Choice and Freedom in The Stanley Parable

Our paired discussions in class on Tuesday about the different endings to The Stanley Parable had me thinking a lot about our earlier readings’ references to the tension between the desire of the player to exert control over their fate and the designer of the game designer to further the development of the game and its narrative. In a game like TSP, where this tension is brought to the forefront, it makes me wonder to what extent gamic freedom is possible in general. TSP challenges and complicates the typically obedient role of the game player, which is obvious. As Sicart (2010) points out, most video games rely on an instrumentalized form of play, encouraging rational behavior towards predefined, desirable goals – accruing points, unlocking achievements, progressing the plot, etc. Sicart draws a distinction between this form of instrumental thinking and moral thinking, which is required for ethical gameplay; the player has to be morally invested in the decisions taken (104). Last week, when I played Bioshock, I remember encountering the decision of whether or not to harvest the little sister, and having to take a moment to consider the morality of the decision in question. I decided to harvest her in order to acquire more ADAMs, but after learning that this would negatively impact the end of the game, I was able to easily reload that part of the game and make a different decision, effectively swapping one in-game reward for another. Ultimately, my decision was not my own, but rather what the game encouraged in order to get the better ending.

In The Stanley Parable, however, while I was still making decisions in order to unlock different endings, many aspects of the game, in particular the metanarrative style, encouraged further reflection on my role as the player. For one, it takes place in an office setting, which is heavily associated with a lack of freedom, not in an absolute way like being locked in a cage, but through biopolitical control, through the internalizing of normative modes of acting and being. From the beginning, I identified myself with Stanley in a much stronger-than-usual way, given that I was the obedient button-pusher that the game describes him as. Moreover, the narrator alternates between referring to Stanley in the first person and second person. During my first run through, when I got to the control room, I decided to press the on-button to challenge what the game narrator wanted Stanley/me to do. In doing so, I had to reckon with the decision I made in real time, as the narrator expressed his anger towards me for ruining the story, letting me know that I as going to meet my end, even mentioning the deliberate choice to not have a cut scene, so I could scramble around pushing buttons and clicking on doors to find a way out (which I did attempt), feeling free to move around and do things while also powerless. In this first run, I already found myself questioning whether defying the game’s narrative was truly an act of freedom and rebellion or, given that the game invited me to do so without necessarily instructing me. However, the self-awareness of the game, and the relationship between the narrator and myself/Stanley is what makes this experience unique. When the narrator reasserts his control with the bomb, I for once accept my fate in a game, knowing that no well-performed maneuver can save me. In Bioshock, however, even when the player realizes they have been under Fontaine’s control the whole time, while it certainly creates a similar sense of alienation, it is immediately followed by more game objectives in which the illusion of control is sustained. In TSP, this is not entirely avoided, because you restart and go for another ending, but the game is, to some extent, aware of the conditions under which it exists and points to and even mocks your relationship to it in way I’ve never experienced in a video game. In the case of the bomb ending, my delusion of power in a video game was effectively made bare and deconstructed. But where that leaves the role of control and freedom in video games as a whole, I look forward to discussing and exploring further.