The Stanley Parable’s Approach to Free Will Problem
Are we really free in our decisions, or is this just a fairytale that has been told us from beginning of the humankind? Do humans really want to decide their own fate, or do we really not have a desire to taste freedom at all? These are the questions that philosophers have been looking for an answer for centuries. Nevertheless, they are very-well handled in this particular game: The Stanley Parable. In this article, we will have a look at what is the game about and analyze the way that it approaches to free will problem. This article is free of spoilers, you may read it with peace in mind :)
“You will play as Stanley, and you will not play as Stanley. You will follow a story, you will not follow a story. You will have a choice, you will have no choice. The game will end, the game will never end.”
-from the Steam page of The Stanley Parable
First of all, The Stanley Parable is a first person, interactive discovery game developed and published by Galactic Cafe. In the game, we control a silent protagonist character called Stanley, who is an employee (number 427) in a big office. He is responsible for constantly pushing a certain button for a certain duration. And which button to push? How long to push? These are all reflected through a monitor on his desk. Such an easy and satisfying job, isn’t it? And of course, our hero fulfills this very task without questioning and any doubts, contentedly. One day, the screen goes blank and stops giving orders, which has never happened before. Stanley, stupefiedly, begins the explore the workplace, discovers that the office is completely abandoned. At that moment; his story begins. A narrator accompanies him during his journey, telling him to perform the given instructions in order to find out what happened to his co-workers. To illustrate, during your adventure, when you have two doors in front of you, he says “Stanley went left.” But here is the thing: you are not obliged to go left. Of course, as a player, you have the option the decide which path you want to go with, oh wait… Do you?
Synopsis of the game is simple: the narrator claims directing you to a path that would lead Stanley to freedom, yet you still have the chance to shape your own story as you wish, which apparently won’t make the narrator happy. Each different path you choose, sets sails to a wide range of different endings. In some cases, the narrator, breaking the fourth wall, reacts to your decisions. Whenever you choose an “inconvenient” path, he gets upset and tries to convince you to follow the exact direction he wants, claiming that obedience is something good and his aim is not more than helping you with the problem you are facing. After you disobey him for a couple of times, he gets completely mad and blocks your way (which makes you stuck in the game) in order to follow the “proper” path.
The most important question Stanley raises is “Are we free in our choices?” Well, you can follow the path which narrator claims will take you to freedom, but do you really wish to sacrifice your free will, in order to achieve this “promised” freedom? Or isn’t there actually a free will to sacrifice at all? Is every decision you made already predetermined by someone else? Have you ever thought that even if you completely disobey the narrator, aren’t these decisions also -inversely- correlated on the narrator’s instructions?
To conclude, after asking too many questions, we realize that Stanley actually is used to receiving orders, and even worse, content to be slave. Narrator tells that we are making Stanley sad by defying him, as normal Stanley would follow his orders and wouldn’t break the flow of his story. Stanley didn’t have a desire to be free, actually, why should he? Why do we have to take a rather gruesome responsibility as making choices when, like Stanley, it is easy to receive orders from a computer? As Jean-Paul Sartre states, becoming aware of one’s own free will causes anxiety. Think about it, we all get confused and spend a lot of time staring at the market shelves when we want to buy some simple stuff but there are a lot of different types, brands and price tags present there, don’t we? Wouldn’t it be easier if there were just only one type of pasta, we bought it and left the store in a short period of time, having more time on more “important” stuff than deciding which pasta to buy? Sometimes becoming a Stanley is not a bad thing, is it? Well, did you decide whether you will be a Stanley or not, or are you too Stanley to decide it?
