This is the story of a game titled The Stanley
Parable. The version that most people know and remember
is probably the one that was released in 2013 and made by the studio Galactic Cafe. However, the version that started it all was
a Half-Life 2 mod with the same title that was made by Davey Wreden, who was a 19 year
old film student at the time he started working on the game in 2008. Davey grew up playing video games, which played
an important role in the creation of The Stanley Parable. “A lot of the work I do is inspired by an
entire lifetime of gaming, which early on was mostly about Nintendo platformers, so
no matter what Nintendo does with each new Mario game I eat it up like a kid in a candy
shop. But the last few years I've really been taken
by the games that get creative with their storytelling, like the MGS games, Bioshock,
Portal, Braid, Half-Life 2, all of which I've set down the controller after finishing and
just stared in awe at the screen.” He partially started the project as a way
to secure a job in game development, but the main motivation and inspiration came from
simply asking “what if?”. “I just had an idea for a kind of game that
broke player expectations, that delivered a familiar experience in a new way. That came from having played games my entire
life, from asking "what if" over and over while playing. I tried to describe my ideas to people and
they didn't have ANY idea what I was talking about, so I figured I'd better go ahead and
make it just to see if it could be pulled off.” Davey further said that the first thing he
asked when designing the game is “what would happen if you could disobey the narrator?”. He wasn’t able to answer that question himself
so he started designing the game around it to see what would happen. According to Davey, The Stanley Parable at
its core is about the perception and limitations of freedom in video games, which is something
he discovered during development, rather than something he tried to purposefully create. Having no experience with developing games
whatsoever, the solo developer decided to use the Source engine made by Valve and relied
heavily on the engine’s Wiki, as well as community message boards that were dedicated
to the Source Development Kit. “Every modder I know just sat down and began
teaching themselves the tools, while going to these community resources. If you're using an engine like Source, the
product you come up with generally has 100% to do with how much hard work you slaved through
to teach yourself to use it!” The name Stanley was chosen because Davey
felt it fit the nature of the protagonist. “It sounds dismissive of people who are
named Stanley, but it occurred to me as just a name of someone who would blend into the
background. Someone with some kind of presence, but who’s
mostly invisible. Kind of striking this right balance where
if you were so inclined, you could completely ignore the fact that Stanley even exists.” It goes without saying that teaching himself
how to develop his first game all on his own took quite some time and after about 3 years,
Davey had finished a version of The Stanley Parable he was happy with. He first showed it to a friend and as soon
as his friend finished the game, the two got lost in a lengthy discussion about freedom,
choice and the nature of games. This interaction confirmed that Davey had
reached his goal with the Half-Life 2 mod and gave him more confidence to upload his
creation to the Mod DB website, a hub for developers to share their mods for free with
the community. He uploaded it on July 31st, 2011, three weeks
after he graduated from the University of Southern California. Once The Stanley Parable was out there for
people to download and play, the positive reviews came pouring in and people started
to share how special the experience was to them. It didn’t take long for the mod to reach
over 100,000 downloads on Mod DB and as of October 2020, the mod has over 450,000 downloads. In 2012, the game even received the Special
Recognition award at the IndieCade show. The overnight success shocked Davey since
he thought no one would actually care about a game like The Stanley Parable. “It's something I simultaneously really
wanted to happen but never had any inclination that it actually would. Anyone who makes creative work learns to temper
their expectations. You go into a project thinking "this will
change the world!" but knowing in your head that it won't, actually. Otherwise, your ego would never be able to
handle the ups and downs! I had convinced myself by the end that no
one would ever care about this game, and all of a sudden I'm being told that ‘no, you
were right in the first place.’ I'm incredibly grateful for that, but for
a while it felt like I couldn't trust myself, like I didn't know which part of my brain
to believe. Becoming an overnight internet "sensation"
is difficult for the ego to process; you kind of have to take yourself out of the equation
or you'll go crazy trying to figure out why your work got the response it did. I'm shocked and amazed and delighted, but
I also try not to think about it too much.” Davey credits much of the mod’s success
