Introduction Tae Nguyen

“Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content” (Nguyen, 2017, p. 1) (pdf)

• “approached games as artworks” (Nguyen, 2017, p. 1) (pdf)

“asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology of the work and its performance.” (Nguyen, 2017, p. 1) (pdf)

• “normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition.” (Nguyen, 2017, p. 1) (pdf)

“The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other.” (Nguyen, 2017, p. 1) (pdf)

Abstract

“The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games, and hopefully demonstrate their relevance and value to one another.” (Nguyen, 2017, p. 2) (pdf)

• ontology: what is a game, what are we doing when playing them?

• value: what is the value of playing games

Foundational work on Games

early work on games

• value in terms of practical benefits

• games as useful methods for children’s education

• outlets for agressive energies

current

huzingian

• magic circle of play

  • new roles and rules for behavior

  • no usual consequence outside the circle

caillois’

• 4 categories of play

  • agon, competition

  • mimesis, make-believe

  • alea, luck and gambling

  • ilinx, play of vertigo and disorientation

• game impulses

  • paida, impulse towards free exploration and discovery

  • ludus, gaming impulse, tendency towards regulation and measurement

Analytic Philosophy

suits’

• game == taking up unnecessary obstacles for the sake of the activity they make possible. Activity would be impossible without.

• inversion of means and ends

  • practical life: means important for valuable ends

  • game life: arbitrary ends are important for particular means

• games are the purpose of life

  • informal argument

    • utopia == no problems, therefore free time to play games

    • games sole activity in utopia

    • games are purpose of life

  • formal argument

    • practical activity seeks to eliminate itself

    • game play does not seek to eliminate itself

    • games are purpose of life

Computer games as representations

• treating games as narrative, fiction or rhetoric

Janet Murray’s Hamlet in the Holodeck

• Tetris is commentary on fast-paced, desperate nature of industrialized, capitalist life

Espen Aarseth’s Cybertext

• Digital games are a new distinctive kind of text

  • ergodic literature, reader must expend nontrivial effort in traversing the text

Ludology vs Narratology Debates

• Ludology,

  • story is chronology of events in a narrative, discourse is order events emerge in the telling of that narrative, so narrative (traditional) audience interprets events, representations that contain information (Frasca 1999)

  • but games, player configures events in pursuit of a goal, games are simulations, narrative –> fiction (Grant Tavinor 2009),

    • Walton’s thoery of fiction. All representative artworks are forms of make-believe play.

be the sole activity.

- therefore games are the purpose of life

• What is the purpose of activity?

  • to eliminate work

    • the purpose of medicine is to eliminate disease

    • in turn eliminates the purpose of medicine

  • art

    • soothes ailments of the heart

    • no ailments of the heart in utopia

  • Game play

    • does not seek to eliminate itself“Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative.” (Nguyen, 2017, p. 1) (pdf)

• games are interactive narrative, audience hears and interprets the story, player enacts and creates the story

• novel fiction using interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world

• new way to represent causal systems, criticize social and political entities

• questions about games as artworks, kinds of artworks

• or cooperative artworks

• what are the normative nature of games

Ontology and Value

• what is a game, what are we doing when we play a game, what is the value of a game?

  • approaching them as texts means treating them as theoretical tools such as psychological study of narrative, or fiction, or rhetoric to understand the representational content of games

  • games can also be thought of as artworks, where we ask about the authorship and ontology of games

  • philosophy of sport motivates us to ask questions about the normative nature of games including concerns of fairness, rule-application, and competition

• One approach is to research work by literary theorists cultural studies, new media scholars, anthropologists, game designers, and some philosophers in the area of ‘game studies’.

Early Research on Games

Philosophy of Play

Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens

• circle of play where rules of standard life, e.g., motives of productiveness, truth-seeking, and moral correctness, are suspended. In circle, there are no concerns of truth, falsity, good or evil, vice or virtue

• as such, concerns about standard practical benefits or educational goals, or concerns about excessive energy that we would normally have about life, are suspended,

Instead:

• games occur within a “magic circle” of play

  • inside are new roles and rules for behavior

  • has no consequence outside the circle

  • magic circle is similar to religious ritual and theater, we enter into consecrated, dedicated ground suspending everyday activities, take up new roles and motivations

Roger Caillois’ Man, Play, and Games

• offers four categories of play

  • agon: play of competitiion

  • mimesis: play of make-believe

  • alea: play of luck and gambling

  • ilinx: play of vertigo and disorientation

• paida vs ludus:

  • paida == childlike free exploration and discovery

  • ludus == tendency towards regulation and measurement, i.e., adults wrestling according to rules with a judged outcome

In Analytic Philosophy

Bernard Suit’s’ The Grasshopper

• Games are the purpose of life

• unnecessary obstacles make the activity of playing a game possible

  • in ordinary life, we select means for independently valuable ends

  • in game life, we select arbitrary ends of the sake of undergoing some particular means

The Purpose of Life is Game

• utopia

  • no problems, dearth of aim,

  • therefore game would