Coda

Coda is the central subject in The Beginner's Guide. The narrator Davey Wreden says that Coda is a male game designer he met in 2009, but since Davey is an unreliable narrator, as it is eventually revealed, all his claims, including this one, have been contested.

Origin and relationship with Davey
According to Davey, the two met in 2009 during a game jam in Sacramento, California. At that time, Coda was developing Notes. Coda showed Davey other games he had developed and the two became friends. They regularly talked online and Coda would send more games for Davey to play, sometimes returning from long periods of isolation and inactivity. At some point, Davey had access to 15 games made by Coda between 2008 and 2010.

In June 2011, after Davey had spent a significant time trying to contact Coda and understand some of the concepts in those games, Coda sends him a new game called Tower, which Davey perceives as very cold and dark. In the final parts of this game, Coda says, by means of messages written on the walls, that he does not want to talk to Davey anymore because of Davey's intrusion into the games and their private nature.

Presence
Coda is not seen or heard throughout the game in any of the levels, but there are messages from them to Davey in the Tower. All the text found within the chapters are supposedly theirs too (including the notes in Notes, game ideas in Stairs and all of the dialog trees elsewhere) - but these are not them communicating in first person.

Mental health
Throughout the narration, Davey mentions that Coda's games eventually began expressing themes of sadness, loneliness and reclusion, which leads Davey to presume Coda was facing problems related to depression, isolation and anxiety, increasingly pressuring him to seek to help his friend in some way.

Gender
While Davey refers to Coda as a "he", throughout the games there are female pronouns used - and sometimes apparently when referring to the relationship between both of them. The female voice in Escape from Whisper is the only voice we hear coming from the games themselves, suggesting this may be Coda's voice. In Escape, all of the statues we see in the different game variations are of women, possibly representing Coda. Because Davey turns out to be an unreliable narrator, we do not even know if he is telling the truth in the first place about even meeting Coda.

Meaning of the name

 * The first interpretation to surface, regarding Coda's name, is usually that of it being an Italian word, which is used in music notation to represent the trailing part of a composition. The word is derived from the Latin cauda, which means tail.
 * Similarly, there has been speculation that Coda would represent Davey at a point in time after releasing The Stanley Parable, which he has publicly stated was a period of deep depression for him (as stated both in his blog and on a lecture). In that sense, Coda would be himself on the period after releasing The Stanley Parable (his personal "coda" for that particular "composition").
 * Coda has also been noted to be similar to Coder (as in: programmer, developer) - which would pragmatically mean the original author creating the levels that are explored during The Beginner's Guide. In that sense it would not have any deeper meaning than representing the character in the story by his role, or as the way in which Coda, as a person, chose the nickname for himself to symbolize his main passion in creating games.

Theories
The game's mostly subjective nature allows many theories about Coda to be thought of.

Coda is Davey
This is the most popular interpretation. Coda might represent Davey's alter ego or a younger version of him, particularly of when he was developing and later selling The Stanley Parable. Coda might represent a struggling, confused, and even depressed Davey at the time he was trying to make TSP a successful game, with the games reflecting different periods of this struggle, such as when he had to deal with criticism.

Coda is actually another person
It might be that Coda is in fact a real person that Davey met, game designer or not. Davey clearly states in various instances that the two are different persons. For example, he says at least twice that Coda sent him folders containing games; if Davey is telling the truth and they were the same person, it would not make sense. Davey also says that he did not understand many of the contents of Coda's games, which also does not match with the theory of them being the same person (unless taken philosophically).

Supporters of this theory do not necessarily advocate an extreme version, with Davey having "genuine" mental breakdowns on a microphone and selling someone else's work without permission, since it would be highly unlikely for a high-profile developer such as him to do this, as reviewer Errant Signal explains. Instead, The Beginner's Guide may represent a romanticized reading of a real person's story, and not an entirely made up story. The extent of the games' genuineness within this theory, however, is debatable.

It is known that the games were not the work of a single amateur developer; this expert article, for example, points out that the degree of polish in The Beginner's Guide 's levels is very telling of the work of a qualified professional team. However, it is yet entirely possible that the levels were inspired by, or even recreations of, amateur work.

One of the arguments in favor of this theory is the fact that the game ends with a homage: "For R.". This has been hypothesized to be Davey's roommate or coworker based on talks he gave about his period of depression.

Coda represents something else
It is also possible that Coda represents an external force, rather than something inside Davey's mind.

Trivia

 * Coda is fictional, as Davey confirmed in the Tone Control Podcast.