Davey Wreden, The Stanley Parable, and Games as Artistic Language

Gaming feels stagnant. The vast majority of blockbusters (so-called Triple-A titles) seem trapped in multimillion-dollar production cycles, repetitions of safe formulas, and technical ambitions that weigh more than their narratives. On top of that, sky-high prices for games we'll hardly finish, or that we're not sure will hook us enough to dedicate more than 30 hours to.

Against this backdrop, the independent space has been carving out more and more room. Over the past fifteen years, the indie scene has not only offered different, original, and more affordable experiences. It has also brought back a figure that had been overshadowed by "the industry" (with a few special exceptions, like Hideo Kojima): the author. Something reminiscent of the medium's early days, when names like the beloved Ron Gilbert or Tim Schafer could be recognized behind a title, like a director behind a film. Strong authorial brands, like Chris Sawyer with RollerCoaster Tycoon.

We can trace the beginning of this new indie wave to 2008, with the brilliant Jonathan Blow and Braid, followed by Markus "Notch" Persson with Minecraft (2011) and Team Meat (Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes) with Super Meat Boy (2010). But this piece is dedicated to someone who came along a bit later, in 2013: Davey Wreden. A creator who turns his works into spaces for philosophical and psychological exploration. Who uses interactivity not to entertain in the traditional sense, but to confront the player with uncomfortable questions about freedom, creation, and identity. As I like to say: art in multiple layers.

The Stanley Parable: Our Own Cave

In 2008, a young Wreden, 22 years old, a Nintendo fan and film student, decided to learn how to use Valve's Source engine. He had an idea: to give the player the ability to disobey the narrative imposed by the game and explore the consequences. That's how his first masterpiece was born, The Stanley Parable, which in its initial version was a Half-Life 2 mod and didn't get its final release until 2013.

The allegory of the cave is the most famous in the history of philosophy. In it, Plato describes how a group of people live chained in darkness, believing that the shadows they see are reality, when in fact they are being projected by other humans who control them. Discovering the truth and escaping that cave doesn't guarantee happiness: on the contrary, it often brings rejection, misery, and even death to whoever tries to free the others.

Many modern works have drawn on this metaphor, like The Matrix or The Truman Show. But The Stanley Parable is different, because here we are the ones who decide whether to escape the cave. The control is in our hands, something that only the video game format can give us.

"Stanley worked in a large building where he was Employee 427. His job consisted of pressing buttons on a keyboard, the buttons he was told to press and for how long to press them. To anyone else, it might have seemed like a boring and exhausting job, but Stanley enjoyed every moment when the orders came in. He believed he had been made exactly for this purpose; he was happy.

And then one day, something very peculiar happened... after sitting for an hour in front of the monitor, he realized that no orders had arrived for him to follow. This had never happened before; something was clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen, Stanley found himself unable to move for a long time. But when he regained his composure and came to his senses, he stood up from his seat and headed out of his office..."

(If any of this reminds you of Severance, the Apple TV series, it's because the game was its source of inspiration -- a fact confirmed by its creator)

That's how we're introduced to the story of Stanley, which from that point on becomes ours as well, since we take control of this obedient worker to help him escape his routine and finally be free. Or is that exactly what the narrator wants?

Because, of course, if we follow everything this omniscient voice tells us, we'll reach a happy ending -- the curious only happy ending in the game -- and this is a very important detail. Stanley uncovers the company's sinister plans, shuts down the machinery, and manages to escape: to leave the cave and be free. All of this happens by following to the letter every... order? we're given as we progress.

... Never again would anyone tell him where to go, what to do, or how to feel. Whatever life he lived from now on, it would be his own.

And that was all he needed to know. It was, perhaps, the only thing worth knowing.

This was exactly the way everything was meant to happen. And Stanley was happy.

But the game resets and we're back in Stanley's office, and as we move forward and hear the same words again, we realize that everything has truly started over. The ending was happy, but it wasn't satisfying. What had happened to his coworkers? Why, beyond the fact that Stanley ended up fine, don't we feel free ourselves? Something feels off. The problem was that we had done everything we were told. The freedom seemed fake, and it was.

So we start exploring other options, defying the narrator, going through the right door when he specifically tells us to take the left one. We become the masters of the story, because Stanley would never have done that -- his script was already written and ended in freedom, a fake freedom. He was still chained in the cave; we wanted to truly escape.

In fact, this idea is deepened in one of the most remarkable endings, which begins when Stanley walks down a dark corridor with an "ESCAPE" sign. Without going into too much detail, Stanley dies and the player arrives at a museum of the game. It's the only moment where the narrator changes and becomes a woman, who says: "When every path you can walk has been created for you in advance, death becomes insignificant. Can you see clearly now how Stanley was dead from the moment he clicked 'Start'?"

And so we fight relentlessly against the narrator and his game, which features a large number of variables and no fewer than 19 endings (or perhaps more?). Some are thought-provoking, others funny, others strange. But none is "happy" like the first one. Because what The Stanley Parable puts at the center is not simply the choice between doors or paths, but the most uncomfortable question: does free will truly exist in a world where every option has already been designed?

The Beginner's Guide: Life After Fame

Following the explosive success of his first work -- even landing a cameo in Netflix's House of Cards -- Davey Wreden fell into a depression fueled by the tsunami of attention that came crashing down on him. The story of a person who becomes famous too quickly, and the consequences that follow, is a tale as real as it is familiar. What's interesting is how this author, already acclaimed as a game developer with honorary status, decided to push forward after hitting rock bottom. That's how his second masterpiece was born: The Beginner's Guide.

Moving away from satire, this more intimate and personal work brings closure to the first chapter of an outstanding artist, because in a way it functions as a spiritual sequel to The Stanley Parable. Not because of the themes it explores, but because of its structure, the concept of a narrator, the visual similarities, and the oppressive atmosphere.

Although here Wreden breaks the fourth wall from the very start:

"Hi, thank you so much for playing The Beginner's Guide. My name is Davey Wreden and I wrote The Stanley Parable. While that game tells a somewhat absurd story, today I'm going to tell you about a series of events that took place between 2008 and 2011. We're going to go through some games made by a friend of mine named Coda..."

He then walks us through a beautiful collection of short or unfinished video games, starting with an experimental Counter-Strike level. He tells us he created this project hoping to showcase Coda's art and motivate him to start making games again.

As we explore and play through the prototypes, he explains his interpretation of every detail: the objects, the textures, the maps that end abruptly. Each explanation seems to give meaning to what we're playing. But what appears to be an act of kindness grows increasingly darker. Why is he so obsessed with his friend's games? Is everything he's explaining really as he says? Does Coda even want his games to be shown? Is Wreden claiming them as his own? These questions and many more are what the game raises, while exploring the conflicts within the triangle between artist, audience, and work.

The line between the real Davey Wreden and the fictional one remains blurred throughout the hour and a half of play. And, thanks to an extraordinary vocal performance, it delivers one of the most memorable endings in the history of independent games.

Long Live the Authors

I celebrate Davey Wreden. His games don't need photorealistic graphics or complex mechanics to be revolutionary. They manage, instead, to make the most of what sets the video game apart from any other medium: the ability to involve the player, to make them an active part of the work, and to confront them with questions that stay with them long after the screen goes dark. This is interactivity as its own artistic language.

Thanks to his story, and looking at local examples like the case of LCB Studios, I can't help but feel hopeful about the future of video games as a medium where great creative minds can express themselves without needing million-dollar technology, and with pure imagination, shape works capable of leaving a lasting mark on culture.