to the Narrator’s voice actor Kevan Brighting, who plays a crucial part in the game so naturally
the voice needed to fit the mood of the game perfectly. During development, Davey posted an audition
on a voice casting website for The Stanley Parable and Kevan submitted an audition. “As soon as I heard his voice I danced around
the room - it was exactly what I had been looking for. He was incredibly gracious and recorded everything
I asked of him, usually getting it all on the first take. He's been an absolute joy to work with. Many aspects of The Stanley Parable's development
have been hard work and dedication, but finding Kevan was pure serendipity." The developer also thinks one of the reasons
people connected to the game so strongly was because he approached the project with a question
in mind. “As modern games go, many developers simply
don't ask many questions, they make assumptions based on how we've already been doing things. I still love games, but most of the AAA stuff
coming out today kinda bores me; I can't remember the last time I paid $60 for a game. I don't want to be pedantic about the "shortcomings"
of modern games or say that anyone's at fault, but I do want to point out that when you approach
your design with a question in mind about how to break the rules and create more interesting
games, people seem to recognize it and respond to it. While Davey was very happy with his well-earned
success, the development process took its toll and he even described it as “grueling”. Once the game was completed, the whole project
felt dead to him. "I started out with career ambitions; this
game killed most of them. If you're starting out, do not try to create
something as ambitious as this by yourself. You will burn out and crash hard." Davey’s interest in pursuing a career in
game development was destroyed and he had all but given up. Before the mod’s release, he made arrangements
to go to Australia to help own and run a video game bar. He went and worked at Mana Bar, an Australian
video-themed cocktail lounge, for about a year. Fortunately, after the game’s release, Davey
started to feel energized again, thanks to the positive reception and the many fans he
spoke to at gaming conventions such as PAX. Initially, the developer made The Stanley
Parable for himself, but once he started talking to fans and heard how passionate they were
about the game, he realized the game was made for them. The Stanley Parable spoke to their interests
and gave them an outlet to explore these new ideas that the game presents. Seeing all the support from fans also helped
Davey to become more open to the idea of working with other people. “I feel supported by people who want me
to continue to make games and I feel like a part of this incredible community. That's the lifeblood that drives my development
now.” From then on, he knew he wanted to elevate
The Stanley Parable into something even bigger. Unsurprisingly, the game’s overnight success
opened up a lot of doors for the creator. All of a sudden he had become one of the game
industry’s most desired creative writers and as a result, major game studios were throwing
job offers at him left and right. However, Davey turned down all of them. He simply didn’t want to work in that kind
of environment and rather wanted to assemble his own team to develop a remake of the Half-Life
2 mod. This wasn’t too difficult since many talented
independent developers were eager to work together with the creator of The Stanley Parable. One of those developers was William Pugh,
a level designer who started modding Valve games at the young age of 14. He made levels for Team Fortress 2, campaigns
for Left 4 Dead 2, and puzzles in Portal for him and his friends to play around in. His work on Team Fortress 2 even earned him
a fan voted Saxxy Award for Best Set Design in 2011. William first heard about The Stanley Parable
one evening thanks to the creator of Minecraft, who tweeted about the game. William promptly downloaded the game and hours
later, Davey’s work left quite the impression on him. That same night he saw on a forum that Davey
was looking for people to help develop a remake and the young level designer jumped at the
opportunity. He sent an email straightaway and Davey quickly
responded, asking for an audition piece. William sent him a level and a bunch of mockups
to prove his talent and after a long conversation with Davey, they decided to work together. And just like that, after one eventful night
until six in the morning, The Stanley Parable as most people came to know and love, was
born. The duo set up their own studio called Galactic
Cafe and they both took on the roles of designer and writer, making the remake very much a
collaborative effort. William was based in the UK and Davey was
still living in Australia, so suffice to say development was a bit tricky. They used Skype to overcome the distance between
them and had conversations during periods when the eight hour time difference overlapped. In the two years The Stanley Parable was in
development, Davey and William never met in person. Despite the challenging working conditions,
