“To See You Made Humble”: Agency and Ethos in The Stanley Parable

Abstract

This chapter examines Galactic Cafe’s The Stanley Parable (2013) (TSP) and explores how the game encourages players to reflect on their role as an ethical subject in the gameworld. TSP encourages this reflection by giving players the opportunity to make choices which, from the players’ perspective, run counter to the game’s expectations, thereby creating a direct relationship between seeming player agency and the ethos of the game overall. Using Sicart’s theory of the ethics of games, and Foucault’s theory of the docile body, this piece considers how this relationship between player agency and ethos may serve as the primary tool that players use to critique the ethos of any given gameworld, not just in TSP. Understanding how player agency can be used as a tool for exploring the ethos of video games may lead to a more nuanced understanding of how ethical rules and values can be negotiated between player, avatar, and designer.