Playing The Stanley Parable this week, I was prepared to be confronted with themes of choice (as the syllabus indicated). While I certainly found the topic of choice to be central to the game’s mechanics and narrative, I was particularly struck by how exposed I felt playing the game. Even during the game’s opening scene, when I discovered the game’s premise, I found myself squirming. Stanley sits in a room, pressing buttons he is anonymously prompted to press, all day for a living, and he is happy? The setting is harrowing in and of itself, and evokes concepts of self-surveillance and lack of privacy.
Once the game began, the feeling of being watched was unmistakable. What’s more, I couldn’t (and still can’t) decide whether the narrator’s tone makes me trust him or not. During my first run, when I got to the room with two open doors, the narrator said that Stanley chose the door on the right, in the past tense, as if the fact that I was about to walk through the right door was common knowledge. Feeling frustrated and rebellious, I took the door on the left, only for the narrator to continue as if he knew that I would go left all along. Yet, I did not feel particularly controlled by the narrator, or the game for that matter. After all, with any videogame, you must willingly subject yourself to the mechanics of the game in order to enjoy it.
On the contrary, I think that The Stanley Parable’s meta-narrator mechanic speaks to the evaporation of privacy in the digital age. Playing the game I found myself in a state of constant self-surveillance. Was the narrator going to reprimand me for disobeying his commands? Would he not care; would he find it amusing? Does the narrator’s opinion/reaction matter in the slightest? The fact that I cared about (or even gave a second thought) to a computer narrator’s “opinion” is analogous to today’s social terrain, particularly with regards to internet communications and social media. The Stanley Parable’s induced self-surveillance felt like the self-surveillance I practice on a regular basis navigating the digital social sphere. I’m hoping to explore this further with my midterm paper.
I really liked your post - I think it leans into a play-centric approach and offers a really potent account of what it feels like to play the Stanley Parable! I would be interested to hear what you think about the fact that Stanley's body also inhabits no physical space. I don't know if you reached the "Out the Window" ending, but in it, you are required to stand on a desk and it becomes possible to look down on where your legs would be - but there's nothing there. This is so unlike other first person perspective games we've played (like Gone Home or Bioshock), where you can at least see your hands as a grounding point of a physic…
I definitely related to the feeling of unease you mentioned. In particular, I felt this way when the narrator would comment on why I made the choices I did. I never made the connection between surveillance and the digital age but it is an apt parallel.