The Stanley Parable

Overview

The Stanley Parable is the definitive version of the game. It was part of the second wave of 20 titles approved through Steam Greenlight on 15 October 2012.

Development

The initial plan was to make a better mod using the Portal 2 version of the Source SDK by December 2012. The map design was seen to be the worst part of the original mod so Davey was hiring.

William Pugh played the Stanley Parable (2011) mod and saw that Davey was hiring for a remake. So William sent an email at 5 am to Davey who said he would contact him soon. An hour later William sent Davey a redesigned office space and was hired. Once they were more comfortable with working with one another they changed their scope for the remake. Davey now had more experience with writing and creating ideas for a game and could create more content on that side whilst William did the majority of the map design with help from Collin Eddings, Jesús Higueras, Jack Parsons and Andreas Jörgensen.

Around January 2013 the team wanted to create an alpha build for Valve, they didn't need to but they wanted to. They had been conversing with Valve about the game and felt that Steam Greenlight helped formulate and finalise what their goals were. They stayed up till 4 am for about 7 days to create the alpha that they wanted to make to a time that they set and realized after the experience that they don’t deal with deadlines very well.

Development was split into five parts and the team began locking down content however the public was not told what the first four parts were. The fifth part was focused on “polish, easter eggs, and a few little goodies”.

Davey commented on locking down content saying that its good but tricky because they easily fell into the trap where something is never good enough. In fact they found that in certain places a little goes a long way.

William put secrets in the game without telling Davey.

Marketing

Greenlight

On 11 September 2012 The Stanley Parable went on Steam Greenlight. Their page only communicated the game's atmosphere and writing style rather than describing any interactive content. The greenlight screenshots in the slides show that the story is confusing, choices are important and you'll have to begin again.

Under the ‘Description’ section is an FAQ where the questions are not objective. This interview quickly turns as Davey pleads with the Questions explaining that the best way to play the game is to not know anything about the game. Its questions persist and Davey’s patience runs out, he questions the Questions right to interview and its existence. It tries asking anyone for help to understand what it - and the game - is after realizing that Davey has left it with no one else around.

The Helpful Development Showcase

In an effort to inform people how the development was going - without telling them about the game - Davey created a section on the Stanley Parable blog called the Helpful Developer Showcase. These are humorous thought experiments:

• Creating doors that don't kill the player - Davey struggles with a door whose morality variable is set to “fuck humans.”
• How many forklifts [can I] put into my game? - After 2 weeks of reflection and deep self-discovery Davey discovers what it means to be an artist.
• Admitting that you've made mistakes - Davey deletes everything.
• A fireside chat with William Pugh! - How William joined the Galactic Cafe team and how the new game became a full game rather than just a better mod.

• How to actively sabotage the quality of your game's story - This is a story of two characters. Marsh who is in love with Chev but not in love with Chev and is Chev who has no arms. The other character is Chev who is in love with Marsh - who he doesn’t know - and only exists in the past whilst always being Genghis Kahn.

• A critical analysis of last week's blog post - A deconstruction of the lies and mistake made in the previous post.
• “I won’t pay for the remake unless it’s longer” - The more you pay the longer the game. If you play it for free then you’ll have the sounds of babies crying and car alarms being played at random times.
• Stalling for Time - Davey and William contemplate creating 20 minutes of developer commentary for every corridor in the game.
• Writing to the press - A fifth of Jack Daniels, a UV bottle of flavored vodka, a few shots of Balblair, a cocktail with salad in it, a cocktail with jelly in it and the other ⅘ of Jack Daniels is required to write an email to Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku.
• Creating games with emotion - David Cage tries to steal Davey’s technique for making emotional games.
• HOW TO HIDE SECRETS IN YOUR GAME WITHOUT TEAM MEMBERS FINDING OUT ABOUT THEM - “ONCE YOU GO SECRET YOU NEVER GO BECRET!!” - William Pugh.
• tits - The hidden meaning of the Stanley Parable is finally revealed.
• How not to give into pressure - Davey discovers the power of Mr. Foots and user suggestions.
• Special Edition Packages (archive) - None of the Special Editions will include The Stanley Parable.
• Healthy communication between teammates (archive) - Flowcharts are shown to be Galactic Cafe's primary means of communication.
• Distribution of The Stanley Parable (archive lost) - Davey starts running out of ideas.
• How to drop everything and quit (archive lost) - With a little help from Rolf, Davey signs off to spend more time making a spot the difference game.

System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8
• Processor: 3.0 GHz P4, Dual Core 2.0 (or higher) or AMD64X2 (or higher)
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: Video card must be 128 MB or more and should be a DirectX 9-compatible with support for Pixel Shader 2.0b (ATI Radeon X800 or higher / NVIDIA GeForce 7600 or higher / Intel HD Graphics 2000 or higher).
• Hard Drive: 3 GB available space
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible