# review of stanley's dubious parable the stanley parable": that it has little to say and indeed actively denies criticism and introspection through simple almost entirely non-mysterious obfuscation - a cheap façade of a (non) mystery. a deceptively simple 'deceptive simpleness' // video here despite being repeatedly told that only trick and garme being played is on the player the only trick and garme being played in the stanley parable is on the player the ideology of the stanley parable to consider stanley's simple explicit and utterly unconcealed 'common sense' surface message as: "you don't need to think; you're as smart as teh garme is" perhaps the subtle form of coldly manipulative player mis-relationship to the asymmetric power of the narrator being sold: "congratulations son; you're now in on the in-joke." the joke itself however might be laughable and worthy of cool philosophical doubt more than just possibly pseudo-deep consider the stanley parable artfully shallow sidestepping criticism by having its own (pseudo) criticism embedded as teh garme's very structure t.s.p directly parallels the obscene comedy of duck soup: "gentlemen chicolini here may talk like an idiot and look like an idiot. but don't let that fool you. ey really is an idiot." it's not that t.s.p doesn't sound clever and look sophisticated - but rather its cleverness itself might be highly limited and even deceiving consider stanley a slang term among players: a "stanley" - players admired for the degree to which they cleverly deconstruct and appreciate entertaining traditional postmodern garming experiences which break the forth wall and provide endless meta-commentary rather than a symbol for some truer (video) reality beneath the lie perhaps t.s.p is already a set of heavily codified cultural (garming) conventions that seem to come already open and 'decoded' - but which which in fact always need critically interpreting what's strangely amusing are the players of t.s.p on youtube (often as egotistical as stanley and ir paltry self-constructed universe) who are confused about what to do in teh garme. this is despite the fact the entire garme constantly tells them they're confused; and yet plain confusion might all that might be happening. in short that is t.s.p as a virtual nothing to write home about as a parable t.s.p does 'conveys a meaning indirectly' - but perhaps all it conveys is the strictly drab myth that it has anything to convey at all; perhaps all it has to convey is mere small potatoes asking the wrong questions the fact that t.s.p throws up more questions than answers doesn't necessarily mean such questions are automatically worth asking stanley's proud ideology manifested as its surface: you'll make a choice that does not matter - you'll follow a story that has no end - you'll play a garme you cannot win; but rather than signposts for garming expectations these are its pre-existing conceptual constraints while many players state that "duh 'there is no point' is the entire point" this might be true nonsense masquerading as seemingly clever nonsense. t.s.p breaks no 'forth wall'; perhaps the fourth wall does not exist. (perhaps the fourth wall is no less illusory than the other three - and may in fact be the most critically impenetrable) maybe there's no 'metafiction' at work in t.s.p either; perhaps its only metafiction is merely the as-said assumption of its existence; but then neither is there much 'fiction' either. this leaves "the actual garme" - and maybe that's the most virtual and problematic assertion of all what t.s.p mistakes for transparency - some alleged wizard of oz-like peek behind the making of the dubious video garme sausage - is really an opaqueness of and enabled by that very transparency image here: the opaque transparency of stephanie sterling at no point is the player any deeper behind its persistent blank surfaces; whatever shallowness displayed is indeed all that's hidden right before the eyes - a startling vacancy hidden in plain sight yet even if teh garme dev admitted ey had no idea what they were doing in t.s.p from the outset this might still not make teh garme any less non-mysterious the term "autodidactic" may here be used as a criticism for a work (/schedule) 'overly burdened with seemingly instructive factual or otherwise educational information in the holy name of enjoyment' - but which exists to the detriment of the player an illogical theory consider t.s.p as little more than an experiment; yet this is an experiment without a testable or even detectable hypothesis; it is it's own tauto-illogical hypothesis there should be an option to play through t.s.p without "the narrator" warden forever yapping uselessly to itself inside its own vacated brain. consider the whole garme as stanley's disembodied body which produces ir disembodied voice to be able to play 'teh garme' suggested and implied by stanley the narrator without ir commentary as the truer (ludo-narratively) dissonant goal of t.s.p that everything exists at the (literal - virtual) surface of t.s.p is not / is hardly any kind of revelation; that little but nothingness exists as that surface might be the realer reason 'garme levels that look like abandoned stage sets from a nameless postmodern movie' feel so interesting and seductive to the player might have something to do with the generalized all-encompassing naturalized artificiality of daily western existence the totalizing degree to which modern wired citizens