Davey described the experience as the most fun he’s ever had working on a project. At the very start of development, Davey thought
the best idea was to stick to the original mod as close as possible. “My very first thought was to just flat
out remake it, beat for beat. But the more we chatted, the more we realized
there was an internal compass – with the world, with the narrator – and we just had
to extrapolate things and see where things logically go. It just feels so obvious once we think of
it.” So instead of simply updating the graphical
and technical aspects, the two developers opted to further build on the original and
think of more ways to mess with players and surprise them. “The main story is the same, the central
thrust is the same, and all the same endings are in the game in some form. We still want to hit the same notes, but someone
who played the original will see things in a new light.” Besides better graphics and more content,
the studio wanted to improve the atmosphere of the remake as well. One of the ways they accomplished this was
by adding a custom soundtrack that was composed by Blake Robinson, Yiannis Ioannides, and
Christiaan Bakker. The expanded story and levels were very much
a result of experimenting, iteration, receiving feedback from playtesters and stumbling on
fun ideas throughout development. For a while, Davey was concerned how the remake
would be received by fans and said that everyone has their own opinion about what it should
be and what direction it should go. This caused the developer to try and figure
out how much needed to be changed and how much needed to stay the same. However, all those worries faded away as soon
as he started brainstorming with William. “Every piece of new content that's currently
in the remake is something that we were chatting about and fell in love with because it sounded
so cool, just a fun new direction to take the story or the Narrator's character. The design document the whole way through
has been purely ‘if it's fun for us to design, it'll probably be fun for someone to play’. I really don’t know what kind of game that
will make it, but I'm enjoying the process so much that I don't really care anymore. It's about making something that surprises
and moves me rather than meeting anyone's expectations.” Replay value was very important to Davey and
William so they designed The Stanley Parable in a way that players can play it over and
over again, in any order they want and still discover new things. However, it’s completely up to the player
to find all the possible endings. At no point does the game push players in
a certain direction, although William explained that they sometimes had to tweak things after
playtestings. “We did our best to avoid pushing players
to make particular choices. However, there were points where playtesters
would just not realize that they were being presented with a choice and they'd miss out
on something like confusion ending or the red and blue doors, so we had to work to visually
highlight these choices a bit more than others.” The two developers experimented with a sort
of flowchart to track all the possible endings, but it had the opposite effect of what they
were trying to achieve. Davey said that it killed the magic of discovery,
since players now knew where everything was. It took out the joy of being surprised by
a new path. For other players it enabled them to scour
the game to find everything. “They'd come back to me saying 'I saw everything!' That's the opposite of what I want! I want players to feel like they've been playing
for hours and seen nothing!” The studio decided to use the Source engine
once again, but this time they wanted to license it as a Steam game. For a brief while, they were even considering
releasing the remake for free or with a “pay what you want”-model. They later dropped this idea in favor of the
Steam Greenlight service and in October 2012 the game had received enough support from
gamers to be approved by Steam to sell The Stanley Parable on their platform. When the game was put up on Steam Greenlight
it was listed as “The Stanley Parable: HD Remix”. While this was useful for getting the word
out that the remake was being developed, Davey announced a couple of months before the release
that the title would be changed to simply “The Stanley Parable”. “I want the remake to stand on its own when
it comes out. I believe this is the definitive version of
The Stanley Parable and I'd like the name to reflect that.” A week before the game was released, Galactic
Cafe dropped a demo of The Stanley Parable on Steam. When people sat down to play it, it immediately
dawned on them that this was no ordinary demo. Instead of letting people play a small part
of the main experience, the developers had built pretty much a separate game to promote
the main game. According to Davey and William, there just
wasn’t any other way they could’ve done it. They didn’t want to spoil the experience
for players, since the most compelling part of the game is the story and the way it messes
with players’ expectations. To give that away in the demo would completely
