My son recently pointed me to a Youtube video of a play-through of a game called simply "The Beginner's Guide". This game is a short narrative that examines the psychological condition of a person known only as "Coda" between the year 2008 and 2011. It is comprised of a series of short video game levels he designed during that time period; think of it like an anthology. Cohesiveness and structure is provided through voice over narration by Davey Wreden, the man who collected Coda's games and assembled them into a single work to be experienced. After watching the video of The Beginner's Guide, here are my thoughts about the experience. There will be no answers, only questions.
Coda seems to be a person who spent so much time on introspection that he was not good for much of anything else. I think of a Christian theologian in a proverbial ivory tower who spends so effort thinking about how to be a Christian that they never actually getting around to being a Christian. I don't think the games Coda designed were ever intended to be seen by others. As such, they served for him as a cathartic release of his inner demons and a method of thinking through and examining his life experiences. Put another way, the games he designed were a coping mechanism.
Seen in this light, and as Davey points out in the voice over narration, the games show Coda increasingly withdrawing from society. Whether due to a personal failure that caused him to retreat into a private shell or the absence of enough courage to face a social challenge in the first place, Coda tended to back off and hide when confronted with perceived danger. I think in some ways the very method he chose for exploring his psyche, that of video games and personal computers, served to further his descent into madness by giving him the option of the aforementioned escape. Now to be sure, other people have accomplished this un-exemplary goal of giving in to their fears throughout human history, utilizing a variety of methods to do it. So it's not as if computers and games are necessarily the work of the devil, so to speak. But just as with any other tool, they can be abused and contribute to the failure of a human being to be a complete person.
Moving on to the larger issue as I see it, what is it that causes some people to behave this way? While I most certainly think the core issue is a lack of communion with their creator, I also don't think it's a complete answer to say that not having a relationship with Christ is the exclusive causal factor. In other words, I think there may be other variables in play that lead to this sort of situation. I base this conclusion upon the evidence of my own life experiences. Even before becoming a Christian I never went to the extremes of behavioral abnormality that seemed to be present in Coda's life during the time frame The Beginner's Guide takes place in. So what is it then? What is it that causes some people who don't know Christ to unravel and retreat into themselves to such an extent that they become utterly useless for anything other than endless introspection while others seem to avoid this fate? Is it mental illness? Is it poor parenting during their formative years? Is it mental illness fueled by poor parenting or other psychological trauma experienced in the past?
Is it possible that this sort of descent into madness is what is faced by all of humanity apart from Christ and it is only an external source of distraction that keeps it at bay? In other words, do most of us cope with the personal issues Coda was suffering from by just ignoring the problem and not investigating our own inner man too deeply, for fear of what we may find there? Could this be part of the reason that the entertainment and narcotics industry has grown to such abominable levels of saturation and obsession in our culture; because of humanity's insatiable need for escapism from the reality of their fate? Again drawing from my own life, I have suffered my entire life from an addiction to entertainment. The tendrils of this obsession run deep. Even as a strong and committed follower of Christ I face the constant specter of this personal demon. And while I never recall any conscious and deliberate decision to avoid any personal dilemmas, the questions raised in my mind by The Beginner's Guide cause me to wonder.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher, once said "when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." The context of Nietzsche's quote was that of people who confront monsters of humanity guarding against becoming monsters themselves. The point being that the abyss exists inside all of us. Although Nietzsche was a consummate humanist and atheist, he hit the Biblical nail squarely on the head with this one. The Bible clearly and unequivocally teaches that men are hopelessly depraved and inherently evil apart from God. So going back to my theory on Coda's behavior, perhaps the reason more people who don't know Christ as their Lord and Savior don't venture into the depths as he did is because they avoid casting their gaze too close to the edge in the first place. Further, perhaps they strain to not even acknowledge that the abyss exists in the first place by immersing themselves in pursuits that facilitate a temporary ignorance of ultimate reality.
As I said, there are no answers here, merely questions.
Having read all of that, let me now explain more fully. I watched about half of the video mentioned above. Then I had to stop for a while to take care of other business. The above post was a reflection of my thoughts at the time. Later I finished watching the play through of The Beginner's Guide. I have no intention of spoiling it but let me just say that it completely blew the doors off of my notions of what was going on.
So now, with a more complete understanding of the game, as I consider what I wrote at first, it sounds horribly pretentious and judgmental to me. I realize, not for the first time, just how overweening my pride tends to be. And in a massive ironic twist, the thing that I had previously accused Coda of doing, introspecting too much, is precisely the reaction that the full experience of The Beginner's Guide has had upon me. Perhaps not in the way the game designer intended, since I think he is making a statement on the gaming industry and how game designers cope. Nevertheless, I find my reaction to his work to be quite palpable and powerful.
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