Permitted Rebellion and Anti-Capitalism: Lessons From The Stanley Parable
[The following essay was written and submitted in 2018 as part of my undergraduate degree in politics and philosophy at the University of Leeds. As part of the final-year module ‘Video Games — Politics, Society and Culture’, I was tasked with writing a ‘critical review’ of any video game. I chose my favourite game of all time: The Stanley Parable.]
In this essay, I shall give a critical review of The Stanley Parable (2013). I shall first give an outline of the context of the release of the game, including its reception by academia. In the main body of the essay, I shall assess the question: ‘To what extent does The Stanley Parable present a coherent view of unfreedom under capitalism?’, which I shall do via the inspection of three specific moments within the game, and using a mainly literary-theoretic approach. Ultimately, I will conclude that the game is indeed coherent, presenting the view that the freedom to resist capitalism is illusory so long as that resistance accepts the rationality of the system.
Introduction
The Stanley Parable is a 2013 game developed and published by Galactic Cafe, a collaboration between game designers Davey Wreden and William Pugh. Originally created by Wreden as a mod for Half-Life 2 (Valve, 2004) in 2011, the ‘remake’, later to be considered the “definitive version” of the game by Wreden (2013), released to a very positive response. It was nominated for and won several awards, including the ‘Audience Award’ at the Independent Games Festival (Gamasutra, 2014) along with ‘Writing in a Comedy’ at the 2013 NAVGTR awards (2014). A year after its release, The Stanley Parable had sold one million copies. (Wreden, 2014). The game has an 88/100 Metacritic rating (2014), and, at the time of writing, sits at an average of ‘Very Positive’ amongst 29,490 reviews on Steam (2018).
In The Stanley Parable (2013) the player plays as Stanley, an office worker who discovers his colleagues have all vanished. The game consists of the player navigating Stanley’s office as a narrator attempts to narrate the ‘intended’ course of the game. The player, however, may choose to disobey the narrator, causing the story to branch out in various directions. The game has nineteen different endings depending on the player’s choices (The Stanley Parable Wiki, 2018).
Since The Stanley Parable’s (2013) release, both lay and academic analysis has conceived of the game as chiefly an exploration of video games themselves: a game which, as its main concern, “reflects upon its own status as a computer game” (Zhu, 2018, p.2). This is a certainly reasonable focus, especially given Wreden’s own interpretation of the game as examining questions of the “perception and limitations of freedom in video gaming” (Wreden, 2011). However, the analysis of the metatextual implications of the game is often done at the same time as overlooking any broader, societal commentary. In some small capacity, this essay will attempt to rectify this, as we consider The Stanley Parable’s exploration of freedom within capitalism.
A Capitalist Context
Before we analyse, more directly, individual moments in the game, it is first necessary to dispel a major objection to the notion that The Stanley Parable presents a coherent view of freedom under capitalism. That is, that the game does not consider capitalism at all.
This objection may appear in two forms. First, is the “it’s just a game!” objection. This objection amounts to the view that video games are either purely commercial products or toys. From this ontological position, the “it’s just a game” critic asserts that video games cannot confer any meaning beyond the simple interaction between a game’s mechanics and the player. This objection may seem intuitively reasonable in response to games which are more obviously commercial products — Flappy Bird (2013), Candy Crush Saga (2013) or Space Invaders (1978) — though even here it remains somewhat suspect. For The Stanley Parable however, this objection can be rejected out of hand. The game is so mechanically minimal — the player walking and opening doors with no obvious objective — that the “it’s just a game” critic would be forced to claim that The Stanley Parable is essentially meaningless. This is clearly an untenable position.
The second form that this objection may take is the claim that The Stanley Parable more directly considers other themes: metaphysical free will or, most significantly, video game narratives. The subject of capitalism, says this critic, is one extrapolation of meaning too far. To counter this objection, we may turn to the setting and context of the play experience.
At almost every moment of the game, the player is surrounded by exaggeratedly corporate imagery (Barron, 2016). From the insipid grey of the office, to the sterile white light filtering through the windows, to the whiteboards and PowerPoint presentations sporting messages such as “on your Boss Appreciation Minute worksheet, circle the top 20 things you love most about your boss” (The Stanley Parable, 2013). It is hardly unreasonable then, for us to consider The Stanley Parable as basically concerned with capitalism as a subject, and to view the choices the player makes within this context. This is, after all, how the player experiences the game: surrounded by the grey artefacts of a bureaucratic capitalism.
A more effective counter to this objection, is to maintain the position that the objection is, in one key sense, basically flawed. To consider The Stanley Parable as ‘about’ one thing over another is reductive and unhelpful. Regardless of the nature of the authorial intent, to move beyond the position that The Stanley Parable is a game only about games is in itself a useful exercise, and in doing so we open up a rich vein of interpretation.
We can therefore state with confidence that it is legitimate to, at the very least, consider The Stanley Parable in the context of capitalism. From this position then we can move forward to inspect its success or otherwise at presenting a coherent view on freedom.
Two Open Doors
“When Stanley came to a set of 2 open doors, he entered the door on his left” (The Stanley Parable, 2013). This is the first choice that is presented to the player and it is here that the player is introduced to the basic ‘mechanic’ of the game, that is, the choice to obey or disobey the narrator. As the most formative choice in the game, and the purest manifestation of the choices presented to the player throughout the game, it can be read as a kind of thesis statement.
