The Stanley Parable is a very interestingly designed game, and the paper of the week defined it as a “literary game” as it tells a story through a game and the game mechanics are primarily about taking certain actions to unlock certain stroylines from the observant third-person narrator. We follow the character of Stanley, an office employee who finds himself in a weird office situation when he goes to work one day only to find nobody else there in the office building. The game starts here, with the player controlling Stanley’s actions and the narrator unlocking gameplay based on where the player takes Stanley in the game-world.
I played two iterations of the game’s free demo version, to get a general sense of the design and the gameplay.
- The first time, inspired by what the paper said about “liberation” from the game rules, I was curious to find what might happen if I deviated from the narrator’s instructions on what Stanley should do next. So, instead of going into the Mind Control Facility, I followed the Escape sign and went down the passageway even though the narrator said that this passageway would lead to Stanley’s death, and kept advising me to turn away. Having read the paper, I wondered whether this was how I would lead to a version of the game that would tell me I am “Not Stanley,” as I remembered this version of the gameplay mentioned in the paper, but wasn’t sure what it means. Sadly, this strategy did not work, and Stanley did suffer a humiliating death due to my course of actions.
- Fortunately, even though I died in this first try, the game restarted immediately and I was at the beginning of the story again. The second time around, I closely followed all of the “stage directions” that the narrator was giving. This was a successful strategy in helping me (Stanley) unlock the secrets of the Mind Control Facility and find freedom outdoors, unshackled by the walls of the controlling office environment.
Thinking about my gameplay relation in terms of the paper’s argument, it felt like a paradox that the only way for Stanley to achieve freedom from mind control was if Stanley’s controller (the game player) closely followed the narrator’s instructions. In a way, the narrator was now controlling Stanley’s every move, which is what was leading Stanley to feeling as if he was in a state of perpetual happiness (which is against Stanley’s proclaimed ideals). On the other hand, deviating from the narrator’s instructions always led to negative consequences for Stanley. In short, it seemed like no version of the story had a satisfying redemptive arc for our poor Stanley.
Since I only played the game two times, I have not yet exhausted all the endings that I can experience in the game, which makes me very curious to go back into the game and try it all out. According to the paper, all of the different endings are truly unique. I am interested in finding the “Not Stanley” ending of the game, so I will try to play again and see if I can access that ending for myself.
