Spotlight on Games: The Stanley Parable

First things first. Go play the Stanley Parable. This is a game where the story carries the entire game, so I can't possibly review this without spoiling pretty much the entire game. I recommend that you play this, not because it's a fun or necessarily good game, but it's a very interesting game. It is guaranteed to give you something to think and talk about. A little bit about the price, it is a bit pricey for the amount of gameplay. I paid 8 dollars and still feel like I wasted some money, but then again I am really cheap when it comes to games. Watch the trailers and try the demo and you might be intrigued enough to buy it, but whatever you expect from it, don't. Go into it with an open mind or you will walk away disappointed.

Spoilers Begin Here

The Stanley Parable is an experiment. It's a look into the nature of gaming and story telling, almost a satirization of the way most games present choices and the illusion of free will. You control the character of Stanley while a narrator explains a story. However, you can deviate from the narrator's instructions and try and forge your own story. You quickly discover that the narrator is aware of the player, and the fact that he is in a game. The fourth wall is broken very early on when the narrator begins to directly address the player as a player. You also quickly discover that the creators were meticulous in their storytelling. Every choice you can possibly make is accounted for and followed through. This gets very frustrating, because the way the game is presented demeans and humiliates the player and the very nature of gaming. Trying to explain it like this is kind of vague and confusing, so I'll take this one element at a time.

The story, I must admit is superb in its use of symbolism and analogy. You begin as Stanley, office worker 427, a man who spends all day pressing keys at a computer that tells him what keys to press and how long to press them. This is an analogy for gaming, because technically gaming  is just pressing buttons at a keyboard. Stanley is perfectly happy with his existence until suddenly the computer stops giving him instructions and all of his coworkers disappear. Stanley is then prompted by the narrator to go explore. From that point, you come to a room with two doors, the first obvious choice you are allowed to make, and this is where the major gameplay element comes into play: choice. The narrator says the Stanley takes the door to the left, but the door to the right is open and it is simple to disobey and take it. On my first playthrough I began with the right door, so I'll do the same here.

Entering the right door, the narrator's voice becomes slightly irate and he changes the story and gives you essentially the same choice, go back onto the path of the story or continue disobeying. Continuing to disobey makes the narrator realize that you are in fact a player, and he addresses you as such. The interesting thing is, the more you choose to disobey, the less options become available to you, and eventually you are forced to follow the linear story that the narrator has set out, but a "broken" version, one you are unable to complete. 

If you choose to follow the story completely, relinquish all choice and let the narrator guide you, the story tells you that you have been under mind control the entire time, and eventually you disable the mind control device and you reach the only "good" ending in the game, Stanley goes free. The irony of this ending is palpable, freedom is obedience, you break free of the mind control by having someone else tell you what to do. It's by far the most satisfying ending, and says a lot about the narrative strategies in other games where straying from the storyline, trying to "break" the game is often unsatisfying and unrewarding. 

Yet The Stanley Parable is a game where the player is compelled to break the game, just to escape the grasp of the narrator. The most frustrating part is that everything you try, every action you take has been accounted for and laid out. You can try and kill yourself but the narrator just keeps on narrating and the game restarts. You can try to escape through a window, you can fall out the map, every way you try and break the game, you think you've won but suddenly the narrator just keeps on talking, and the frustration mounts. This is the message of the Stanley Parable: Control.

The defining moment of this theme of control is the countdown ending. You're in a very boss-battle like room, littered with buttons and monitors that drop clues to which buttons you're supposed to press to stop the countdown. The only thing is, it's impossible. The buttons do nothing, the clues mean nothing, as soon as you choose this ending you've already lost. As you run around the narrator taunts you for trying to beat the game, taunts you for thinking that you actually have any control over the narrative. This is the truth the Stanley Parable conveys, the truth it reveals about any game you play, your decisions mean nothing. You only have the illusion of choice, of free will, you are trapped in the game. As long as you play the game the game has complete control over you. Yet, in another ending, you can torture the narrator by repeatedly throwing yourself off a stairwell, trying to kill yourself rather than live in safety with the narrator. The narrator pleads you to stop, but the only way to advance the narrative is to continue.

This is the symbiotic relationship between the player and the game, the viewer and the art. Art is meant to be taken in, experienced, and The Stanley Parable, does an excellent job of portraying how much the narrator, the game needs Stanley, how much art needs someone to appreciate it. Without the viewer, there is paint on a canvas, mere lines of code, but with a viewer, a player, someone to appreciate and understand it, there is art, there is meaning, there is a message, there is more than meets the eye.

Yet this relationship has some troubling implications. The narrator implies games are mind-control, a prison, a place where the player has no control, yet it is a prison that the player voluntarily enters, and as long as they are there they have no control. The Stanley Parable criticizes the pastime, saying gaming is living someone else's fantasy, there are times when it seems the narrator is addressing Stanley when the narrator is actually addressing the player. The narrator tries to tell Stanley that he isn't in fact experiencing this world, but pressing keys at a keyboard, but as I played through this part I was oblivious to the fact that the narrator was in fact describing me. This is the genius of the Stanley Parable, it immerses you while trying desperately to break you out. It makes you ignorant to the lack of free will you have in the game, and the free will you have in the real world.

