The Stanley Parable

As its stands currently, The Stanley Parable enjoys a fairly positive average score here, and yet the majority of the published reviews of it are negative. Neither of these facts surprise me: articulating why you hate The Stanley Parable would be very easy, but explaining why you think it's good is much tougher. Well, unless I was just going to say 'I've never laughed out loud so often at a game' - which is true, but it doesn't really tell you anything, does it? Some people laugh out loud at The Big Bang Theory. It's hardly the most reliable mark of quality.

Nevertheless, here's my effort: The Stanley Parable is clearly the result of a lot of time spent thinking deeply and critically about games. This is a deeply unfashionable thing to do. The vast majority of what passes for criticism in the world of gaming is laughably fawning and juvenile, and thinking deeply bears far too much of a resemblance to politics for comfort; even the vaguest hint of that is enough to get people's backs up. Were the discourse in gaming up to the standards of even popular music and television, let alone literature, cinema, or traditional visual arts, The Stanley Parable would not be unusual; there would be hundreds of attempts to grapple with what it means to be a game, to subvert expectations not just of genre but of the very form itself, to encourage the player to consider their own agency in the medium. (Consider that music remains music in an empty room, that a game cannot exist without a player by its very definition, and yet the role of the player has been examined less than the role of the listener.) (Consider also that the one genre of games that has done this sort of thing more than any other is interactive fiction - because it ultimately builds on the back of critical theories about literature, not gaming.) Thinking about how video games might do that is difficult, but progressing and developing art has always been difficult, and if games are to be taken seriously as art (and twenty years of talking to people about games leads me to believe that there is literally nothing gamers want more, are more united on, than this) then this has to happen eventually. That makes The Stanley Parable exciting, despite essentially being a man walking around an empty office. It'a a glimpse of where the weird offshoots to gaming that will come in the future might take us.

Some have taken that as being somehow anti-games, that picking apart the seams we take for granted in games must mean that the makers of The Stanley Parable hate games. If you wanted to, you could respond by pointing out that basically every composer that ever moved music forward was accused by somebody of being anti-music in their day - reactionaries gonna react. A more salient point, however, is that The Stanley Parable simply does not work at all unless the player understands the language of gaming. Imagine somebody playing this, having never played a game before; they'd follow the narrator's instructions, complete it in five minutes, and wonder what the point of it all was. They wouldn't understand why they should take a wrong turn, because they haven't spent years being taught by platformers and shooters that there's usually some kind of collectable or reward at the end of the road less travelled. They wouldn't even spot a lot of the wrong turns - it wouldn't occur to them that you could, say, drop off the llift onto the walkway in the cargo area, or that a designer would only ever clearly mark a door as 'broom closet' if they wanted you to notice it and try opening it. The ending they'd reach (one of about seventeen, depending on what you consider to be an ending) wouldn't even make sense to them, because it's a statement on the very act of playing a game. The Stanley Parable is satire, and like all satire of any worth, it comes from a place of love, or at least of true and deep understanding, of the material it's satirizing. It would not be possible to design this game, to know exactly where to drop its secrets and what visual clues the player will need to find them, if you hadn't spent years playing and enjoying video games. And it certainly would not be possible to include all these arch, knowing jokes about the world of gaming. Hell, I'm not convinced that it would be possible to write this game if you didn't have plenty of experience of gaming in general, not just video games; the narrator is essentially a frustrated AD&D dungeon master who has spent weeks planning this perfectly designed quest for his players only to see them tear it to shreds by doing the 'wrong' thing constantly. I have to imagine anybody who's ever spent time playing any tabletop RPG will recognize at least one person they know in this. I only ever acted as a DM once and I recognize myself in it. Maybe that's why I took so much enjoyment in trying to make him angry as possible, and why my favourite part of the game was probably the moment he threw his toys out of the pram completely and went 'fine, if you hate my game so much, go play Minecraft and Portal instead!'

There's a key word there: enjoyment. There is no denying that there is a certain amount of chin-stroking academic thought that goes into coming up with a concept like this, and also no denying that this can result in an end product that's very dry; there is no shortage of works that have broken down barrriers, perhaps even proven hugely influential, but have suffered from a major lack of charm and wit that has made them difficult to love. The Stanley Parable understands that the easiest way to negate that is to embrace the inherent silliness of experimentation, to crack wise about it. Having the freedom to truly break the game is one thing; breaking the narrator, laughing at his frustration and exasperation, is another, and the game wouldn't be half of what it is without his commentary. It's fun. No, really - walking around an empty office, figuring out all of its bizarre secrets and poking at things until you make a British guy angry, is fun. Even having somebody occasionally point out the repetitive misery of life and ruminate on how much genuine agency any of us ever have in any moment is fun. That's a very hard line to sell to anybody that's skeptical, but I'd argue that far from being the anti-game some would like to sell it as, The Stanley Parable comes closer to the spirit of the games of my childhood than most AAA games in the last ten years have.

