galactic-cafe
Latest
'Awful,' 'intimidating,' 'complicated': Indie devs on the guilt of success
It's said that money can't buy happiness. In fact, for some indie game developers, an influx of money can mean just the opposite. In a New Yorker feature, developers like Rami Ismail of Vlambeer (Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers), Edmund McMillen of Team Meat (Super Meat Boy) and Davey Wreden of Galactic Cafe (The Stanley Parable) explain how the success of their games have, in some ways, made their lives harder, not easier. Ismail, for example, cited his feelings of guilt over making more money in a single night than his mother makes all year. "Ever since I was a kid I've watched my mom wake up at six in the morning, work all day, come home, make my brother and me dinner," Ismail said. Regarding his overnight success, he told the New Yorker, "It feels awful. I couldn't get rid of the image of my mother in her car, driving to work." McMillen likewise experienced an impact on his familial relationships. He said that after the release of Super Meat Boy and Indie Game: The Movie - a documentary in which he is prominently featured - he had experienced distant relatives and old acquaintances asking him for money. "This success has artificially elevated me; it's caused jealousy, even hatred," McMillen said. "The money has made relationships complicated." Wreden wrote on his studio's site in February that he was experiencing depression, and told the New Yorker that, with the success of The Stanley Parable behind him, he must now look ahead to creating its successor. "It's intimidating to think that we have enough time and resources to do whatever we want," Wreden said. For more on the developing, expanding indie scene, be sure to check out our in-depth feature report. [Image: Vlambeer]
.jpg.cf.jpg)
Playing like nobody's watching in The Stanley Parable
The Stanley Parable casts you as a nondescript soul in a nondescript office building. From this mundane beginning emerges a skewed story of a man making choices, both small and serious, and a player expressing their importance in a video game. It's clearly a thoughtfully considered, deliberately tuned and – what's that? "We didn't actually think about this when we were designing the game"? So said William Pugh, one of the designers behind The Stanley Parable, the first-person adventure game that initially took form as a Half-Life 2 mod. Davey Wreden, creator of the original version in 2011, shared the stage with Pugh in a candid analysis of their game during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Joystiq Top 10 of 2013: The Stanley Parable
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. If you could bring yourself to describe and spoil them, it would be much easier to write about the marvelous moments that make The Stanley Parable such a special piece of entertainment. These moments, some of which commandeer the game and some of which seem insignificant as they pass you by, shape the outcome of Stanley's story. Whether you decide to go along with the narrator's dialog, following his every command to the letter, or completely ignore him and forge your own path, or just stand still, The Stanley Parable has something to say about your decision.
The Stanley Parable gets a new cubicle on Mac
The Stanley Parable is now available on Mac OSX 10.8 and higher. Writer Davey Wreden tells Joystiq that support for earlier versions of Mac OSX is planned through an upcoming patch. The game is currently 40% off, down to $9, in the Steam Holiday Sale right now. A free demo for The Stanley Parable, which you can grab through the Steam app page, has been available since October 10. In The Stanley Parable, players guide the titular Stanley – an employee at a nondescript office building who suddenly finds all of his coworkers have vanished. We loved The Stanley Parable, as evidenced by our review lauding the game's elaborate and self-defining experiment on players.
The Stanley Parable dev promises to alter controversial PSA slides
There is a PSA video called "Choice" within The Stanley Parable that some players are finding very offensive. Within the video, slides show a white man interacting with an impoverished black child from a third-world country. In one slide, he's giving the child a cigarette; another shows him setting the child on fire. In response to criticism on Twitter, creator Davey Wreden has agreed to alter the imagery in an upcoming patch. Wreden told Kotaku that "we always wanted the game to be something that could be played by anyone of any age" and that if "a person would feel less comfortable showing the game to their children then I've got no problem helping fix that!" Wreden concluded that the new slides could be added to The Stanley Parable in around a few weeks' time, but that changing the audio would pose a much more difficult task. The Stanley Parable, a remake of Wreden's original Source engine mod released in 2011 that has sold over 100,000 copies, is a narrative-driven interactive fiction game centered around player choice. In our review, we called The Stanley Parable a unique player experiment "we should all celebrate."
The Stanley Parable sales exceed expectations by a lot
Since launching on Thursday, The Stanley Parable has sold more than 100,000 copies, much to the happy surprise of its developer, Galactic Cafe. Though the quality of the game undoubtedly had at least something to do with its success, so did a clever combination of free Stanley stuff. In a postmortem, Galactic Cafe ruminated on the triumphs and failures of launching The Stanley Parable, including the demo, which dropped on Steam a week prior to the full game's launch and enjoyed an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 downloads. "Essentially we got the press equivalent of two video game launches," the post reads. Then there was the cadre of Let's Play videos on YouTube and social media posts that bolstered coverage. "Give people a reason to talk, that's all we aimed for, and the rest sorted itself out. Release a whole bunch of things for free in fairly quick succession, then at the end of it put a price tag on the last one," Galactic Cafe suggested. "It was a lot of extra work, but the results feel very much worth it." The Stanley Parable is a first-person exploration game in which players assume the role of Stanley, a worker drone who one day finds all his coworkers have upped and vanished. In our review, we called The Stanley Parable an "attempt to help you discover who you are" – a personal experiment conducted on players that is "something we should all celebrate."
The Stanley Parable review: Delectable dissident
The Stanley Parable centers around Stanley, employee #427 in a non-descript office building. Stanley, whose chief job is to press buttons on a keyboard when prompted, one day finds all of his coworkers have disappeared. Believing he has missed a memo, Stanley leaves his office and heads to the conference room, setting in motion a series of choices that ultimately brings Stanley toward one of many possible outcomes. Stanley is an analogue of adult life. He has a boring job, an apartment and a wife, and he seems content with it all. At first glance, he's everything we're told we should strive to be in life. Work hard and you'll be happy and all of that. It doesn't take long, however, before Stanley is presented as much more than a simple office drone. He's an iconoclast, a character whose wildly varying experiences throughout The Stanley Parable challenge established notions of storytelling. The result is a series of entirely unexpected events that feel varied and wholly original – a ride that uses a familiar first-person vehicle to reach thrilling, uncharted destinations.
PSA: The Stanley Parable is out now, 20 percent off
The Stanley Parable is now available on Steam, and is 20 percent off ($11.99) until October 23. Originally a Half-Life 2 mod, the first-person exploration game centers on Stanley, employee number 427 of a nameless company, who pushes buttons on a keyboard at his desk as instructions appear on a monitor. Compared to the 2011 mod, The Stanley Parable "returns with new content, new ideas, a fresh coat of visual paint," and voice-overs by Kevan Brighting. The game's description underscores the "everything is not as it seems" nature of the game, as over time "meaning begins to arise, the paradoxes might start to make sense." Developer Galactic Cafe encourages players to check out the game's demo to learn more, which is also available through Steam.
The Stanley Parable demo hits Steam, full version out October 17
A demo version of Davey Wreden's first-person interactive short story The Stanley Parable is out now on Steam ahead of the full version's scheduled launch on October 17. Built on a Half-Life 2 mod project from 2011, The Stanley Parable is a brief, narrated experience that reflects on player choice and free will within an office setting. The demo version serves up a unique story with original content not featured in the full game, making it worth a playthrough for fans of the original mod.
