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Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us
WOULD YOU KILL ONE PERSON TO SAVE FIVE OTHERS?
If you could upload all of your memories into a machine, would that machine be you? Is it possible we're all already artificial intelligences, living inside a simulation?
These sound like questions from a philosophy class, but in fact they're from modern, popular video games. Philosophical discussion often uses thought experiments to consider ideas that we can't test in real life, and media like books, films, and games can make these thought experiments far more accessible to a non-academic audience. Thanks to their interactive nature, video games can be especially effective ways to explore these ideas.
Each chapter of this book introduces a philosophical topic through discussion of relevant video games, with interviews with game creators and expert philosophers. In ten chapters, this book demonstrates how video games can help us to consider the following
1. Why do video games make for good thought experiments? (From the ethical dilemmas of the Mass Effect series to 'philosophy games'.)
2. What can we actually know? (From why Phoenix Wright is right for the wrong reasons to whether No Man's Sky is a lie.)
3. Is virtual reality a kind of reality? (On whether VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and HTC Vive deal in mass-market hallucination.)
4. What constitutes a mind? (From the souls of Two Souls to the synths of Fallout 4 .)
5. What can you lose before you're no longer yourself? (Identity crises in the likes of The Swapper and BioShock Infinite .)
6. Does it mean anything to say we have choice? (Determinism and free will in Bioshock , Portal 2 and Deus Ex .)
7. What does it mean to be a good or dutiful person? (Virtue ethics in the Ultima series and duty ethics in Torment .)
8. Is there anything better in life than to be happy? (Utilitarianism in Bioshock 2 and Harvest Moon .)
10. How should we be governed, for whom and by who? (Government and rights in Eve Online , Crusader Kings , Democracy 3 and Fable 3 .)
11. Is it ever right to take another life? And how do we cope with our own death? (The Harm Thesis and the good death in To The Moon and Lost Odyssey. )
If you could upload all of your memories into a machine, would that machine be you? Is it possible we're all already artificial intelligences, living inside a simulation?
These sound like questions from a philosophy class, but in fact they're from modern, popular video games. Philosophical discussion often uses thought experiments to consider ideas that we can't test in real life, and media like books, films, and games can make these thought experiments far more accessible to a non-academic audience. Thanks to their interactive nature, video games can be especially effective ways to explore these ideas.
Each chapter of this book introduces a philosophical topic through discussion of relevant video games, with interviews with game creators and expert philosophers. In ten chapters, this book demonstrates how video games can help us to consider the following
1. Why do video games make for good thought experiments? (From the ethical dilemmas of the Mass Effect series to 'philosophy games'.)
2. What can we actually know? (From why Phoenix Wright is right for the wrong reasons to whether No Man's Sky is a lie.)
3. Is virtual reality a kind of reality? (On whether VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and HTC Vive deal in mass-market hallucination.)
4. What constitutes a mind? (From the souls of Two Souls to the synths of Fallout 4 .)
5. What can you lose before you're no longer yourself? (Identity crises in the likes of The Swapper and BioShock Infinite .)
6. Does it mean anything to say we have choice? (Determinism and free will in Bioshock , Portal 2 and Deus Ex .)
7. What does it mean to be a good or dutiful person? (Virtue ethics in the Ultima series and duty ethics in Torment .)
8. Is there anything better in life than to be happy? (Utilitarianism in Bioshock 2 and Harvest Moon .)
10. How should we be governed, for whom and by who? (Government and rights in Eve Online , Crusader Kings , Democracy 3 and Fable 3 .)
11. Is it ever right to take another life? And how do we cope with our own death? (The Harm Thesis and the good death in To The Moon and Lost Odyssey. )
384 pages, Paperback
First published August 17, 2017
27 people are currently reading
300 people want to read
About the author
Jordan Erica Webber
3 books11 followersWriter. Presenter for television (The Gadget Show), radio (BBC), and podcasts (Wild Wild Tech, Talking Simulator). Co-author of Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
December 17, 2019
I wrote half of it, so you should totally discount this review.
October 12, 2018
Intriguing, ambitious, admirable, and occasionally maddening. The title is not quite right: essentially this offers a whistle-stop tour through the history of philosophy, with video games brought in at moments to provide examples of notable philosophical concepts and thought experiments. It's likeable, and I'm glad this kind of thing exists, but I must confess that it made me want to hurl my Kindle across the room about as often as it had me gripped.
