly split. Some claim that this game is a deep introspective journey about games and life, while the rest believe that it is a piece of obnoxious, pretentious trash. And while I don’t agree with the later opinions, I find it a very interesting response to a game that is trying to be an experience more than a game – a game that I would argue is art.
Let’s bring in some context. The Beginner’s Guide is part of a nebulous categorization of games called walking simulators, which simply means that the gameplay consists entirely of moving your avatar around a space and that’s it. No fancy button pressing, no double joysticks, no stretching your fingers across the keyboard. The experience isn’t unlike walking through a museum and stopping to look at various exhibits. In this instance the creator of the game speaks directly to you while he shows you sections of different video games made by a game developer he enjoys who has since stopped creating new work. Now, there’s a lot more to this game, but telling you any of it would be a great disservice to you. It’s one of those experiences that are better if you go in with as little information as possible.
My question is, why do some people have such a vitriolic response to this game? I mean, just read some of these reviews that I pulled off of the games Steam page.
“I dislike this title because it’s so open-ended that its brains fall out. I found the ending quite incomplete, and I come away from the game unsure whether or not I’m better for having played it.”
“I didn’t enjoy the story. The opening of such a personal crypt, means we have to share the pain. Stanley Parable made me happy. Beginner’s Guide did not.”
And then even the positive reviews for the game come off as uncertain as to if they enjoyed the experience or not.
“I’m not sure that I would call this a game. I’m not sure what it is. But it made me feel things.”
There are pages and pages of these reviews either dismissing the game or praising it to the highest degree. So what gives?
Well. One is the nature of the game, which I can’t really touch on without spoiling, but the other factor is, I think partially, people’s expectations on art, especially popular media that tries to be art. Simply put, people don’t like it. They want their media (their games) to be beautiful, their plotlines to make sense, and the morals to be clear, and art at it’s best subverts all of these expectations. It refuses to be categorized and embraces the ugly along with the beautiful. The painful as well as the joyous. It doesn’t want to be put into a box and if you insist on doing so, you, the person experiencing that art, has to be the one to create that box. And even then, your box will never perfectly fit over what the experience is.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with enjoying games that aren’t trying to be artistic, but when a game doesn’t conform to these expectations of the player, when a game tries to be artistic? What happens then? You get split reviews. You get The Beginner’s Guide. I mean, go back and read those reviews again. The Stanley Parable (the developer’s previous game) made me happy. The Beginner’s Guide did not. - I come away from the game unsure whether or not I’m better for having played it. - I’m not sure what it is. But it made me feel things.
There’s an implicit understanding in all of these reviews that games are meant to make them, the players, happy. That games are meant to bring enjoyment only. That games aren’t supposed to leave the player questioning, and it’s clear that all of these players were left questioning. During my own playthrough I felt something not dissimilar to these other players. I was left vulnerable. Looking inwards because of what the game was saying and seeing if it connected to my own experiences, knowing it did, and finding that deeply uncomfortable. Parsing through the experience of The Beginner’s Guide takes time and effort, and at the end of the whole thing you can never be sure what it was all about. Only what it was about to you.
Which I think is why some reviews write off the whole experience with such venom. We, as human beings want beauty. We crave certainty. But that isn’t representative of real life, and there’s no reason why games can’t be uncomfortable. Why they, like every other medium before them, can’t be mirrors into the human experience.
I would recommend trying the game out yourself, to find out how it makes you feel. It’s a cheap purchase, 13 bucks on Steam, cheaper if you get it on sale. It won’t take you long to complete The Beginners Guide, probably around an hour or two, and maybe by the end of it you’ll end up feeling like you experienced something ineffable – even if in reality it was just pixels on a screen and canned voices through your speaker. Or maybe you’ll hate it and that’s fine too because then you’ll have felt something.
Which is all art really is. Good or bad. It’s supposed to make you feel things.
Thanks for reading!
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The Banner Art was made by my talented mother who would really appreciate a follow on Instagram @jackiebestemanart. Or visit her website! www.jackiebesteman.com
Free Shit will return on July 15th! See ya!