Channels, Fall 2016

Alford • Choosing to Choose Page 54 The question of choice is also brought up in a multitude of ways through the gameplay. The narrator tells the player what to do, and the player can either obey or disobey. When players reach the first set of doors, the narrator says, “Stanley went through the door on the right.” At this point, Stanley can enter through either the right door or the left door. But regardless of which door he takes, the narrator is prepared to respond to what he does. Each story line is pre-determined. The only choice the player maintains is which story line s/he will be forced to follow. Here, the medium of the game allows a special type of critique other mediums cannot offer. Stories in books and movies are typically monolithic. Games are linear, but they give the player a variety of options. They create the illusion that the player’s choice has an impact even though developers already wrote the possible stories. In The Stanley Parable , the narrator responds immediately to glitches or exploits in the game’s engine. There is no real way to disobey; there is only the illusion that the player can disobey. In a similar way, society is constructed so that “rebellion” only plays further into the hand of the technological society. Ellul describes this society saying, “Today technique has taken over the whole of civilization. Certainly, technique is no longer the simple machine substitute for human labor. It has come to be the intervention into the very substance not only of the inorganic but also the organic” (p. 128). The logic of modern technique is one of objective truth. Machines either work, or they do not. Businesses are either efficient, or they are not. This lack of a middle ground corrupts choice because it says there are not multiple legitimate paths. Indeed, the paths that humans are allowed to follow will always be legitimate ones because technicians have designed the structure of society. They choose what paths people can or cannot follow. Technology functions as the they-self Heidegger described, obscuring the Dasein's ability to make free choices and therefore dwell authentically in their environment. Much like the typewriter limited the writer to thirty or so possible characters, technique limits the human to the successful options it has created. One may be able to leave the society, withdrawing into something outside the system. But attempts to challenge or change the system are difficult. As the narrator in The Stanley Parable said: After being enslaved all these years you go and try to take control of the machine for yourself, is that want you wanted? Control? Oh...Stanley. *sigh* I applaud your effort, I really do, but you need to understand; there's only so much that machine can do. You were supposed to let it go, turn the controls off, and leave. If you want to throw my story off track, you're going to have to do much better than that. I'm afraid you don't have nearly the power you think you do. (The Stanley Parable) Someone can choose a life without a phone, without email, without any number of the interfaces upon which the technological society is built. But s/he cannot easily change what that society has become because those interfaces are the foundation of modern reality. Ellul (1964) explained: Civilization no longer exists of itself. Every Activity – intellectual, artistic, moral – is only part of technique. This fact is so enormous and unpredictable that we are simply unable to foresee its consequences. Most of us, blinded by traditional and