neuter the experience for players, Davey said. The team concluded that the best way of conveying
the experience is through an additional piece of content, completely separate from the main
game, that carries the style and tone of The Stanley Parable without actually spoiling
it. The demo was in development for months and
proved a real challenge to make it as appealing as the main game, with Davey going as far
as saying that the first prototype was a complete failure. “It had no particular flow, no understanding
of where you were or where you were going. We would stop the player and make them listen
to long monologues, it was awful! I had to sit down and cop to the fact that
my own game had eluded me. I had forgotten what made the experience good,
why players care about this kind of interaction.” The developers went back to the drawing board
to try and rediscover what makes their game tick. “We completely rediscovered what The Stanley
Parable is and what kind of relationship between Player and Narrator is actually compelling. I guess that's what happens this late in development:
You start to forget what made your work special in the first place. Rather than the main game informing the demo,
the demo helped me learn more about the main game.” The studio took the idea of a demo another
step further and created personalized versions for popular youtubers and streamers like Game
Grumps, by slightly altering the Narrator’s lines so that he would address them personally. Oh, hello hello hello. Welcome to this Steam Train live demonstration of The Stanley Parable. Additionally, the standard demo was streamed
by a lot of high traffic Let’s Players, creating a lot of free marketing for the main
game that was about to be released. After two years of hard work, Galactic Cafe
released The Stanley Parable on October 17th, 2013. Like the original mod, it instantly became
an immense success, receiving critical acclaim from reviewers and gamers. Many people pointed out how the game turns
traditional video game storytelling on its head, while simultaneously highlighting the
flaws of modern video game narratives. As a result, it was nominated for a bunch
of awards in 2013 and 2014. One of the awards the game won was that of
“Writing in a Comedy” at the 2013 National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers and
that same day the Narrator’s voice actor Kevan Brighting, also received an award for
“Lead Performance in a Comedy”. Unfortunately, despite all the success, both
Davey and William felt very lost after the game’s release. Even after having released the Half-Life 2
mod in 2011, Davey wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of attention both during development
and after the remake’s launch. “What I found really difficult was that
it was so much attention being lumped on me personally. It became really difficult to maintain a sense
of self when so many other people are defining you for you. Everyone loves to be liked by someone else
because it’s like, ‘oh, great, you like me. That makes me feel good’, but it’s a different
thing when 100,000 people are doing that.” Davey didn’t know how to handle being in
the spotlight, how to deal with all the comments from people online, the good and the bad. What’s more, he felt it’s not something
you can publicly talk about, you have to keep it to yourself and let it build up. “This biggest problem is that there’s
no real way to talk about it publicly because it doesn’t sound like a real problem. It sounds like a made-up problem, but it’s
clearly not because a lot of people go through it.” He further said that he felt he wasn’t allowed
to feel bad or stressed because of his success and this compelled him to take himself off
the grid for a couple of months. In the end, Davey is glad he and William went
through the whole ordeal, since it was a great learning experience. “I’m really glad that we did it because
now I have all of that information for future stuff. I came out of it, I’m alive, I’m sane. It’s like, as long as I knew I would come
out of it and be generally okay, I’m happier that we actually did it and were as vulnerable
as we were about it, to have pushed myself that far and gone like, ‘okay, now I know
that I can go there and come back”. While Davey had problems with being in the
spotlight, the exact opposite was true for William. The Stanley Parable Half-Life 2 mod was entirely
made by Davey, but as mentioned before, the remake came from the minds of both Davey and
William. However, much of the general public only knew
about Davey and assumed he was the sole creator. Eventually, this didn’t sit right with William
and he expressed this during an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, which quickly turned
into a sort of therapy session for the duo. “There’s the notion of me not being publicly
seen as the development guy, just because that’s how it is. With that comes a nasty mentality that can
creep in where it’s like, I’m not getting any credit for my work. There was a period of time where, on news
sites, I’d see ‘Davey Wreden, creator of the Stanley Parable’ and I was like,
oh, that’s my two years of work down the drain. That’s a really negative spiral that you