One thing which initially puzzled me is that the book's ideas about the philosophical aspect of games are mostly drawn from what games purport to be about, rather than what it is actually like to play them. These are often vastly different experiences, and (to my mind at least) the latter offers far more food for thought than the former. The stories which games tell are frequently worthwhile, but if they're simply summarised like they are here, they offer nothing that wouldn't be equally well served by describing the plot of a film or a novel. For example, at one point the Grimoire cards from Destiny are brought up as an example of a video game that describes the treatment of an AI consciousness in a future society; but those 'cards' are literally just static text that can only be accessed outside of the game itself. They are both functionally and experientially peripheral to the game. Nothing about them couldn't be expressed just as well in a novel or a short story.
To put it another way: it is one thing to recount the plot of a game like Soma as an illustration of certain philosophical problems about materialism and the nature of consciousness and so on; but it is surely an entirely different thing to discover those problems for yourself through playing the game. To its credit, the book does seem aware of this -- there's an interesting early description of The Trolley Problem, and how games can offer a unique perspective on similar thought experiments that would be impossible to replicate in real life. But the book seems content to raise this almost as if it were a teasing appetiser before whisking us on to something else.
The scope of the book is wildly excessive. I couldn't name now a single one of those 'ten things', and the book as a whole lacks a coherent thesis. We rush past intriguing topics in a few lines that themselves could themselves be the subject of an essay, or a book. In this regard perhaps the demands of the industry are to blame; inevitably readers today demand something concise which comes packaged as a 'big ideas' book. Slow, careful works of criticism that address specific games, or particular aspects of gaming, are (I would imagine) a tough sell. The problem is that this ends up falling awkwardly between the categories of serious academic games writing and popular non-fiction.
The lightness of tone also sometimes lends itself to a certain slackness that I found frustrating. Sometimes this is manifest as a sort of drive-by snark; a line like 'most media like TV and books miss the interactivity and variety that makes thought experiments compelling and hence effective' is the kind of thing that trips me up, and prompts more questions than it answers. (Is it fair to say that TV and books are not 'interactive'? Are they not also varied?) There's a particularly harsh line about psychoanalysis versus philosophy that made me roll my eyes. And then sometimes this is expressed in drawing what seems like banal, patronising conclusions -- when describing the Ship of Theseus, for example: 'It would be a huge task to construct a real ship, progressively replace each constituent part, and question people about the ship’s status at each stage in order to figure out if there’s a consensus on when it becomes a new ship.'
This is not wrong, but it's just kind of a boring conclusion to arrive at. That the Ship of Theseus might be less about nominative determinism and more about a way of thinking about ourselves -- when we are, after all, remaking ourselves all the time, every day -- isn't that more interesting? The odd thing is that I felt like the authors know this too. But there's an awful lot of this TED-talk-esque gesticulating and generalising to get to those good moments.
And there are good moments! There's stuff in here which I really liked. For one thing, the bibliography is vast -- the authors have seem to have read (and played) absolutely everything. The final chapter on killing and dying in games has some fine examples (like much of this book it reminded me that I really ought to play Planescape: Torment) though it suffers from failing to draw a meaningful distinction between depictions of violence and violent play. I liked the comparison between the haunted world of Bloodborne and Descartes' demon. I liked the slightly demented use of the game Dishonored to illustrate the sinister implications of Kant's formulations about treating other people as both a means to an end and an end in themselves: in those terms it's more 'respectful' not to assassinate Lady Boyle, but to kidnap her and keep her alive but imprisoned by her manic secret admirer. I liked the deep dive into the astonishingly complex ethical system of the Ultima games, which were once huge and are so little discussed today. I liked the stuff about ethics in obscure MMOs like A Tale in the Desert, and in vast games like EVE Online - that stuff seems to get closer to the philosophical experience of playing games, rather than the experience of reading about them.
One thing which initially puzzled me is that the book's ideas about the philosophical aspect of games are mostly drawn from what games purport to be about, rather than what it is actually like to play them. These are often vastly different experiences, and (to my mind at least) the latter offers far more food for thought than the former. The stories which games tell are frequently worthwhile, but if they're simply summarised like they are here, they offer nothing that wouldn't be equally well served by describing the plot of a film or a novel. For example, at one point the Grimoire cards from Destiny are brought up as an example of a video game that describes the treatment of an AI consciousness in a future society; but those 'cards' are literally just static text that can only be accessed outside of the game itself. They are both functionally and experientially peripheral to the game. Nothing about them couldn't be expressed just as well in a novel or a short story.