The only way to beat the Stanley Parable it to stop playing. There is no satisfaction to be found in any of the endings. This is not a game you play for pleasure. Hell I'm even hesitant to call this a game. The Stanley Parable is an experiment of the mind. It's a message addressed to Stanley but meant for you. It asks questions without questioning them, it points out incongruities and hypocrisies without pointing at them. The goal of the game is not to win, it is to send a message, to convey an idea. This is not a game, it is an art. Not satisfying, but visceral, not enjoyable, but interesting.

As a game, I hate the Stanley Parable,
but as art, it was beautiful.

Modular Madness

A while ago I ran into an idea called Phonebloks, and thought it was clever, that it might work, and that I really, really want one. As someone who has built their own computer, I have an appreciation for the power and price of a custom built computer  (Protip: it's cheaper and better). I love the freedom of being able to choose the hardware that goes into my computer. When I saw the opportunity for that to happen with a phone as well, I was ecstatic. At the time, realistically I considered it not very feasible. From a design and technology perspective, phones are able to be small because the hardware is arranged on top of each other, intertwined with each other, there is zero wasted space. When you separate and isolate the parts, and put room between them, the phone takes up a lot more space. Unlike PCs, phones (obviously) need to be compact to fit in pockets as such. This article explains a bunch of reasons an idea like Phonebloks probably wouldn't work. After reading it, I was mildly pessimistic about the possibility of such a phone until very recently.

On October 28th, Motorola announced Project Ara, essentially the exact same thing as Phonebloks, and I have to say, I'm excited to see them prove Colin Lecher wrong. I've even signed up for the Project Ara Dscout, the app that lets users give feedback, comments and ideas to the developers through a series of "missions" over the next few months. So for the rest of this post, I'm going to talk about my initial thoughts about Project Ara.

So like I mentioned, I'm really excited for this idea, and I really want one, but I am worried about the size of the phone since, as I also mentioned, the parts are going to be separated and there is going to be some wasted space. Hopefully, technology has advanced enough for this to be a negligible problem. I also hope they don't solve it by making the parts less complex, trading higher-end technology for the module design. Either that or made the phone the size of a Phablet or something stupid like that.

I don't remember where, but I read somewhere that specific builds of Android are required for different combinations of parts in order to have full optimization. This isn't a problem with conventional smartphones since every phone has the same parts, but with a modular phone, this is obviously a problem. I'm curious to see how that problem is solved.

I'm very curious to see what companies start developing modules for Project Ara, and for what. It'd be awesome if Nvidia, AMD and Intel made processors and things specifically for gaming. I mean that's the entire point of this right? To have phones that can be customized to fit even the most specific or obscure niches.

So yea.
I'm pretty excited.

The Man Who Rules The Universe

On January 1st, 1980, Pan Books published Douglas Adams's Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Chapter 29 of that book features a minor, but fascinating character: the Man who Rules the Universe. He lives with his cat in a ramshackle hut on a desolate planet hidden and protected by a field of Unprobability. The most interesting feature about this man, however, is that he believes in nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even the things he perceives with his own eyes.

Most would call such a man insane, and that was clearly Adams's intent. But the fascinating thing about this character is that, in fact, he isn't. On the outside, the man is as he appears, weathered, rough and quite out if his mind, but underneath this facade is a sort of bemused, resigned but very perceptive intelligence. His insanity seems more like something to pass the time in the isolation on his lonely planet rather than an actual degradation of his psyche. My reasoning for this is as follows; the man seems to know exactly what is going on. With apparent awareness of the situation, he distracts Zarniwoop, allowing Trillian and Zaphod to escape unnoticed, then deliberately locks Zarniwoop out of the house and ignores him. These very calculated, specific actions lend evidence to the idea that the man who rules the universe is not only at least partially sane, but has an awareness and understanding of the world beyond his apparent doubt of everything he perceives. The way he acted, the actions he took imply that the man knows the consequences of the actions he took, and the consequences of the trio's presence on the planet.

The man's entire reality exists in a duality of doubt, and actions contradicting that doubt. His life symbolizes the somewhat bittersweet truth that every philosopher, every conspiracist, every human on this planet must face.

We are trapped by our experiences, they are inescapable, we can doubt them all we want but in the end, we must live our lives as human beings along with the rest of the world. We have no choice but to interact with the world under the assumption that it is real.

But is that such a bad thing?

Our lives, no matter how much we doubt them, are quite beautiful. Every day we have the chance to learn something new, something fantastic, to meet new people, to discover new places, to have some fun. Our lives, have the potential to be quite enjoyable. The Man who Rules the Universe can find excitement in everything he experiences, because he can experience them in a new way every time. He lives with his cat in a ramshackle hut on a desolate planet hidden and protected by a field of Unprobability, yet he can find something to do, something to enjoy every single day. What excuse do we have for stagnancy?

I say enjoy life, all of its doubts, assumptions and beauties.
After all, it's all that we got.

I bid you welcome to the Man Who Rules The Universe.