On the surface, the choice is between compliance with the narrator, or rebellion against him. In the context of capitalism, which surrounds the player in the form of the corporate, dystopian office, we may see the choice more broadly between acceptance or resistance. However, there is a great deal of irony in this choice as it is presented to the player. The two doors are placed equidistant from one another; they are both open when the player approaches; the routes through both appear identical (figure 1). All elements of the actual game design point toward the basically illusory nature, or even total meaninglessness, of the choice: the player is equally ‘supposed’ to the go through the right door as the left. Therefore, whichever door the player chooses, their freedom is questioned. The Stanley Parable suggests that a rebellion against the narrative of capitalism, embodied here in the narrator, is no rebellion at all, rather a kind of ‘permitted rebellion’. The rebellion itself is constrained so long as it functions within the logic of the underlying rationality of the capitalist system, just as the player’s choice is within the logic of the game’s design.
If The Stanley Parable presents any view of freedom under capitalism, it is this. The question therefore remains however: does the rest of the game maintain this view with coherence?
The Freedom Ending
Given the presence of an actual narrative conclusion, absent in other endings, The Freedom Ending can be seen as the ‘main’ ending. In the broader narrative of the game, this ending holds particular importance as the only ending that satisfies the narrator’s every ‘command’. It is reasonable then for us to look here to understand The Stanley Parable as a whole.
If the player chooses the left door, and continues to follow the narrator’s account of events, Stanley discovers that he and his colleagues were under both constant surveillance and the influence mind control. The player, at the narrator’s ‘command’, switches off the mind control device, and exits the office, walking into an idyllic pastoral scene.
This certainly appears to be a continuation of the view of freedom in capitalism presented in the ‘Two Open Doors’ choice, and indeed can be understood as an even more explicit confirmation of this view. The player is told by the narrator that Stanley has successfully rebelled against the drudgery of his exploitation; he is free. Even the Steam achievements reinforce this: the player will receive the ‘Beat the game’ achievement upon reaching this ending. But again, there is obvious irony in this. The player has obeyed narrator, giving up every element of their freedom. Rebellion against capitalism is once again presented as purely performative so long as it remains within the constraints of the system itself.
An objection can be made here however. The irony of the Freedom Ending only functions if the player is aware of the many other paths that were available to them. If the player has no game literacy and assumed the narrator’s account of events to be binding on the player’s actions, the game appears totally linear. Indeed, this player may be happy with having beaten the game. With this in mind, the view presented by The Stanley Parable is an even more cynical one. This reading suggests that an agent who has no knowledge of the structures of the capitalist system cannot even come to appreciate their unfreedom let own be free.
However, whilst this may appear to be a more radical view than the one presented in the ‘Two Open Doors’ choice, this does not in fact imply incoherence. If we, as we ought to, consider the Freedom Ending is a narrative climax of the game, then we should expect a development in its message in comparison to the beginning of the game. To see narrative development and assert an incoherence of message seems unsound. The objection therefore appears to stem from a conception of the game as having an un-narrative form. This is a basically false conception, and the coherence of the game’s view therefore stands.
The Not Stanley Ending
Like the Freedom Ending, the Not Stanley Ending can also be seen as the ‘main’ ending, possessing, as it does, a sense of narrative climax. It also has significance as one of only two endings in which the player acts against the narration at every decision point. On this narrative importance then, our focus can be justified.
Of the two open doors, if the player chooses the right door and continues to rebel against the narrator, they reach the Not Stanley Ending. The turning point in this playthrough comes when the narrator forces Stanley into a room with a ringing phone. Both the game design and the narrator suggest that there is no choice other than to pick up the phone. However, the player may in fact unplug the phone at the wall. This should be read as the only choice in the game that actually functions as a resistance to the game’s structures. The narrator states explicitly: “no, that wasn’t supposed to be a choice”; “you […] chose incorrectly”.
Here, it appears that the narrator and the explicitly capitalist environment that surrounds the player, meld into one. Whereas previously the narrator stood above the dystopian, capitalist grey of the office, here he seems to create it, manifesting an out-of-place room containing only a phone. If we did not already, we should understand the narrator, and more broadly the coercive structures of the game itself, as paralleling the structures of the capitalist system. From this, The Stanley Parable’s view of capitalism can again be seen.
If the game is coherent in its view of unfreedom under capitalism, then the choice to unplug the phone, a choice that does seem to transcend the rationality of the system within the game, should be capable of forming actual resistance to this system. As we see, this is indeed the case. After unplugging the phone, the insipid capitalistic grey of the office becomes an absurdist patchwork; the narrator is unable to continue with his preferred course of events; and, finally, the player is separated from Stanley, standing above and outside of the office. The player achieves a meaningful freedom in contrast to the Freedom Ending. The game therefore does seem to maintain coherence in its view that only a choice that goes beyond the rationality of capitalism is a free one.
An objection can be levelled against this position however, if we read the choice to unplug the phone more cynically. This objection runs as follows. The choice to pick up the phone does not transcend the rationality of the game design. The very fact that the plug is visible to the player is a conscious choice of the design of the game. Indeed, to unplug the phone, the player must press ‘e’, an action only available to the player if they accept the basic rationality of the system. Given this, when the structure of the game breaks down and the player secures their liberty, the game loses its coherent view. Indeed, it presents a contradictory one: that resistance that accepts capitalist rationality is actual resistance and can be a meaningfully free act.
We should be sceptical of this objection however, as it asks for an impossible solution. If this objection holds, the only way for The Stanley Parable to maintain its view, would be to allow a possible choice which is outside of the design of the video game itself. This is impossible by definition. We ought to admit that The Stanley Parable, in so far as it is possible within a necessarily designed system of play, creates such a choice for the player, thus preserving the coherence of its view.
Conclusion
To conclude, I have argued that The Stanley Parable presents a coherent view of unfreedom under capitalism, namely, that only resistance that resists not on the basis of capitalist rationality can display actual freedom. I have shown this via a demonstration of the capitalist context of the game, the analysis of three key moments within the game, and the rejection of several objections.
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