To put it another way: it is one thing to recount the plot of a game like Soma as an illustration of certain philosophical problems about materialism and the nature of consciousness and so on; but it is surely an entirely different thing to discover those problems for yourself through playing the game. To its credit, the book does seem aware of this -- there's an interesting early description of The Trolley Problem, and how games can offer a unique perspective on similar thought experiments that would be impossible to replicate in real life. But the book seems content to raise this almost as if it were a teasing appetiser before whisking us on to something else.
The scope of the book is wildly excessive. I couldn't name now a single one of those 'ten things', and the book as a whole lacks a coherent thesis. We rush past intriguing topics in a few lines that themselves could themselves be the subject of an essay, or a book. In this regard perhaps the demands of the industry are to blame; inevitably readers today demand something concise which comes packaged as a 'big ideas' book. Slow, careful works of criticism that address specific games, or particular aspects of gaming, are (I would imagine) a tough sell. The problem is that this ends up falling awkwardly between the categories of serious academic games writing and popular non-fiction.
The lightness of tone also sometimes lends itself to a certain slackness that I found frustrating. Sometimes this is manifest as a sort of drive-by snark; a line like 'most media like TV and books miss the interactivity and variety that makes thought experiments compelling and hence effective' is the kind of thing that trips me up, and prompts more questions than it answers. (Is it fair to say that TV and books are not 'interactive'? Are they not also varied?) There's a particularly harsh line about psychoanalysis versus philosophy that made me roll my eyes. And then sometimes this is expressed in drawing what seems like banal, patronising conclusions -- when describing the Ship of Theseus, for example: 'It would be a huge task to construct a real ship, progressively replace each constituent part, and question people about the ship’s status at each stage in order to figure out if there’s a consensus on when it becomes a new ship.'
This is not wrong, but it's just kind of a boring conclusion to arrive at. That the Ship of Theseus might be less about nominative determinism and more about a way of thinking about ourselves -- when we are, after all, remaking ourselves all the time, every day -- isn't that more interesting? The odd thing is that I felt like the authors know this too. But there's an awful lot of this TED-talk-esque gesticulating and generalising to get to those good moments.
And there are good moments! There's stuff in here which I really liked. For one thing, the bibliography is vast -- the authors have seem to have read (and played) absolutely everything. The final chapter on killing and dying in games has some fine examples (like much of this book it reminded me that I really ought to play Planescape: Torment) though it suffers from failing to draw a meaningful distinction between depictions of violence and violent play. I liked the comparison between the haunted world of Bloodborne and Descartes' demon. I liked the slightly demented use of the game Dishonored to illustrate the sinister implications of Kant's formulations about treating other people as both a means to an end and an end in themselves: in those terms it's more 'respectful' not to assassinate Lady Boyle, but to kidnap her and keep her alive but imprisoned by her manic secret admirer. I liked the deep dive into the astonishingly complex ethical system of the Ultima games, which were once huge and are so little discussed today. I liked the stuff about ethics in obscure MMOs like A Tale in the Desert, and in vast games like EVE Online - that stuff seems to get closer to the philosophical experience of playing games, rather than the experience of reading about them.
January 17, 2018
For Christmas, among a selection of philosophy-related books, I received Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us (About Life, Philosophy and Everything), by Jordan Erica Webber and Daniel Griliopoulos. This book, published only last year (2017), aims to "use video games to explain philosophy, and hence to improve your life" (Webber and Griliopoulos 2017, xviii), and to argue that "video games can be philosophically complex, ethically rich and morally instructive" (xviii). It does so through ten chapters exploring a variety of aspects of philosophy, from epistemology and philosophy of mind right through to ethics and political thought, in conjunction with an extremely wide selection of video games (the game bibliography which constitutes Appendix II runs to five and a half pages).
While none of the areas of philosophy discussed in Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us are precisely my area of expertise, I'm at least basically familiar with all of them. I'm also pretty au fait with a lot of the games the book covers - I've played several, such as Dishonored, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Skyrim, Stardew Valley, Bioshock and Bloodborne, to give an incomplete list, and am familiar with others through either watching playthroughs (Soma, Fallout 4) or reading articles about them. I'd consider myself a gamer and a philosopher, and so the basic notion behind this book appeals to me absolutely. I'm fascinated by the ways in which video games could function as unique ways to explore or express philosophical ideas, and I love reading theoretical articles about games and game design.
