Warning: Spoilers Ahead
Like an onion, and like all good stories, The Stanley Parable has layers. On the surface, you have a walking simulator about a man named Stanley roaming about his abandoned office building, looking for answers as to the whereabouts of his missing coworkers. Go a little deeper, and you find a metafictional narrative that is far more concerned with its own self-awareness than the original story.
The Stanley Parable is all about exploring different possible routes through the game and the micronarrative that occurs along each branching path. A few of these endings feel like they were part of the original story: there is some connection in these endings to Stanley, his office, and the life he was living before the game begins. Most endings, however, are so far derailed from the original story that they have taken on a life of their own. As Stanley (the player) continues to diverge from the instructions provided by the narrator, the narration starts to evolve (perhaps devolve) in real-time. The narrator switches from trying to keep some sense of a coherent story on track to reluctantly dealing with Stanley’s choices and writing the new story as it’s happening.
Things get interesting when the game starts to flex its self-awareness. Some of the divergent endings still treat Stanley like a person without regard for the player, but other endings address the player head-on. There are moments when the narrator references concepts like “endings” and “new content” that should be foreign to the in-game characters, as they are to do with the digital medium of video games themselves.
The paper we read this week refers to the metafiction in The Stanley Parable and the game’s use of elements from the “Theatre of the Absurd” to get the player to let go of any sense of reason or sensible circumstances surrounding the game’s events. By crafting such an absurd and non-orientable experience, the player is freed from their propensity to experience the game through their character’s eyes and to instead play the game as a player.
This emergent property of the game is the final layer of the onion. When you start playing The Stanley Parable, you play as Stanley. As you explore more and more branching paths, you stop playing as Stanley and start playing as you. The Stanley Parable is a game about a player playing a game about a man named Stanley.
This surprising effect of the game’s design was not lost on its developers. There are moments in the game where the narrative makes fun of you, the player, for playing the game like a player.
There’s even a whole subset of alternate endings to The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (an expansion of the original game) where the narrator’s attempts to appease your insatiable thirst for “new content.”
Players and designers alike can appreciate the depth, humor, and effort put into The Stanley Parable. If you haven’t explored any of the game’s 19 different endings — 42 in the expanded release — I highly recommend you give this game a go.
Works Cited:
Sarian, A. A. (2018). Paradox and Pedagogy in The Stanley Parable. Games and Culture, 15(2), 179-197. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412018765550 (Original work published 2020)