can get into.” He explained that during the last six months
of development, it was just him working until five in the morning, all by himself. He was isolated in the UK, away from all the
events and press that Davey was dealing with. After those six months, he suddenly had nothing
else to do. “I’ve sacrificed education and social
stuff and acting opportunities to work on this thing and then the game finishes and
you’re left like, God, I’ve got nothing left to do in the day. Your day just becomes like, playing DOTA,
or just sitting by yourself not sure what to do.” Additionally, William assumed during development
that he and Davey would start a company together and make games for years to come. However, as time went on, Davey wasn’t quite
sure what he wanted to do in the future. Once development on The Stanley Parable was
completed, he had seemingly changed his mind about continuing his professional relationship
with William, at least for the near future. “When we were talking about what the next
five years are going to be like. I have a radically different understanding
of that and it’s really tough to convey that a lot of times. Expectations are rough. When you think that you know what you’re
going to do with yourself, you’re leaving yourself wide open to be really badly hurt
when reality steps in. There was a certain point where I had to let
go of my expectations about what we were going to do next. William was eager to continue making games,
but without Davey, he wasn’t sure how to go forward. “We thought we’d be starting to work on
stuff like December, ready to get back into the zone of things. Then Davey was going off here and going off
there and I was left just like, okay then, so what do I do? What’s my purpose in life now? It’s just like the notion of feeling like
you’re not worth anything, because you made these things, but that wasn’t the important
thing behind the success, so throw you away.” It’s important to underline that there was
never any bad blood between the two developers and from interviews you can tell they’re
good friends, but the pressure and stress from developing a highly anticipated game,
coupled with an uncertain future, brought out some understandable frustrations. Things got too much for William, causing him
to take a short break from everything. “I went off to stay with a friend in London
for a while and then I was just chilling out about that and finding time away from staring
at a screen all day to find out how I was feeling about all of it. Then we came back and we talked a lot, and,
yes, just conversation. Talking’s the way to progress through things. Then I realized that I’d learnt a lot of
stuff and I was in a position to maybe find something that I really wanted to make.” When asked what the reason was why Davey didn’t
want to continue with the plans they had made during the making of The Stanley Parable,
he explained that he felt that he was pushing William too hard and needed to step back. He wanted to give William, who was still only
19 when the game was released, time to figure out who he actually was, instead of pushing
another project onto him. They stopped talking to each other for a while,
both realizing they needed time and space to figure out what they want and who they
are. Davey went on to develop The Beginner’s
Guide, while William created his own studio called Crows Crows Crows in October 2015. Even though they were working on different
projects, they still kept in touch. “We’re still very much in touch, and still
help each other out with all sorts of stuff. But I love the team I’m working with now. I think games are moving towards being like
TV and film where the project dictates who works on it. With this new project, I wanted to write. With Davey principally being a writer, it
wouldn’t have made sense for him to work on it. If another thing comes up where we want to
work together on stuff, that’ll definitely happen.” Three years after its initial release, The
Stanley Parable received an exclusive limited collector’s edition in August 2016. In 2018 it seemed like Davey and William found
their way back to each other. An announcement at the Game Awards that year
revealed that Galactic Cafe and Crows Crows Crows are teaming up to deliver an Ultra Deluxe
edition of The Stanley Parable, complete with overhauled graphics and extra story content. On top of that, the game is finally coming
to consoles as well, although it’s still unclear which consoles exactly. Originally, the Ultra Deluxe edition was slated
for release in 2019 but it eventually got pushed to early 2021. The two studios are now hard at work to finally
bring their critically acclaimed game to as many people as possible and according to Davey,
the wait is going to be worth it. “The scope of the game has expanded as we
keep getting really cool ideas to add. I hope it feels worth it in the end. We've been reviewing the work that's completed
and I actually think this game is going to be sick. Crows Crows Crows have been doing an amazing
job, and I think fans of the original game are going to be really pleasantly surprised."