Even though this book could have been targeted directly toward my confluence of interests, however, I came away dissatisfied. Some of this wasn't the authors' fault: the book's targeted, I think, at beginners to philosophy, with a lot less basic philosophical background knowledge than I have. Much of the time, I simply wanted more in-depth or nuanced philosophical discussion than is probably feasible for the kind of text Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us is. In other respects, however, I think that Ten Things is also flawed at being the kind of book it's trying to be, and it's those problems I want to explore in the rest of this review.
Before I get into its defects, I do want to note that I genuinely enjoyed the book: I was never bored while reading it, and it was a pleasure to re-engage with aspects of philosophy that my own research rarely touches on.
51rkffi2yql-_sx325_bo1204203200_
My main criticism concerns the way in which Ten Things combines "video games" on the one hand and "philosophy" on the other. What I'd like to see, and what it does sometimes do, is an exploration of what could make video games a unique way of engaging in philosophy. How can games, as opposed to other media, do philosophy? Ten Things starts off very promisingly on this score with Chapter One: "Video Games As Thought Experiments". This chapter spends some time considering the specific features of games which makes them suitable vehicles for philosophical thought experiments (such as the famous Trolley Problem), and I hoped that the rest of the book would follow a similar pattern. However, Ten Things more often lapses into a far less interesting genre of popular philosophy book: the kind which outlines certain philosophical concepts (such as Cartesian dualism) and then points to where those concepts can be seen instantiated in its chosen film, TV series, or other such medium. This is at its most frustrating when the book gets close to exploring the specific nature of games in relation to philosophy and then shies away from the issue.
For instance, Webber and Griliopoulos discuss the multiplayer survival game Rust in connection to ideas about the state of nature. They write "... a player in Rust has less incentive to kill new players and more to co-operate, to build structures and for mutual benefit. But you can still kill your compatriots for at will, if you're running low on resources." (Webber and Griliopoulos 2017, 272). This could have developed into a fascinating discussion of how multiplayer video games might function as a way of testing state-of-nature narratives and hypotheses, and whether they would be a legitimate way of doing so. Instead, however, the writers fall back on "Similarly, in Hobbes' mooted state of nature, societies need something to tie them together, to prevent conflict. ... In wider society, Hobbes argued that what the people would set up is a 'social contract'..." (273). Juxtaposing historical philosophers like Hobbes with video game scenarios is certainly interesting, but was done throughout the book without due attention either to the uniqueness of video games or to the role of historical texts in our understanding of philosophy.
And in fact, that leads me on to my second criticism - in some ways more minor, but in other ways more of a problem for me as I read the book. I repeatedly ran up against sneering, dismissive comments about historical thinkers and philosophers which failed to acknowledge their significance or achievements - or even just to give them their due respect as fellow thinkers. The most glaring example of this comes in Chapter Six: "On free will: the uniqueness of games", in which the authors are discussing how both Freud and Plato had tripartite theories of the mind - Freud positing a super-ego, ego and an id, and Plato dividing the mind into "the appetitive, the spirited and the logical" (170). Webber and Griliopoulous go on to comment:
It's worth noting that none of these theories has any basis in empirical evidence - they're just narratives drawn from our subjective experience of how our minds work. While that might be good enough for pseudoscience like Freudian psychoanalysis or the rhetorical sections of The Republic, most philosophers prefer to work to a higher standard. (170)
Now, I'm hardly a fan of Freud's work, but to dismiss psychoanalysis without a second thought as "pseudoscience", or to dismiss The Republic as not being of a high enough standard for proper philosophy, doesn't do justice to either Freud or Plato. Furthermore, the authors are making assumptions about the nature of philosophy which require considerable justification - in particular that philosophy is a discipline, like science, which requires a basis in empirical evidence. It seems to me that a narrative drawn from our subjective experience is far from a wrong way of doing philosophy, or intrinsically of a lower standard: a philosophical inquiry into the nature of the self need not be of the same sort as a scientific inquiry (and, after all, if it was, one of them would be superfluous).
In the same chapter, there's a reference to Kant which also rubbed me the wrong way. Webber and Griliopoulos write that Kant "was so keen to retain the concept [free will] that he even posited that the physical world wasn't the real world, but there was a separate 'noumenal' world inaccessible to human perception, just to house free will" (176). In a footnote, they go on to comment:
Typically, when a philosopher employs an argument that involves inventing a whole new sphere of existence just to justify their own prejudices ... it's not a very convincing argument. (176)
I don't know nearly enough about Kant and his arguments regarding free will or the noumenal world to judge how Webber and Griliopoulos have interpreted him. I would, however, be astounded if the situation really was as simple as inventing things to justify his own prejudices (please, comment if I'm wrong on this!)
