I think one important aspect of the Freedom ending that highlights its artifice is the juxtaposition of the narrator telling you Stanley feels free and liberated, when you know you've just spent the entire cycle of the game doing exactly what you are told at every single point. Literally following a Grand Narrative.
I do find it interesting, though, that that’s the moment that you lose control of Stanley. There’s a way of interpreting it as he actually is free, and a way of interpreting it as he still isn’t free. I think that’s the reason this game has endured all these years: Everyone gets something truly unique from it. Almost like a Rorschach test.
@@EdenHellCipher Oooh, that's not something I had thought about! That's a neat way to interpret the freedom ending i hadn't thought of. That losing control of Stanley (as the player) is him gaining freedom from us. That's,,, actually really cool way to think about it!
Yeah, this is true. I especially felt the last bit about how all of my thoughts are all focused on work (well uni stuff, but it's basically the same tbh). Good video!
One question I would like ask is how do you go about dissecting media and I would like to try my hand on it as well. I am a huge fan of this type of content but I haven't been to college and I wonder what books, articles would you recommend. I been wanting to dissect the game hylics, or maybe it's just one big cow tool art project.
I appreciate questions like this, though they're a bit hard to answer, because the process doesn't go how one might expect. What happens usually is I'm studying some sort of thing in school or for fun on my own time, and as I'm studying a topic (in this case, the history of neoliberalism and its ideological tenets), I start to notice parallels to pieces of media that then become the basis for videos. Like, I was studying neoliberalism, and then it reminded me of The Stanley Parable so I played the game and took notes with the main question I was asking myself being "what does The Stanley Parable *say* about neoliberalism?" Once I had a guiding question like that, I compared and contrasted the game's contents to various readings I looked at and tried to find a way to answer that question with my interpretation of the game. The best approach, imo, would be to just start studying topics of interest and then see which topics feel like Hylics relates heavily to. I would say that game has a lot of surrealist imagery, so surrealism might be a topic worth studying, looking at its history, why it came to be a thing, what surrealist artists historically were responding to, and what the sort of "theory" of surrealism is, like why surrealism is the way it is. That's just what I would think would be a good starting point, but the nice thing about studying is you might find a whole rabbit hole where you least expect it. So as long as you're studying a topic of interest, you can probably find inspiration. As far as specific books or articles, I can't say much that relates to Hylics, but I found a lot of value in reading from authors who were foundational for specific philosophical/sociological theories. Foucault's writings on Governmentality & Baudrillard's writings on Hyperreality were two that helped inform this video, and will also be useful for videos I intend to make about The Matrix, Hotline Miami, and American Psycho. But I doubt those writings would really relate that strongly to Hylics.
@@MalmroseProjects Hey! I'm not the person who wrote the original comment; but wanted to say that even for me this is extremely useful! Am definitely gonna be putting this method into use :) Also tbh, this video and this comment have both inspired me to make some _weirder_ art that actually says something. Something that I'd want to say. I feel like thanking you for the inspiration. Thanks :)
Making a concentrated effort to not come dismissive into this video because I am not sure this can be good. But then again I sorta enjoyed the XRA video so who knows.
no, it's just the next part isnt finished yet. im working on finishing up college before i come back to it. hoping ill have time to tackle finishing it during the summer! no guarantees bc i have a lot of stuff i gotta do, but it's smth i intend to get to as soon as i can
was the kirby 64 winter world choice of music international? given how our earth In the kirby universe froze over, with no humans around and the world industrialized.
it's not over, im just still working on the script for lost highway, it's taken a back seat to school but im gonna have time to try to finish it and get that series finished over the course of the rest of the year. there's no guarantees i can make, but im not done with the lynch stuff
ur taste is immaculate. I consider the broom closet to be an ending, it was my first one! i chose to quit after that. It sucks that in doing that i was still feeding into that system of predisposed outcomes without even knowing. the mere action of me hitting settings then quit is an option available to me, not one that i have made myself. which then begs me to ask the question, what is freedom in todays society and does it truly exist? I know i can choose whatever i want but what is the meaning of that? it has all been done before, there is no more true orignality.
