Back in middle school, I played a curious and difficult 2D platformer game called the Strange Adventures. The game was a parody of Mario Bros: the player also needs to control the movement of a man to save the princess. However, what makes the game unique is that almost every trap in this game is anti-intuitive, and the producers actively challenge players to think out of the box. For example, inone level, you will be armed with a pistol and a shield and a billboard will hang in the sky instructing you to “charge eastward and save the princess.” After numerous attempts, the player will eventually realize that the monsters and traps are undefeatable, and the only way to win is to become walk left until you walk out of the screen. It wasn’t until seven years that I realize what I played at the time was a “meta-game.”
Meta-game, like other meta versions of media, is inspired by the principles of post-modernism, aiming to challenge the narratives of modernism and rationality. Meta-games usually allow and even reward players to disobey the instructions. In The Stanley Parable, for example, the player’s task is not to listen, but to play with the narrator and explore Stanley’s world on his own. There are more than twenty endings to be achieved, and I am not sure yet whether I have exhausted the possibility of this game. The gist of this game, however, lies in exploration and the realization of the impossibility of escape. If the player decides to cheat by typing commands in the console, he will be punished by the narrator and get locked in a room. If the player refuses to play a “Save this child” game provided by the narrator, he will be teleported into a pseudo-Minecraft or pseudo-Portal, and then understands that these pseudo-games are also inescapable.
Interaction is the key feature of video games, while Meta-games excel at “breaking the fourth wall.” In The Stanley Parable, players not only interact with the different rooms but also face a gibberish narrator that loves to taunt the player’s different decisions. At some point, Stanley will get demented and the player will somehow question himself if he’s dreaming (at least I did). Eventually, I realized that I am neither playing against the producer nor the narrator. Why do I have to escape, after all? Why do I want to help Stanley escape from the mind-controlling company? I was playing under the prescribed mindset of escaping. What if The Stanley Parable, like the real world, is unescapable and I have to figure out a meaning on my own? Here I transitioned to an existentialist mindset, which can arguably be a useful tool to cope the meaninglessness within a post-modern world. I feel like the joy of playing a post-modern game lies not only in its anti-intuitions but also in the revelations I gained while playing. In fact, I have been a little depressed and confused in these past weeks, but The Stanley Parable partially helped me answer some of my questions about the world.