are always already fully embedded in/as global simulation (capital information power language etc) that always proudly presents itself naturally as 'guaranteed entirely artificial' - that is fully open as to it's (oh-so inevitable) façades of endless artifice and 'free' play reality television for pzombies the people who take part in "reality tv" shows would not take part if they weren't already fully convinced of the appeal and 'truth' of the profound fakeness of the show; ir direct involvement is entirely based on ir unquestioning acceptance that reality simply isn't worth caring about - not when you've this many (forever unseen) viewers checking you out stanley clearly states about ir garme / the private garme that is himself: "..it's actually best if you don't know anything about it before you play it"; in fact stanley knows little before during or after; to use an old hip hop term ir's just 'played himself'. for all ir clever talk ir's dangerously bereft of inner knowledge that is rather than 'mad' stanley / the narrator is more usefully to be considered an automatic pzombie [caption id="attachment_28696" align="aligncenter" width="530"] teaching stanley's dubious parable to the 'natives'[/caption] to a distinctly indistinct artificial intelligence such as stanley all intelligence is artificial - and therefore to be treated inhumanly - with polite contempt and passive-aggressive dominance; a condescending father figurine who always knows best the ongoing undeath of the author (player) in which players smugly consider they're always already playing "the stanley parable" - and that ir warm feelings of being unable and-or unwilling to wake up from it are part and parcel of its cynical design; yet the only (ultimate ie. from the very outset) irony however is that they still do not wake up sure "the narrator" is not to be trusted; the irony however is that players believe either ir lies andor ir truths the pathetic possibly anti-philosophical non-question "is life a dream?" exists only for the shallow and self absorbed; for those who willingly submit to useless illusions concerning what's (unconsciously - yet explicitly) already considered both real andor fake even as pseudo choices perhaps both real and fake in t.s.p are still both as fake as coke or pepsi - as is both of them combined (the player is instructed that both real and fake are to be transcended through it's own more truthful 'third way') - the way of play perhaps? one imagines a dim (in all senses) future where "the stanley parable" is gently provided as a dim (ideological) test to potential full time employees of a faceless hyper-bureaucratic institution for wilfully self-incarcerated players > the job is yours stanley only to the degree to which you 'get it' - the degree to which you're intelligent enough to understand the degree of t.s.p's true darkly artificial intelligence with a sly knowing wink and a 'in-on-the-in-joke' nudge" (to the fellow inmates) > ~ the narrator it's not that "the narrator" tells players both lies and truths - but that they listen to ir at all - and indeed feel secure in all that ey tells them; ey thinks out loud so that they don't have to empty signs pointing nowhere t.s.p as an empty sign signifying our depthless sterile relentlessly and ruthlessly clever vain and endlessly well designed video garme hyperreality panopticon forever self-policed by those who can but endlessly laugh - precisely because they're know they're *not* free (yet still exist within stanley's strictly enforced ideological limits) rather than 'self awareness of limitations' t.s.p might merely encourage the continued playing of artful garmes it is precisely because of the the fact teh garme outright tells players "this world was not made for you to understand" that the stanley parable has much to aggressively teach (read: instruct); an entirely mystery free ontological mystery to willingly fall under the stanley parable's stifling lightly perfumed spell is to be gently yet firmly crushed under the polite corporate weight of an empty office filing cabinet as nate kierman of kritiqal correctly states it is fitting that players eventually arrived in a museum dedicated to teh garme itself; an internal monument to a project which clearly recognizes its own genius even as others struggle to understand the appeal wait a sec let's begin again. does this mean i get the job? (robert what) **update patch**: the stanley parabola in this updated version of the classic garme of scripted freedom(tm) consider yourself a generic postmodern video garmes critic called stanley (played by herbert marshall mcluhan in a cameo role) who plays the ghost of a dream of a memory of an ancient cyborg warrior - a love samurai trying to find ir dead wife nora inside a poem the stanley parabola breaks new ground by allowing the player to do literally anything. let's look at an example in this scenario the player has just infused a bicycle with the soul of ir great great great uncle hermophrates' ethereal presence to detect nearby mineral deposits. or ey might train the bicycle in the art of undoing temporal paradoxes example feature list **+** lots of things to do and see **+** multiplayer by default (see other players as ghosts) **+** infinitely community-moddable plug in and play style levels **+** like 2001 meets kafka in resident evil vs garry's mod **+** everything in world is meanfully inter-active **+** nonlinear paths to each new level // republic of bob