Videogame Ethics aren't real - especially not in The Stanley Parable

When playing videogames, it becomes easy to accept the so-called “magic circle” as fact, and thus buy into the illusion that the player has any choice in the game. There is the thinking that especially in open world games, such as Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto, there are more options to engage in “ethical choices” by choosing not to kill people or commit theft. Yet, there are no consequences to these actions. If the player so chooses, the game can be restarted, and the actions are meaningless. The Stanley Parable plays with this very concept in the “Confusion Ending”, where the narrator “restarts” the game some 6 times before the game does an actual hard reset. It doesn’t matter if the player – or even the narrator – makes mistakes, since there are no real consequences to the game. The game has no memory of past events or outcomes. Indeed, some players might believe the only way to “win” the game is by finding all the outcomes, thus demanding constant resets and erasing past attempts.

Under this framework, the very idea of ethics becomes meaningless. Sicart himself acknowledges this, since, in a game with ethics, “there is no testing of solutions for ethical dilemmas: once the player takes a choice, reloading to a prior state to that choice is not possible. Permadeath is an option” (Sicart 108). And yet, the very intention of The Stanley Parable is to discover different paths, different outcomes based on previous actions. The point of ethics is to make decisions that alter the path, but it’s more than that. Using ethics means deciding to push oneself in a different path, one that cannot be taken back. Just like a burnt match can’t be relit, an ethical decision can’t be remade. Therefore, even in games with the illusion of ethical decisions, there is no real ethical weight to the matter.

This leads me to an idea, one that takes Sicart’s analysis to its logical conclusion: the very nature of videogames is counterintuitive to the concept of ethics. Of course, it can be used as a tool to analyze the impact of different decisions on people and the environment, but the decisions made in videogames, by their very nature, can’t be held to any ethical standard. Even if the player buys into the idea that decisions in videogames have the potential to cause harm or joy (an idea that itself demands scrutiny), the ability to erase the decision and make a new one if the player is unhappy undermines the concept of ethics. Ethical gameplay is an oxymoron, unless the game is set to self-destruct once the player completes the game. (But one must question whether such a game would be very commercially successful…) Perhaps Sicart conflates the notion of simulation with the idea of ethical decision-making to come to the idea of “Ethical Gameplay”, but games, whether on the computer, console, or phone, can only be simulators of various situations. They have no real impact on life beyond what the player can learn, and that’s what distances it from true ethical decision-making. Just as reading a book has no true ethical weight, playing a videogame means nothing in the context of ethics.

This brings us back to The Stanley Parable. Stanley can die. Stanley can wander different paths. Stanley can choose to end mind control or attempt to take control himself. Yet, Stanley will always end up back in his office, 427, and nothing will have any lasting impact. Characterizing The Stanley Parable as an opportunity for “ethical gameplay” is a mischaracterization of what that term is. There are no ethics in this game, only simulations of ethics. A person can attempt to end the world, jump off platforms, or even go into a Broom Closet. But, as the nihilist says, nothing really matters in the end. It doesn’t matter because you always come back to 427.