I feel, despite what the "point" or the idea, of, is, that I can't play the game because it literally feels like a mental illness simulator, a drugs infused psychosis or just kind of like a literal hell (in a less dramatic sense: a dream like nightmare). So to me it's not a game, it's an experience that I admittedly find fascinating, scary like horrifying but at the same time sort of beautiful and again: intriguing, that I want to experience but don't necessarily want to dwell in too much unless I really don't have any other choice, like unless it was the only game I owned and could play but in which sense in our world I feel at least, unlike the game's we always have a choice and we don't have to listen to "the narrator'' because there isn't one, thankfully except perhaps the sweet silence of our own consciousness, in which sense... To some people, sometimes, it is in reality as detrimental as the narrator in game is to Stanley, but okay. So also just for clarity I do not want to demean those who actually have problems in real life because of whatever reason, this is really not my intent, and in which sense my comment might also get muted or removed which I am fine with I think but the point is again about the game. It feels. I don't want to say "soulless'' because it definitely isn't but it just feels Godless as a principle. ...heh, principle. But yeah no. Amazing game. Wonderful experience, it has incorporated so much intelligent things and real life lore shall we say but again. It does not feel like something that I actually want to spend any of my time in, except for a few minutes perhaps but is something admittedly I could and would want (and am) to watch let's say endless hours of or about on RU-vid that covers it in essence thoroughly and well and goes through the game, instead of me. Also another thing that I want to highlight, of my own perhaps subjective opinion is that the game is not I think almost "in any way" representative of our world because it is not a realistic depiction of life and especially: reality that we are in because it is not a 1:1 scale. Our world and reality have much more and many more for one nuances and also different types of people, societies cultures and in essence: possibilities so. However much the game is fascinating because perhaps in some way or ways it can be construed as a sort of critique of modern life, remember that in reality you always have a choice. A choice to do something else, instead of to live out a nightmare.
What i mean is that in order to talk about the game being mainly about neoliberalism you disect to an extreme two of multiple endings (drawing a lot of debatable conclusions) and the whole thing could be explained away with it being a funny idea and not a philosofically and politically charged thing. The game i think revolves about more personal themes rather than social, but yes it nods sometimes to the ridiculousness of work culture.
this is part 1 of a ~2 hour video. i cover other endings in more detail, talk about the personal aspects, and cover the meta themes in the next part(s). the description for the video says that this video lays the groundwork for ideas that will be expanded in the next part. i dont like the dismissiveness of comments like yours here. davey wreden was a critical studies student in college and applied his critical studies background to game design when developing the stanley parable. as someone with some background in critical studies and who also has a background in media studies and sociology, this video is pretty much par for the course for an academic study on a piece of media. if you dont like the academic approach that's fine, but i think you're misunderstanding why that approach happens. this is not meant as a persuasive essay, im not making an argument to try to convince people to adopt my perspective. im applying political and social theories to a game to see how a game can reflect social realities that exist outside of the game. all games reflect neoliberalism whether they want to or not. this video is exploring how the stanley parable reflects neoliberalism, drawing from theories outlined by baudrillard, foucault, the sociological theory of symbolic interactionism, and others. whether or not the game "meant" these things is beside the point. the question being asked is not "what did the developers intend?" but "what narratives does the game evoke?" disagreeing with my conclusions is fine and encouraged, but you're not really coming from a comparable perspective to form the basis of a discussion. it's not possible for a game to not reflect the dominant global economic model that we all exist under. so the question is, to what degree does it reflect neoliberalism? to me, it does to a degree worth making a video about. if it doesnt to you, that's fine, but i hope you'll see where im coming from because these videos take a lot of time and effort to make and i wouldn't bother unless i felt like there was a lot worth saying. im just drawing connections between a game's text and the world and culture that it exists within.
@@walkinwalker9768Also, for what it’s worth, the reason the game has endured over a decade is the fact that you can get so many different interpretations on so many different levels from it. There are definite themes of capitalism but also themes of identity and personal agency. Davey Wreden’s talk at GDC delves into that second part. Great watch, if you haven’t checked it out.
