The Stanley Parable

[Original_Name]

I had really high hopes for this game -- the post-modern hype media, reviews from respected journalists championing it as the greatest achievement in gaming meta-narrative, and all kinds of gamers declaring it the king of indie gaming in 2013 (though "Gone Home" has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention as well... that one's next on my list) -- so I put down the steep-for-an-indie-title asking price and tried it out and everything that's been said about the game is true.

...but it did absolutely nothing for me. Not because I felt that the gameplay was too hollow for its narrative focus, nor because I felt that its meta-posturing was too pretentious (I legitimately loved every concept that was put before me) -- really, this is the sort of game that I've pitched to friends many times over, I just commit the ultimate failure of a creative person and talk about things more than I do them, turning me into precisely that cliché that says "Oh yeah, I thought of something like that. I'm glad/furious to see that someone made it happen" and impresses absolutely no one.

On paper, I love everything that this game stands for. It's on the bleeding edge of narrative technique, it manages to reel in those that normally wouldn't be interested (see critiques of "Dear Esther", "Gone Home", and to a degree "Shenmue") by teetering masterfully on the line between humorous and menacing, and just exudes the charm needed to make influential minds take notice.

Yeah, yeah, so it does everything right on paper, but it didn't do everything right by me. I was told that this game was going to turn my brain inside out and stomp on it, and it didn't deliver. I followed my heart, took the path that felt most intuitive to me and, without spoiling anything, was faced with the decision to either turn the game off (as urged by the narrator) or die in game. I chose to turn the game off, because this is supposed to be mind-bending, amazing, always-two-steps ahead sort of game design, so maybe there would be some twist to pressing "Quit", right? Nope, just quit. Back to the menu screen. So I began a new game, went to the exact same point, and chose to die. Maybe this would be a false death!? Nope. Black screen forever. Death. I waited for a long time -- didn't wanna be fooled, maybe the narrator would say something if I waited long enough!? Nope. Black screen forever. Death. I moved my mouse around -- maybe I was just in a dark room and I'd see the light of a door behind me!? Nope. Black screen forever. Death.

I've heard of people running around for hours in this game -- a thousand tricks of level design and meta-narrative that seem to wind on endlessly, crafting a world with "no ending". Within five minutes I intuitively stumbled upon an obvious, only marginally meta ending.

See, if I'd never quit a game in spite of its narrative before, this might have come as more of a shock to me -- but it's not. Before I felled the first Colossus in "Shadow of the [/redundant]", I really let what I knew of the narrative sink in... really let it strike me how bad I felt to violently draw blood from the lumbering work of art I'd just admired a moment before... and, having only bought the game for $10 at the time, decided I'd feel better if I just turned the game off. Years later I discovered that

everyone who continues on gets tricked in a big way. A few years later had the exact same experience with BioShock.

Turning a game off because the game explicitly told me to turn it off is new to me, I suppose (outside of Metal Gear Solid 2)... which is why I went back to check and see what happens if you don't. I was given a binary between finites in a game that others have championed for its seeming infinity. JT once recommended a free Flash game called "Every Day the Same Dream" that did basically the same thing with less production and pretense. Now, unless you can take another path where my path is openly mocked or something, I'm just not impressed. There should have been more here. At least for me. Others are talking about five hours of brain-screwing madness, I got five minutes with a couple of laughs and a shrug-worthy "ending".

[J T]

I played the original Stanley Parable mod. I also just downloaded the demo for the new game (which is a smaller, different story from the main one), but I haven't had a chance to play that yet.

The original mod was really entertaining, and it's a sort of joke that you are both "in on" and "the butt of", which if you think about it, is kind of a unique form of comedy that perhaps can only be achieved in either an interactive video game or live setting. It's sounds like perhaps you wanted something more than what the game can deliver, but I'm not sure what that would be. Or perhaps your disappointment that even this meta-level game can still only work within the confines of a videogame is part of the point.

You also might be overthinking it, which the game admittedly encourages, but doing so takes us dangerously close to becoming another Raphael.

[Original_Name]

I sort of rambled a ton, but I was tryin' to say that I totally recognized the merits of the game and really appreciated what it's doing, it's just that my own personal playthrough brought out so little of the things that are supposed to make the game special, and that feels like an oversight to me. I'd seen all of these previews involving people getting lost in the hallways and having to play complex mind-games with the narrator, whereas I just so happened to make a blind bee-line directly to a path that had very, very little of this. I guess it could definitely come off like I'm demanding too much, but it really seems like there should've been a fail-safe for this where it at least does something to keep you in other parts of the game for longer, because nothing had the tension that the narrative was at that point suggesting because I hadn't experienced basically anything.

It's like, objectively I'd give the game a very high rating based on its merits, but subjectively I was incredibly disappointed 'cause I only got brief glimpses of what the game really has to offer, and it takes a ton away from it to replay it trying to see them, 'cause I know I won't be making my natural decisions, breaking all of the tension the game's supposed to have.

[Original_Name]

You also might be overthinking it, which the game admittedly encourages, but doing so takes us dangerously close to becoming another Raphael.

Yeah, I had that completely in mind the entire time I was typing it up, since that was one of the trailers that made me want the game. I'm not caught up with the whole "is it a game" "where are the emotions" sort of thing, I'm just saying that the game should've done a bit more to preserve the sense of tension it revels in for the 5-10% who'll happen to make the three decisions that I made.