I'm certainly not saying that the historical greats of philosophy shouldn't be criticised in books of popular philosophy - of course they can and should be engaged with critically. However, the impression given by Webber and Griliopoulos of the history of philosophy is sometimes that of a series of writers making stupid mistakes about things they should have known better about and which we, sensible thinkers today, do know better about. It rather raises the question of why, if Freud, Plato, Kant and others can be so easily set aside, they're being drawn on so heavily for this book in the first place. Furthermore, it's indicative of an attitude that I don't like to see in philosophical dialogue: the attitude of trying to knock down a thinker or an argument rather than trying to engage with and build on other thought.
And that's why my most fundamental issue with this book concerns these scattered digs at historical philosophers. I can forgive a book of this sort a certain shallowness, or a failure to achieve exactly what it's aiming at - I recognise what it's trying to do, and it's an interesting and worthwhile project, even if it doesn't entirely succeed. A book aimed at introducing beginners to philosophy, however, ought to show philosophy at its best, and I don't think Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us does that when it treats important philosophical voices as if they're barely worth considering. As an undergraduate, I was taught always to interpret philosophical texts as charitably as possible - to assume, essentially, that the authors weren't stupid. Ten Things doesn't abide by that principle.
I have a couple of other issues with the book (its odd footnoting/referencing system, for one, and its tendency to treat contentious philosophical issues as if they're easily settled), but this review is long enough to be going on with. I'm a bit concerned that I've been overly critical - after all, it probably does serve its main purpose, of introducing philosophical concepts to video gamers, pretty well. Some of my problems are just to do with being the wrong kind of reader. I'd very much like to hear from readers unfamiliar with either philosophy, on the one hand, or video games on the other, to get a sense of how it struck them.
While none of the areas of philosophy discussed in Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us are precisely my area of expertise, I'm at least basically familiar with all of them. I'm also pretty au fait with a lot of the games the book covers - I've played several, such as Dishonored, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Skyrim, Stardew Valley, Bioshock and Bloodborne, to give an incomplete list, and am familiar with others through either watching playthroughs (Soma, Fallout 4) or reading articles about them. I'd consider myself a gamer and a philosopher, and so the basic notion behind this book appeals to me absolutely. I'm fascinated by the ways in which video games could function as unique ways to explore or express philosophical ideas, and I love reading theoretical articles about games and game design.
Even though this book could have been targeted directly toward my confluence of interests, however, I came away dissatisfied. Some of this wasn't the authors' fault: the book's targeted, I think, at beginners to philosophy, with a lot less basic philosophical background knowledge than I have. Much of the time, I simply wanted more in-depth or nuanced philosophical discussion than is probably feasible for the kind of text Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us is. In other respects, however, I think that Ten Things is also flawed at being the kind of book it's trying to be, and it's those problems I want to explore in the rest of this review.
Before I get into its defects, I do want to note that I genuinely enjoyed the book: I was never bored while reading it, and it was a pleasure to re-engage with aspects of philosophy that my own research rarely touches on.
51rkffi2yql-_sx325_bo1204203200_
My main criticism concerns the way in which Ten Things combines "video games" on the one hand and "philosophy" on the other. What I'd like to see, and what it does sometimes do, is an exploration of what could make video games a unique way of engaging in philosophy. How can games, as opposed to other media, do philosophy? Ten Things starts off very promisingly on this score with Chapter One: "Video Games As Thought Experiments". This chapter spends some time considering the specific features of games which makes them suitable vehicles for philosophical thought experiments (such as the famous Trolley Problem), and I hoped that the rest of the book would follow a similar pattern. However, Ten Things more often lapses into a far less interesting genre of popular philosophy book: the kind which outlines certain philosophical concepts (such as Cartesian dualism) and then points to where those concepts can be seen instantiated in its chosen film, TV series, or other such medium. This is at its most frustrating when the book gets close to exploring the specific nature of games in relation to philosophy and then shies away from the issue.
For instance, Webber and Griliopoulos discuss the multiplayer survival game Rust in connection to ideas about the state of nature. They write "... a player in Rust has less incentive to kill new players and more to co-operate, to build structures and for mutual benefit. But you can still kill your compatriots for at will, if you're running low on resources." (Webber and Griliopoulos 2017, 272). This could have developed into a fascinating discussion of how multiplayer video games might function as a way of testing state-of-nature narratives and hypotheses, and whether they would be a legitimate way of doing so. Instead, however, the writers fall back on "Similarly, in Hobbes' mooted state of nature, societies need something to tie them together, to prevent conflict. ... In wider society, Hobbes argued that what the people would set up is a 'social contract'..." (273). Juxtaposing historical philosophers like Hobbes with video game scenarios is certainly interesting, but was done throughout the book without due attention either to the uniqueness of video games or to the role of historical texts in our understanding of philosophy.