I don't like attributing intentions or meaning to art. This is also not a discussion on what art is or isn't. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe edition released a couple of days ago. I played it, so here I want to briefly address why, for me, it was one of the most important gaming experiences ever, hopefully it will make sense.

Also note that this post talks about the new edition. The changes were significantly enough to change my perception of the game. Enjoy.

Burning Out
If you've ever followed the works and posts of Davey Wreden you might've come across The Beginner's Guide. It's not a game that many played (especially compared to The Stanley Parable), but it's way more useful to give some context on what's going on here. The game is told by the point of view of Davey himself, exploring the games of a fictional friend of him called Coda. The whole experience consists in navigating trough small interactive experiences with the commentary of the narrator.

Quoting Wikipedia:

Wreden's narration explains that he was inspired by many of Coda's game concepts, providing his own analysis on many of the themes he perceived to appear in Coda's games. However, Wreden had seen that many of the games are based on themes of prisons, isolation, and difficulty in communicating with others, and that eventually Coda's games took a darker tone and took much longer to produce, focusing even more strongly on dialogue that implied that game development was no longer a positive activity for Coda. Wreden felt concerned that Coda was feeling depressed and weighed down by game development, and took it upon himself to show some of Coda's game concepts to others to get feedback to help encourage Coda to develop more. However, this in turn led to Coda to draw into seclusion. At some point in 2011, Wreden believed Coda had stopped making games, until he was sent an email with a private link to a final game by Coda.

The game is supposed to be a window into Davey's life itself. The Beginner's Guide was created two years after The Stanley Parable was released (to almost universal acclaim). What happens when a project you did for fun turns out to be a way bigger thing than you expected? I don't know about Davey but I can talk from my experience: I have a genuine desire to make things for people, until these things actually start to get used. After that a feeling of paranoia, stress and inadequacy starts to fill the development experience. I'm not saying it's a universal feeling but it's what I felt in The Beginner's Guide. A relevant piece is this recent post about Monkey Island 3 by Ron Gilbert

Return to Monkey Island may not be the art style you wanted or were expecting but it's the art style I wanted.

When I started this game my biggest fear was Disney wouldn't let me make the game I wanted to make, but they have been wonderful to work with.

It's ironic that the people who don't want me to make the game I want to make are some of the hard core Monkey Island fans. And that is what makes me sad about all the comments

At one point a developer transitions from developing for himself to developing for others. I think this is a natural and necessary step, but I personally don't handle it well, and I think neither does Davey. The Beginner's Guide is a testament to that. And so is The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Edition (in part)

Delivering A Product
If you're not familiar with the timeline of the release of the game here's roughly how it went:

7 December 2018 / Announcement Trailer
27 November 2019 / First Delay Announcement (coming 2020)
2 December 2021 / Where is The Stanley Parable(coming 2022)
30 March 2022 / Release Date Trailer (out 4/27/22)

There's a recurrent theme in all these videos and it's something like "Please, stop. It's coming when it's ready". I might be wrong but I felt the fear of expectations coming from all the trailers. I find it hard to deliver something when no one is asking for it, I can't imagine how stressful it might be to deliver something of this order of magnitude, especially coming from a guy that made "The Beginner's Guide"

Dear Davey, thank you for your interest in my games. I need to ask you not to speak to me anymore. I wonder at times whether you think I am making these games for you. You've so infected my personal space that it's possible I did begin to plant solutions in my work somewhere, hidden between games. If there was an answer, a meaning, would it make you any happier? Would you stop taking my games and showing them to people against my wishes? Giving them something that is not yours to give? Violating the one boundary that keeps me safe? Would you simply let them be what they are?

Then The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Edition came out.

What makes a game?
The Stanley Parable is probably one of the few games that is less fun the less games you've played (I think another one is Undertale). I find this fascinating. For anyone that didn't play the original the game is a "Walking Simulator": a game where your only interaction is to walk around a map where something happens (usually a narrator talking about something). The core theme behind The Stanley Parable (at least the original one) is "player agency": the narrator narrates something and the game gives you a choice, either you follow what the narrator said or you don't, then the narrator reacts accordingly usually breaking the 4th wall. Davey wanted to discuss the illusion of free choice in games and how usually it's non existent. Is it actually "making a choice and leaving the main path" if that action is intended and scripted?