[Pulsar_t]

Always enjoy your posts ON

[dtrack]

There are milestones in the evolution of gaming whether the audience likes them or not. As games evolved they've arrived to the end of the cycle and further increasing the shader model version number can't help either. Most of the games are in the mainstream line even if they are indie regarding their gameplay, narrative and mechanics. Necessarily, the stones must be not only self-reflective but subversive and reflective to gaming (history). Therefore they're getting closer to contemporary media art than a given genre. This is something like the transition was from classical arts to contemporary ones. Some parts must be dispossed in favor to rearrange stresses and this can lead to gamers complaining the game lacking in parts. It doesn't mean it is not enjoyable but players must be prepared (or even trained) to meet the cultural requirements.
I think what's the interesting about this game is not why those people can't enjoy it but why they like the others (where they are basically doing the same). May be the level of immersion what it makes(?).

[Original_Name]

There are milestones in the evolution of gaming whether the audience likes them or not. As games evolved they've arrived to the end of the cycle and further increasing the shader model version number can't help either. Most of the games are in the mainstream line even if they are indie regarding their gameplay, narrative and mechanics. Necessarily, the stones must be not only self-reflective but subversive and reflective to gaming (history). Therefore they're getting closer to contemporary media art than a given genre. This is something like the transition was from classical arts to contemporary ones. Some parts must be dispossed in favor to rearrange stresses and this can lead to gamers complaining the game lacking in parts. It doesn't mean it is not enjoyable but players must be prepared (or even trained) to meet the cultural requirements.
I think what's the interesting about this game is not why those people can't enjoy it but why they like the others (where they are basically doing the same). May be the level of immersion what it makes(?).

Love the post, and I absolutely agree. I am an enormous supporter of what The Stanley Parable represents. I myself have considered learning a bit of code in order to write stories that tear themselves apart in real-time as you read them and such things. I think that The Stanley Parable is treading precisely the territory that games need to tread, and I'm glad that I put my money toward it at least as a symbolic gesture. Like I say, I've had basically the same idea before, a game based mechanically based on dissonance between player and narrator, and dissonance between a given universe and a player's perception of it. Really, I should've started learning C++ and OpenGL back in high school, but I screwed up and now try and fail to get anything off the ground by pitching ideas to IT guys who say "Awh, that's cool, we should do that!" and then never start.

Anyway, my critique with The Stanley Parable isn't that it didn't feel like a "game", or that it was disorienting, or that its mechanics were flawed, or its concept was too "out there". My only issue with it is that it is possible to, in three decisions, reach a conclusion. A conclusion that makes it its operating principle to assume that you have been engaged with the environment for a very long time. If I had made a different decision, and had been walking down corridors for a long time, being lead and mislead by the dissonant narrator before reaching such a conclusion (as I know is possible from what others have said about the game -- and the fact that this is possible is exciting to me and demands my praise), then I would be among the many praising the game. The problem was not in the mechanics, nor in travelling the pathway, nor in the "ending" -- the problem is that they did not protect their own concept by preventing the ability to stumble upon it instantly, because doing so totally neuters it conceptually and meta-conceptually.

Had I been stuck for even half an hour in the actual environment before being thrust out of it simply by making intuitive decisions (as will be the case for 90% of players, my case is a rare one), I would be praising it both on its merits and on my personal experience. But as it stands, I can't do the latter. So, not a matter of mechanics or concept, simply in design. It's possible to skip over the mechanics and concept almost entirely and reach a conclusion that assumes you've been buried in the mechanics and concept for some time. You could make the argument that that's meta too, but I was given absolutely zero reason to believe that it's deliberate.

Always enjoy your posts ON

Thank you! There's always a reason to come back here.

[dsheinem]

So I just spent a few hours with this and probably reached about a half dozen different endings. The "good ending" is absolutely obvious and easy, and that's the point. I guess I am not sure what the critique is. Specifically, this:

the problem is that they did not protect their own concept by preventing the ability to stumble upon it instantly, because doing so totally neuters it conceptually and meta-conceptually.

How does reaching that "good ending" in a few steps neuter the concept of a game that proclaims over and over again (even if you do it right away) that "there is no end"?

I quite like the game, and there are indeed sections that "mock" your choices and so forth, where the narrator gets passive-aggressive, etc. I think you likely need to spend more time with it, ON. How many different paths did you try/endings did you reach?

The museum ending is, thus far, my favorite.

[dtrack]

I didn't write my post as opposed to yours but as an addition, and it was mostly in general.
Howewer i think you just missed the point of this game - at least partially. In most traditional games the goal is to reach the ending(s) as fast as you can. The faster the better and that is why speedruns are popular. But in Stanley Parable you have to put effort to make the game last for a while. Of course it is also subverted but this is very much the concept. When you reach an endig (you died, or escaped or whatever) then it is your fault/merit. But no! It really isn't. That is actually the core of the game. There is a point where the narrator gives you some reason to restart the game and he really does. Then you can reach a certain point and he will restart the game again but with no apparent reason. He just decides to restart.
And of course it is also subverted because your restarted game is still your first game. Restarts are the part of the "quest" and they are not "game overs".
Most of the time i have a feeling of what the idea and concept was but then i can easily witness the interference between idea and execution. It can be a movie or a game or even a painting or any cultural product.
Not this time. I think the game conceptually just as perfect and timely as it is executed flawlessly and I've enjoyed the game more than any other game in the past 1 year.

[Hazerd]

/didnt read large wall of text.

But i did watch a preview of this game and read some posts on it on other forums, and i really want to play this game, but i feel this game is insulting the player , along with the idea that this game is extremely indepth and thought provoking, its almost horror-like and disturbing to a point that it could drive a man insane...