And in fact, that leads me on to my second criticism - in some ways more minor, but in other ways more of a problem for me as I read the book. I repeatedly ran up against sneering, dismissive comments about historical thinkers and philosophers which failed to acknowledge their significance or achievements - or even just to give them their due respect as fellow thinkers. The most glaring example of this comes in Chapter Six: "On free will: the uniqueness of games", in which the authors are discussing how both Freud and Plato had tripartite theories of the mind - Freud positing a super-ego, ego and an id, and Plato dividing the mind into "the appetitive, the spirited and the logical" (170). Webber and Griliopoulous go on to comment:
It's worth noting that none of these theories has any basis in empirical evidence - they're just narratives drawn from our subjective experience of how our minds work. While that might be good enough for pseudoscience like Freudian psychoanalysis or the rhetorical sections of The Republic, most philosophers prefer to work to a higher standard. (170)
Now, I'm hardly a fan of Freud's work, but to dismiss psychoanalysis without a second thought as "pseudoscience", or to dismiss The Republic as not being of a high enough standard for proper philosophy, doesn't do justice to either Freud or Plato. Furthermore, the authors are making assumptions about the nature of philosophy which require considerable justification - in particular that philosophy is a discipline, like science, which requires a basis in empirical evidence. It seems to me that a narrative drawn from our subjective experience is far from a wrong way of doing philosophy, or intrinsically of a lower standard: a philosophical inquiry into the nature of the self need not be of the same sort as a scientific inquiry (and, after all, if it was, one of them would be superfluous).
In the same chapter, there's a reference to Kant which also rubbed me the wrong way. Webber and Griliopoulos write that Kant "was so keen to retain the concept [free will] that he even posited that the physical world wasn't the real world, but there was a separate 'noumenal' world inaccessible to human perception, just to house free will" (176). In a footnote, they go on to comment:
Typically, when a philosopher employs an argument that involves inventing a whole new sphere of existence just to justify their own prejudices ... it's not a very convincing argument. (176)
I don't know nearly enough about Kant and his arguments regarding free will or the noumenal world to judge how Webber and Griliopoulos have interpreted him. I would, however, be astounded if the situation really was as simple as inventing things to justify his own prejudices (please, comment if I'm wrong on this!)
I'm certainly not saying that the historical greats of philosophy shouldn't be criticised in books of popular philosophy - of course they can and should be engaged with critically. However, the impression given by Webber and Griliopoulos of the history of philosophy is sometimes that of a series of writers making stupid mistakes about things they should have known better about and which we, sensible thinkers today, do know better about. It rather raises the question of why, if Freud, Plato, Kant and others can be so easily set aside, they're being drawn on so heavily for this book in the first place. Furthermore, it's indicative of an attitude that I don't like to see in philosophical dialogue: the attitude of trying to knock down a thinker or an argument rather than trying to engage with and build on other thought.
And that's why my most fundamental issue with this book concerns these scattered digs at historical philosophers. I can forgive a book of this sort a certain shallowness, or a failure to achieve exactly what it's aiming at - I recognise what it's trying to do, and it's an interesting and worthwhile project, even if it doesn't entirely succeed. A book aimed at introducing beginners to philosophy, however, ought to show philosophy at its best, and I don't think Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us does that when it treats important philosophical voices as if they're barely worth considering. As an undergraduate, I was taught always to interpret philosophical texts as charitably as possible - to assume, essentially, that the authors weren't stupid. Ten Things doesn't abide by that principle.
I have a couple of other issues with the book (its odd footnoting/referencing system, for one, and its tendency to treat contentious philosophical issues as if they're easily settled), but this review is long enough to be going on with. I'm a bit concerned that I've been overly critical - after all, it probably does serve its main purpose, of introducing philosophical concepts to video gamers, pretty well. Some of my problems are just to do with being the wrong kind of reader. I'd very much like to hear from readers unfamiliar with either philosophy, on the one hand, or video games on the other, to get a sense of how it struck them.
