This is not going to become a video game blog. Just need to get this out of my head.

I stopped actively playing video games years ago. I did it because I’m bad at them and it stopped being fun. I need to stop again and I will soon not because games aren’t fun, but because I want nothing to do with them or the culture surrounding them.

The Stanley Parable is the kind of game people have claimed to have wanted for a long damn time. They’ve wanted art in video games. But if we are to call this game “Art”, we must evaluate it as art. In terms of it being a video game and as art, it fails miserably.

You are supposed to see all of the endings in the game in order to “get” what the message of the game is about. Here’s what I “got” from The Stanley Parable: freedom can only be found in being an adolescent, cynical, nay-saying little shit who says “NUH-UHHHH!” to whoever tells them to do anything. It is the elevation of Zach de la Rocha’s infantile “Fuck You! I Won’t Do What You Tell Me!” to the level of pure dharma. It is the distilation of every cynicism saturated piece of media to which the males of my generation masturbate. It is The Matrix, Fight Club, V For Vendetta, Office Space, every dystopia, every “my job sucks”, etc. It is every over-cynical thing that has ever screamed “Everything sucks, there is no way to make it any better except to destroy the whole thing and start over”. It is different only in the total lack of window dressing around the idea.

The message of The Stanley Parable is not “disobey”. It is “only ever disobey ever at absolutely all costs”. The only difference between this game and every other movie, book, song, television show, video game or what-have-you the males of my generation masturbate to is the fact that it places you in the feet of the person doing the disobeying.

This is contrasted against the game’s “obey” ending in that there is no contrast. In both these endings you are on as much of a track as the other. There are four other endings, one where the narrator turns on a nuclear timebomb and talks a lot of crap about you acting like you’re in video game (and you die), one where you find out you are insane (and you somehow die, despite the fact that mental illnesses are not suddenly fatal), one where you are told to stop playing the game (and since you’re a naysaying little shit, you don’t turn it off and die), and one that is cynicism incarnate (where the character continues to live his boring, complacent, utterly ineffectual life and then dies.) I’m not so much ruining this game as showing you that it comes direct to you pre-ruined.

Mindlessly disobeying is not any more freeing than mindlessly obeying. I am under no delusion that this is some terrifically deep statement. But there is no way to be “deep” about this game. The word “pretentious” is often thought to refer to things that are “so deep” that they are largely inscrutable. “Pretentious” means “Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed.” In other words, “pretentious” has to do with “pretending” to be deep when it is not. That I cannot be deep about this game is not a symptom of my inability to be deep, it is a symptom of this game’s shallowness.

Some will argue that I’m missing the point of all of this and tell me this game is only about freedom of choice in most video games and lack of the feeling of control video games can give you.

So it’s a video game about video games made by a gamer for gamers about the gamer’s (general) point of view in a problem relating to video games. Also, it’s a mod. Which means it’s a video game requiring you to own other video games to play. And it’s not well known meaning you’re probably a niche gamer who reads video game blogs to have heard of it let alone play it. This isn’t art, it’s a fucking bandwagon. And people have jumped on top of it like it contains eternal life and a million dollars. I have never seen any piece of media have such an overwhelming percentage of overwhelming praise.

“But it’s just a game. It’s only about video games not life.” Etc. etc. ad infinitum. The point it is trying to make about video games is something-something lack of control something-something choice free will blah blah whatever. It’s facile and obvious and completely aimed at individuals chomping at the bit to agree if for no other reason to look intellectual within a group not terribly well-known for intellectualism. The game challenges no pre-conceived notions on the part of it’s terribly narrowed and focused audience and lacks the ability to move that conversation forward a millimetre.

So why write about it at all then? Because while video games are an art form, true art is hard to find in games. This game is almost universally considered wonderful, brilliant, excellent, illuminating and so on by that audience. But it is both crap as a game and abysmal as art. Video games deserve better in the way of choices and they will get better as companies decide to sink money into entertaining games that allow freer choices. Art games deserve better than The Stanley Parable.