The last episode of the year is us talking about the meta-commentary on criticism, The Beginner’s Guide.
There’s a lot to talk about with The Beginner’s Guide and yet it is a game that leaves me somewhat cold. I don’t know why. To me it came across as an academic exercise. There’s a lot to say in this academic exercise and we do in fact. Yet, I enjoyed it less than The Stanley Parable. I wonder if that’s because I am the target of its message instead of the game itself?
One thing I wished I had brought into this podcast, though I couldn’t have because I only saw it after we recorded the episode, was a tweet about the game. “Is this the ‘You’re so vain!’ of video games?” An interesting idea I would have liked to talk about. We couldn’t actually “You’re so vain” game because none of us know enough people, but the idea behind it might have brought some interesting conversation to the table.
The Beginner’s Guide episode is up on PopMatters, SoundCloud and the RSS feed.
“Heh. It’s strange, but the thought of not being driven by external validation is unthinkable. I actually cannot conceive of what that would be like.”
How funny — I’m working on a paper that I gave a presentation on yesterday, and I also referred to TBG as an academic exercise of sorts (I compared it to an essay in its structure). It’s an awfully odd game, but I like the lines of inquiry and discussion raised by it.
Oh — and since I can’t edit — in my presentation I also showed the precise moment you quoted, re: validation. Great minds? 🙂