September 11, 2020
If you are a gamer, then buy several copies of this book. Carry one copy with you at all times, and whenever you hear someone saying "Games are for kids", shove it in their face and tell them never to speak again, unless they have read it. You can also slap them twice across the face first, if they said "Games are for kids" while watching the latest reality show on TV.
Of course, one of those copies is for you to read. Not that you didn't already know how video games are not "just games", since you are a gamer, but this book will offer you a deeper look into certain philosophical matters (e.g. the self, identity, politics, death, happiness, the mind, knowledge, duty, freedom, etc.) and how these unfold within games. It's a fascinating read, but with one drawback; it contains major spoilers for certain games, like Soma, the Bioshock series, Planescape: Torment, Modern Warfare, The Swapper, the Mass Effect series, the Fallout series and a few more. Unfortunately, that was unavoidable, considering the depth of the book. On the plus side, there is a list included that contains all the games that are mentioned, sorted by chapter. Although most mentions are spoiler-free, you can avoid reading a chapter that includes a game that you are currently playing, or want to play soon, in order to be on the safe side.
Now, if you are not a gamer, just read this book. Seriously, it will make you understand what you're missing, and will also save you the embarrassment next time you consider opening your mouth to blurt out something uninformed and incredibly stupid.
Of course, one of those copies is for you to read. Not that you didn't already know how video games are not "just games", since you are a gamer, but this book will offer you a deeper look into certain philosophical matters (e.g. the self, identity, politics, death, happiness, the mind, knowledge, duty, freedom, etc.) and how these unfold within games. It's a fascinating read, but with one drawback; it contains major spoilers for certain games, like Soma, the Bioshock series, Planescape: Torment, Modern Warfare, The Swapper, the Mass Effect series, the Fallout series and a few more. Unfortunately, that was unavoidable, considering the depth of the book. On the plus side, there is a list included that contains all the games that are mentioned, sorted by chapter. Although most mentions are spoiler-free, you can avoid reading a chapter that includes a game that you are currently playing, or want to play soon, in order to be on the safe side.
Now, if you are not a gamer, just read this book. Seriously, it will make you understand what you're missing, and will also save you the embarrassment next time you consider opening your mouth to blurt out something uninformed and incredibly stupid.
October 8, 2017
An accessible introduction to philosophical concepts such as utilitarianism and both uses games to explain them and explains how games utilise them for storytelling, or to conveys themes the creators wish to put across. Highly recommended for those looking to delve deeper into the thinking behind a number of recent games or for those looking to get into philosophy.
September 24, 2017
This is a really god book for someone wanting to explore key philosophical ideas. Using video games as examples provides a really clear view of how these idea could play out.
December 21, 2019
I enjoyed this a great deal, although I am friends with one of the authors (both in real life, and on Goodreads), so I am not a particularly reliable judge.
NEVERTHELESS - this is an introduction to a collection of philosophical ideas that uses video games as examples of those philosophies. I have an extremely limited understanding of philosophy as a field, beyond occasional mullings of the sorts of questions that it poses, and a vague understanding that cleverer people than me have asked the same questions and come up with better answers. I also have played enough video games to be familiar with the examples used. 'Ten Things' gave me a sense that philosophy is very interesting, and a sense of what parts I I find interesting in particular. Well recommended if you are in a similar position to myself.
NEVERTHELESS - this is an introduction to a collection of philosophical ideas that uses video games as examples of those philosophies. I have an extremely limited understanding of philosophy as a field, beyond occasional mullings of the sorts of questions that it poses, and a vague understanding that cleverer people than me have asked the same questions and come up with better answers. I also have played enough video games to be familiar with the examples used. 'Ten Things' gave me a sense that philosophy is very interesting, and a sense of what parts I I find interesting in particular. Well recommended if you are in a similar position to myself.
November 18, 2017
Pretty good, the chapters I enjoyed most were the last two. I think what is important here is that we need more books like this one, so we can make videogames a stronger subject to talk and think about.
May 22, 2018
A great exploration of various philosophical topics. The use of video games as thought experiments or even just as ways of demonstrating a concept was engaging; I've even added some of the mentioned games to my wish list (also, just to be clear, there are spoilers within the book -- the plot does need to be explained for the philosophy to be explored). I particularly liked the chapters seven and eight (which was on moral systems). Additionally, the chapter on virtual reality served to introduce me to a view I had not yet considered before which is always fun.