A person that never played a game in their life simply wouldn't get The Stanley Parable. They would just reach the end and move on. They wouldn't understand why they're supposed to "go trough the left door" and they probably wouldn't even see many of the alternate options because they wouldn't be familiar with standard video game tropes.

On the other hand if you played many games, if you're used to getting optional rewards from secondary paths, then everything suddenly makes sense (kinda). You have expectations, they're subverted. And it takes a lot of time and research and knowledge to understand what those expectations are. n What makes a game? Is it the act of playing it? Is it having a player? Can a game even be a game without anyone playing it? Does it need gameplay and what even is gameplay?

I think those are the questions posed by the original game, and in my opinion it works wonderfully. But at the time The Stanley Parable was just a novelty for me, the new edition changed everything.

New Paragraph: Ultra Deluxe Edition
[This part obviously contains spoilers]

How do you make a sequel? The Ultra Deluxe Edition deconstructs this whole concept. The name of the game implies it's just an enhanced version, but at one point in the game the whole main menu becomes "The Stanley Parable 2". You have a part in which the game explores some random ideas for what might be a sequel to the game, they all seem absurd, then they're thrown into the game and completely change how you experience it. I think the best example of this is "The Bucket"

At one point the narrator introduces "The Reassurance Bucket": an item that is supposed to help you with finding the right way, comfort and reassurance in your choices. Then all the original endings change acknowledging the bucket. I personally grew used to the bucket and for some bizarre reason formed an "emotional connection" with it. The game succeeded in delivering a completely new experience (something worthy of a sequel) by just adding a bucket and changing some lines of dialogue.

But the part that resonated with me the most was The Skip Button Ending:

The first time you get to experience the new content ends up with a disappointed narrator because of the lack of it. You go on a trip down memory lane with the narrator revisiting the original reviews for the first game and thinking about how great it was. Then suddenly Steam reviews appear. They're negative but bring points that some people would consider reasonable. The narrator reads some of them and agrees with the necessity of adding a "skip button" in the game to skip the rambling monologues (which, keep in mind, are the most important part of the game), and then he adds one.

You, as a player, now have the ability to skip dialogue, except that every time you do you skip more of it. 30 seconds, a minute, an hour, two weeks. You, as Stanley, as the character, stand still for the whole duration and don't notice the skip. The narrator on the other hand lives inside the game. Does a game exist without a player? He keeps talking, he feels alone, he begs you not to skip his dialogue.

As you skip more and more the narrator becomes unstable, rambles a lot and seems to become crazy. Then you have just silence. Centuries pass and you're left with a destroyed room, no one talking, a wasteland outside. You go out, walk a bit and then the game restarts, there was nothing to do either.

This links back to the beginning of my review. Whose game is The Stanley Parable? Is it Davey's? Is it the studio's or the players'? How does it feel to go against the wishes of your user base when you want to preserve artistic or functional integrity of a product? I felt desperation in that ending, and a desire to just do whatever one wants to do. I felt connected to it because I also develop small games, I also develop small products and whenever someone asks (or demands) a feature it's either

A) "Oh, I didn't think about it and it seems cool. I'll add it"
B) "Yes, it makes sense but it doesn't fit into my vision of the product"
C) "It's a terrible idea"

Sadly situation B and C are the most frequent ones, and the ones that sometimes put me off from developing something. I'm mentally afraid of them.

Conclusion
I find incredible how the new edition of The Stanley Parable managed to evoke so many feelings and thoughts in my mind just by reusing assets and volountarily revisiting an old game, modifying it. As stated in the introduction I'm not inserting meaning into Crow Crow Crow's work, but I'm grateful for what they delivered and for the food for thought they gave me. Ultra Deluxe Edition is something you should probably play, especially if you have experience with gaming otherwise it just might fall flat, but for $20 it's the best value for money I've ever had in the last years.

