Stacking and the Self — An Interview with Lee Petty
This interview originally appeared on infinitecontinues.
Let me tell you a couple of stories…
A number of years ago, I worked with an AI programmer named Chris. Chris wasn’t just a wiz with code, he was also a crafty sort. For the better part of a year, he spent his lunch breaks soldering a box of random electronics and buttons into a working arcade cabinet. But he had an unreasonably long commute, so he was allowed to work off-site.
Any ordinary person would be content to phone in every now and then. But not Chris; he built a steampunk brain tank – complete with an air pump and mood lighting he could control via the internet – and set it up at his old desk. Even when he wasn’t there, he was.
Philosophers have been using brains in jars for years. Dan Dennett, in his thought experiment “Where Am I?”, spins a tale in which his gray matter, safely in a vat in Texas, remotely pilots his body to defuse a nuclear weapon buried under Oklahoma.
The core of Dennett’s experiment is trying to pin-point where his consciousness – his self – is located, whether in the brain or in the body. It’s a royal head-trip and definitely worth a read.
I bring up both examples because I see Stacking as the videogame equivalent of the brain-in-a-jar thought experiment. In Stacking, a downloadable title from Psychonauts developer Double Fine, the player guides little Charlie Blackmore, a matryoshka doll, on a quest to rescue his family from the evil industrialist, The Baron. While the game is primarily about solving puzzles by stacking Charlie into a series of larger dolls, playing it raised a number of questions about the notion of self and remote control.
Crafty Chris now works his magic at Double Fine and put me in touch with Stacking’s project lead, Lee Petty, who weathered an increasingly crazy series of questions about his latest game.
infinitecontinues: Thanks for taking the time to chat, Lee. Talk to me about the world of Stacking – the game evokes a very distinct period of the early-20th century with its Art Nouveau aesthetic and choice of themes (rise of industrialism, reliance on child labor, etc). Are the dolls on my desk likely to revolt or am I safe for now?
Lee Petty: The world is set in its own universe, without a direct tangent to our world – it’s not like Toy Story, where toys come to life at night while the children sleep. It’s much more like the world of Cars, where these talking, living objects exist in kind of a metaphorical world with its own set of behaviors and rules. Their world reflects our world, but doesn’t exist in relation to it in a specific way.
ic: Can you elaborate how the act of stacking works and what it means?
LP: Clearly, the dolls are designed to stack with one another, but exactly what stacking means isn’t explained. The player knows that Charlie’s ability is unusual, but doesn’t know if it is unique.
When you try and really analyze the act of stacking, or nesting, a doll inside another doll, it can be quite disturbing. Because I wanted the game to be a charming experience, I wanted to avoid directly addressing the nature of stacking in the game’s narrative. Instead, the idea of stacking dolls, and identity, is explored in a playful, often subtle way.
An idea that was never fully explored in the game was that the normal mode of behavior in this world was that larger dolls could stack smaller dolls inside them. This idea came from one of the first images of Stacking I had, which was of a mom unstacking her children while dropping them off at the train station to go to school. This idea was incorporated as the lost German family, who you do see unstack in their silent film play, and rejoice that they have been reunited.
ic: Speaking of identity, if I stack into a larger doll, which doll am I? Am I still Charlie, puppeteering the other doll from within, or have I become the other doll?
LP: When Charlie stacks into another doll his sense of “self” remains intact, but he has access to some of the “essence” of the doll that he is stacked into – which manifest, gameplay-wise, not only as special abilities, but also by the type of dialog responses that Charlie receives while in that doll. In effect, this changes Charlie as a character too, as he is able to see the world though the eyes of another based on how other dolls respond to him. This is an important mechanic, as it is the most direct way to get clues and information to the problems at hand.
ic: If that’s the case, where is the larger doll’s self displaced to? Are they aware of Charlie’s presence?
LP: The dolls that Charlie stacks into are effectively “asleep” when he is in control of them. When the player unstacks a doll, they hang around for 30 seconds or so, and then go back to what they were doing. This provides a useful gameplay mechanic and also perhaps implies that they might still be getting their bearings, as if they are waking up.
ic: Double Fine has a precedent for making games about jumping into other people’s bodies (see Psychonauts). What is it about mental violation that appeals to you?
LP: I don’t see Charlie stacking others as some sort of violent act, but instead I see it more like a mischievous child breaking the rules of a classist society. Charlie uses his natural talent to get groups of people together and use their talents to solve problems. On some level these goals are self-centered (rescuing his family), but on another level his endeavors also help change the entire society for the better (abolishing child labor, etc). The implication is that perhaps the adults are too caught up in the details of their own lives to notice even the most obvious injustices around them.
Most games are about violation – mental or physical. Even simple puzzle games seem to be about jamming brightly colored geometric shapes into uncomfortable positions so that the player can vaporize them. Giving the player control in a game is basically letting them violate the world in some way. And everyone knows there is also an innate satisfaction to fucking with people.
ic: Last question… Throughout the game, some of the potential stacks are into animals, corpses, and members of Charlie’s family. How would you respond to the concern that the game encourages bestiality, necrophilia, and incest as solutions to its challenges? There’s also something to be said about stacking into Widow Chastity and gender identity.
LP: Thankfully you don’t work for the ESRB. I think these unusual combinations are what give the game its charm. On the one hand, Stacking is a non violent, puzzle driven game about playing with dolls. On the other hand, the simple act of stacking dolls brings up all sorts of identity and existential questions. I really wanted the game to read on many levels – to be satisfying to children and adults, casual and core players, to be both simple fun and also philosophically interesting.
Thanks to Lee for taking the time to answer our questions. Stacking and The Lost Hobo King DLC are available on XBLA, PSN, PC.
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