My least favourite chapters were the last two which, at least in my eyes, took on a more... one-sided stance. With the other chapters being sure to explore as many sides as possible without becoming their own books, the chapter on politics (to a lesser degree) and the chapter on death (to a greater degree) felt biased. Arguing your own opinion is all well and good, but when the rest of the book is neutral it feels out of place. And since the last chapters were what I read, well, last that impression stuck (hence the 4/5 instead of the 5/5).
However, its sill a fantastic read with many fascinating insights. It serves as an interesting introduction to philosophy; I'm definitely going to need to reread it sometime.
My least favourite chapters were the last two which, at least in my eyes, took on a more... one-sided stance. With the other chapters being sure to explore as many sides as possible without becoming their own books, the chapter on politics (to a lesser degree) and the chapter on death (to a greater degree) felt biased. Arguing your own opinion is all well and good, but when the rest of the book is neutral it feels out of place. And since the last chapters were what I read, well, last that impression stuck (hence the 4/5 instead of the 5/5).
However, its sill a fantastic read with many fascinating insights. It serves as an interesting introduction to philosophy; I'm definitely going to need to reread it sometime.
January 3, 2024
I think this book tries to do too much by trying to go through the entirety of philosophy and through many different computer games to come out with its ideas. Whilst computer games have really interesting philosophical ideas (such as Fallout come to mind), the book doesn't focus on one series but saturates the reader with lots of different games. I think the most interesting chapters were on the political theories but that comes with my interests.
I also think that some of the descriptions of philosophical ideas are quite sloppy. For example the analysis of ethics, stating Utilitarianism as part of the main ethical theory in history understates broad ideas of consequentialism that Utilitarianism is a part of but aren't Utilitarian.
That said, this book is an intriguing read and can put forward interesting ideas. For me, the simple role playing game Castle, Forest, Island, Sea is a fascinating little game which looks over philosophical ideas whilst playing a game where the character makes decisions.
I also think that some of the descriptions of philosophical ideas are quite sloppy. For example the analysis of ethics, stating Utilitarianism as part of the main ethical theory in history understates broad ideas of consequentialism that Utilitarianism is a part of but aren't Utilitarian.
That said, this book is an intriguing read and can put forward interesting ideas. For me, the simple role playing game Castle, Forest, Island, Sea is a fascinating little game which looks over philosophical ideas whilst playing a game where the character makes decisions.
October 5, 2018
Good but not for me
Marking this as done without finishing it. As well written and entertaining a bit of pop philosophy as I've seen, but not really the book for me. Would definitely recommend this as an introductory text for anyone interested in philosophy but not sure how or where to start
Marking this as done without finishing it. As well written and entertaining a bit of pop philosophy as I've seen, but not really the book for me. Would definitely recommend this as an introductory text for anyone interested in philosophy but not sure how or where to start
July 1, 2021
When I was reading the book I felt like the author some how programed a bot to write the book. Too many unnecessary content. I did not read anything neither on philosophy nor on video games. I don't either think that the author was a video games' player as she claimed.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 30, 2023
While I did feel that there were a lot of great themes to be explored here, I wasn't well read in philosophy and so much of the language made it inaccessible. Perhaps a list of pre-reading would have helped.
May 27, 2022
boring...
October 23, 2022
Hmm. There're nice points. But, too much details make the book hard for reading.
December 31, 2022
Fan of bioshock and a fan of soma. What more could i ask for?
June 11, 2023
This book is, ostensibly, a beginners crash course on theoretical philosophy. The 'Ten Things' are not as clearly delineated as the title suggests - why must every non-fiction book strive for Buzzfeed clickbait titles, now? I appreciate the exception.
I felt rather condescended, because I actively think about and reflect on the games I play, and so I didn't really learn anything about a single game mentioned (of which I've played 90%+). Jordan and Daniel basically summarise interesting contemporary (mostly, rightfully, indie) games. You could read the Wiki articles and make the same conclusions.
Tim Rogers's videos will help you learn about video games, and our relative dispositions to them as art (or umwelts, reality mirrors reflecting ourSelves). Hell, YouTube in general offers a more profound array of insights into video game philosophy while providing footage.
I felt rather condescended, because I actively think about and reflect on the games I play, and so I didn't really learn anything about a single game mentioned (of which I've played 90%+). Jordan and Daniel basically summarise interesting contemporary (mostly, rightfully, indie) games. You could read the Wiki articles and make the same conclusions.
Tim Rogers's videos will help you learn about video games, and our relative dispositions to them as art (or umwelts, reality mirrors reflecting ourSelves). Hell, YouTube in general offers a more profound array of insights into video game philosophy while providing footage.
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October 29, 2018794.8 W371 2017
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