Can't say this was the most fun game ever, but it definitely made me think a lot. This game just did what it wanted to do and didn't compromise. It's not over the top just to be over the top. It's over the top because it wants you to look at how goofy you are as a human being and how sometimes your choices don't matter. Is the narrator stupid? Is he a genius? Or is he just a series of prerecorded voice lines created for the sole purpose of making you perceive the game in a certain way.
I feel like this game is trying to make a metacommentary on gaming as a whole, but most gamers are too attached to their preconceived ideas of what a game is and what it is supposed to feel like that they miss what this game is trying to say. The fact that this game elicited a lot of negative responses proves the statements The Stanley Parable is making.
This isn't a perfect game, but it is an experience worth having.

this game kickstarted my love for surreal media and i will forever cherish it

(written nov 8, 2017)

You’re standing in front of two doors. If you go in the left door, there is a narrative adventure game called The Stanley Parable. It’s about 10-20 minutes long, and describes an odd day in the life of a man named Stanley. It’s a game that supposes you’re someone who always follows directions, that when engaging in art built on exploration and interpretation, you believe in the voice that tells you what to do and how you need to do it. It’s a neat little commentary on choice but doesn’t really do much to support its point.

If you enter the right door, you start playing another game. It mocks The Stanley Parable for assuming the player has the curiosity of a dishwasher. It morphs into a perpetual Jenga game of narrative control, an existential “Who’s On First.” It breaks narrative conventions, only to break some more conventions, and eventually the player gets deja vu from wondering if that convention that just broke was the same convention from around 34 conventions ago. This game, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, is also called The Stanley Parable.

This version of The Stanley Parable is a bit of a mess. I use the term “game” loosely, it’s more like a really interesting crash. I shouldn’t be surprised, though; the narrator of the game gave me specific instructions, and I disobeyed them. What did I expect? Why would someone else’s art have to accommodate to me?

Wait, no, that’s stupid. Of course it should accommodate me, it’s a game. Accommodate isn’t even the right word, I’m not doing anything outside of The Stanley Parable, I’m still playing it. This isn’t accommodation, it’s interpretation. I chose to go right because that’s how I’m interpreting the game. It’s still providing an entertaining story and humor, the game is still going. I have as much choice in playing a game as I do when imagining what something in a book looks like: not a lot, but enough to personalize the experience.

Christ, this review is going nowhere. I can’t write about this. What’s the point in playing a game with “an intended experience?” It’s not a straight line, it’s a cube, it’s a tactile playground. The intended experience should be the entire game, not some cherry-picked facets that cheaply emulate a more “serious” art form. Make me wonder, make me think, make me laugh, make me cry, but do it by making me play, goddammit!

There’s a part in The Stanley Parable where it told me to remember what a plant looked like, but it never really came up again, so overall I’d give this game a 7.8/10

The hell are you doing?! You don’t give numbered scores! You got rid of those! Numbers are just a symptom of the “it’s only about the player” way of thinking that disregards creative freedom for the customer’s needs, and the core disease is the mentality 90s kids have from being raised on commercials that marketed control of the product more than the product itself! “YOU will save the princess, YOU will fight the dragon, it’s all about YOU, YOU, —”

You aren’t making any sense. You just said games are all about what the player interprets, right? Yes, and we compare that method of interpreting through play too similarly to film. It’s like a movie with nothing but exposition, a book where every description is followed by “intended” images. Don’t restrict the player to fit your vision if your vision is meant to be played. The point is—

. . .

You’re standing in front of two doors.

It's clear that we've moved on from this. Meta-narratives that make the game "sentient" and talk directly to the player have been a trope of the indie dev scene for a short period of time, under a decade. It was run into the ground mostly because of how popular and ever-present the youtube let's play scene was, and this kind of story was perfect for reaction content with a demographic of teenagers and young adults. None were like Stanley Parable though, for better or for worse.

So when a sequel for a game that criticized the monotony of desk jobs and the false sense of choice we have in our lives was announced, people were pretty skeptical. I mean I wasn't, I had faith, but this could easily be not good. We've moved on, new content doesn't seem as new or exciting as a concept because of this culture we left behind. But oh did they know. They knew exactly what we were doing.

The idea of sequels has been severely tainted by American entertainment. They are cash-grabs, sell-outs, rehashes, and they only serve the purpose to milk as much money out of a successful franchise as possible. The cynical fuckers over at Crows Crows Crows introduce you to "new content" with a door that says "new content", until later when it says "new, new content" with a flashy neon sign. Through constant convoluted mechanics that don't do anything, and long one-sided conversations with the narrator, you get more of the different same. The pressure of pleasing everyone around you, the weight of a legacy holding creativity down, the public outcry determining what you make next, and the sad truth that no, this isn't a "good" sequel, all comes together to make me breathe out of my nose a bit and think on how I go about creating. It doesn't matter, really.