The Stanley Parable is a game that is all about expectations – the expectations of how a demo should work, how it is played, and what the player walks away with. With an emphasis on removing external challenge in the game, the goal of the game is in providing the player with space to understand themselves through their actions.
As opposed to providing a set of binary choices that fulfil a particular goal, the game instead offers these choices and interactions through which the player can explore their own reasons for making them. In essence, the game merely facilitates the narrative of the player. It is their actions that drive the narrative, while the narrator serves to acknowledge and register your actions.
The point of this demo is to play upon the very concept of a demo itself. Because a traditional demo of the game would be jeopardised from having a portion of the game extracted without context, it is apparent that the goal of this particular demo is to recreate its self-referential humour. Thus rather than providing a preview of the content of the game, but rather an emphasis on the nature of the game.
The very nature of The Stanley Parable hinges on the design philosophy of its developers – to provide the player with a space for introspection. With the inclusion of a narrator who seemingly responds to each action of the player, this negotiation between obedience, confusion and exploration is used to create a sense of playfulness without the need for external challenge. Just as the idea of the traditional game demo is subverted, this demo serves as an example of the kind of subversion that the final game itself strives to make.
In addition, the demo is a critique on the current state of trends in the game industry, while also reinforcing its own design philosophy. For example, the narrator offers a variety of buttons to the player, promising that the game offers a multitude of potential answers for each. Regardless of the button pressed, they all return the same response. In this exercise, the player cannot continue without first pressing one of the buttons, also emphasising the superficial context in which these games offer choices, and as a means to an end. This echoes the shallow and linear tendency of a player’s choice in game.
This is accentuated elswhere, where the demo features a set of booths that are described to be able to ‘convert text into raw emotion’ for the player. When stepping inside, it simply plays a scripted sequences of projected text, voiceover and light, parodying the seemingly-formulaic methods in which games attempt to derive emotion from the player.
While not serving as a traditional game demo for The Stanley Parable, this demo succeeds in accomplishing the very essence of the game. It showcases the wit of the narrator, the game’s self-referential humour, and a clear indication of the goal of the developers. It not only plays with expectations of a game demo, but also toys with the concept of play itself.
