Oct 25, 2013  I've just completed The Stanley Parable for the eleventh time. I'll avoid spoilers, and instead say that in the 15 or so minutes it took to finish my last playthrough, I laughed, felt a pang of.

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The giant insult on traditional game development techniques and how it got away with itThis article contains spoilers about the game. Stop reading if you want to have a fresh experience with the game. Everything below is my speculation, don't take them as definitive facts.Let me make a safe guess - you have played The Stanley Parable. It has confused you or may be even frustrated. Its nature evokes an inevitable reaction. No matter what you thought about TSP, there is something great about it. You can play it as a comedy game or look at it deeply, perhaps too deep.

And that's what I decided to do.The walking simulatorThe Stanley Parable is everything and beyond video games. It's a giant commentary on todays game development philosophy. Throughout its unexpected span and twisty narrative, it has a clear message - there are problems with narrative in video games, which we have not addressed yet.It is a big blow on the traditional view on narrative and how it is constructed. The Stanley Parable is an insult, directed to everyone who is happy with the status quo. It is so aware of itself and the current industry, that it is not afraid to mock even himself.The Stanley Parable pokes it's finger directly at the weakest point in video games - their, still, underdeveloped narrative skills. By exposing how much is the real agency over narrative in players hands, it is a brilliant comedic piece of art and at the same time a big lesson to those who are willing to look at it more deeply.The 8 gameAs the real game mocks real and full content commercial video games, the demo challenges products of its nature.The first thing that struck me is how many people were actually patient to wait for their number in the waiting room, even when it's completely pointless. I didn't expect anybody would do that.One of the remarks made in the demo is choice variety and how limited it is most of the time.

Or that your choice doesn't really matter and even when it seems to, you eventually get on the track, laid by the products creators.Do you remember the Wall Technology? It outlines when a demo is supposed to show a working slice of the full product, it actually has leftover and unfinished material, which is in conflict with its purpose.The choice which didn't matterThe commercial game starts with the launch trailer where we are introduced to Stanley, employee 427. He is working in a big company where his job is to push buttons on a keyboard. He receives commands through a monitor on his desk.

Stanley is told which buttons to push, for how long and in which order.For a long time I did not understand what that meant or even if there was anything obscure about that description. Yes, his employee number is 427, which contains the number 42 - an appropriate reference to Douglas Adams and his legacy. But perhaps the detailed description of Stanleys job portrays the very notion of playing video games.

We push particular buttons in particular order, to achieve particular effects. We play games, by their explicit rules, the way we are told to do so.In recent years we have seen a great amount of open world/sand box games. But there hasn't been shortage in linear games with strict control over players actions.

Totally agree. I didn't once think that this was a satire on games themselves, but rather how easily the player gets lulled into 'press right button combination - get narrative reward', or even how easily players let 'choice' effect them, even though they are totally on rails in a very defined experience the whole way through the game.

Ironic of course, in that the stanley parable itself is the most extreme offender of what it is satirizing, but interesting as it constantly points that out while you are going through it. I think the best ending is the phone ending, because it most viciously bashes the player for their attitude: Do you really think this game is fun because we have freedom and are exercising it? Well, that's clearly quite the illusion, isn't it.

Welcome to life. Now I've depressed myself.

Every videogame presents its players with a series of choices. While these choices might range from insignificant (where to jump next) to world-changing (whether to kill the king), they are almost always meaningful to the gamer's experience in some way., a downloadable indie game made with developer Valve's free, does present you with choices. However, they don't mean anything.This is precisely the point.'

The design document for The Stanley Parable was, 'Mess with the player's head in every way possible,' says creator Davey Wreden, 'throwing them off-guard, or pretending there's an answer and then kinda whisking it away from in front of them.' In the game, you inhabit the body of Stanley, a man who, despite working a monotonous office job, is completely content with his life. One day, everybody in Stanley's office disappears.

Guided by a disembodied narrator – voiced impeccably by British actor – Stanley ventures off to find out why nobody is there.It's impossible to say much more without ruining the game's brilliantly disjointed story, which takes around an hour to experience in its entirety. There are multiple choices, paths and endings, all of which will leave you with many questions and absolutely no answers.

But The Stanley Parable will leave you thinking, and that's what Wreden is aiming for. 'The whole point of the game is that there is no answer.' 'The whole point of the game is that there is no answer,' Wreden said in a phone interview with Wired.com. 'The entirety of the game is realizing what the question is in the first place.'

The Stanley Parable breaks the fourth wall constantly, acknowledging that it is a videogame, limited by the medium's constraints. It also presents hypothetical questions about the nature of choice, posits a debate about reality and contradicts its own rules constantly.Wreden says the most valuable part of the game is when you turn it off and discuss the experience with somebody else.

He hopes to leave players talking about the nature of videogames – and thinking about ways to take interactive storytelling to the next level. 'You have to critique the things that you love for them to be better,' says Wreden, a USC film school graduate. 'I wanted this to be kind of a slap to the face to videogame developers, to say, 'Hey, take a look at what you've been doing so far.'

I wanted to ask the question 'Why are we doing this?' 'The 22-year-old Wreden, who never designed a game before, says he made The Stanley Parable more out of curiosity than anything else. In the past few weeks, he's been contacted by many developers – both hobbyist and professional – all of whom are interested in working with him on future projects.But first, Wreden is planning to completely remake The Stanley Parable and re-release it as a pay-what-you-want game. He has no idea – he's just happy that he was able to make at least one splash in the industry.' 3d gunstar heroes pc.

Hopefully people play it and say, 'Holy hell, what did I just experience?'