Stanley went to public school and got good grades. Stanley participated in after school programs like the boy scouts and intramural swimming. Stanley caught a staph infection at summer camp. Stanley stayed away from drugs and alcohol. Stanley let a dog lick his wiener once, but never talks about it. Stanley went to Purdue. Stanley majored in Economics. Stanley rushed for Kappa, but was rejected for pooping himself and not eating the poop. Stanley joined the workforce. Stanley has student loans. Stanley works in an office.
The Stanley Parable is a game about choice.
Games are just a bunch of assets assembled any which way. There is not that much to it. The hard part is building the shit. Textures, programming, bit maps, rigging. It's a whole big to-do. Then some designer comes in and kind of just, puts stuff places. There are fancy words for it, linear pathing, spawn points, funnel dumps. But designers are mostly kicking over a toybox and playing Transformer Barbies.
The best part about games is that you don't even need a protagonist. If you are playing a game, it's implied one is there. You can simply tell a story around empty space. A disembodied perspective wandering around. Stuff talks to that perspective. Objects react to that perspective. the perspective can manipulate specific assets. It's all smoke and mirrors. Following breadcrumbs.
Am I inside that person? Do I control the actions of this person? Has all of this already happened? The cognitive dissonance of participating in a story about someone else as that person is a third rail. The moment I realize nothing I do matters is the moment I begin pressing buttons, searching for the combination of actions needed to make it stop. The Stanley Parable is right there with me, and makes the questions the point.
Anyway, I heard Tim Burton signed on for Beetlejuice 2. That should be fun. Also, Arkham Origins is launching multi platform. Thanks for that. Also there was something else I wanted to say but forgot so also JERBZ.
The Protoculture Mixtape v.177 Issue : People : Gooch
