For this week’s critical play, I finally played The Stanley Parable. I remember when this game was really popular during middle school, and I’m really excited to finally be playing it! The Stanley Parable is a video game created by Galactic Cafe. Its target audience is players who enjoy narratives and darker themes.
In The Stanley Parable, walking tells the story by using both time and space to limit access to the narrative in a way predetermined by the designer. This spoon-feeding of information creates an edge of seat narrative experience that’s surprising from a game with such few interactions.
The first thing I noticed about The Stanley Parable was it’s surprising use of time. When walking around the map, certain interactions only trigger if you’ve spent the right amount of time. For example, in my second play though, I moved between the rooms without listening to the narrator’s entire speech because I was interested in seeing what a different choice later on in the game would do. However to my surprise, the narrator admonished me for moving so quickly. This usage of time in many ways breaks the magic circle, bringing the player into the game almost like the player is a character. But, it further prompts the player to slow down to a speed intended by the game. Additionally, I noticed the usage of time during the ending scene where the narrators blows up Stanley. The narrator will not progress the story with any actions by the player. Rather, the narrative only progresses if the timer goes down. Using this method, the game limits the way in which the player is able to experience each narrative beat, forcing time to process and understand in the way that the game designers intended. Without limitations using time, it might be possible for someone to just run through all the doors and to the end of the game, missing the narrative completely. Using real world time forces a re-centering of the narrative in an effective way.
Secondly, The Stanley Parable leaves narrative to be found as the player walks to different places. In this way, the game uses strategies common to embedded narrative games by placing narrative beats throughout space. This means that the player can looks around the areas like a diorama, coming to conclusions about what happened in the space like in many other walking game. But, the inclusion of the narrative as a character constantly providing new information as the player moves between rooms serves to provide information that may not be discernible just from surroundings. Additionally, the narrator helps the player get a feel for how long to spend in each area, making the game a bit easier to understand for the average person not used to walking sims (this certainly helped me!). The narrator also serves the purpose of helping the player know where to go next, preventing players from becoming confused and wandering previous areas endlessly without noticing how to progress the game.
Finally, at times, the game forces the player into certain spaces to require the narrative to progress in a certain predetermined way. This is for example present in the ending where you go down the stairs and are then locked in an endless loop. In reality, the player cannot access all of the in game space available at any time. Rather, they can only access the parts that are important or relevant to the narrative.
In this way, The Stanley Parable’s limited information access helps it’s narrative be more coherent and easily experienced by all players. Perhaps this is part of why this game became so globally popular despite having such an odd premise and unfamiliar gameplay style.
