Games

The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the (...) central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts. (shrink)

Information technologies are fundamentally changing modern society. Almost any human activity, including the caring for a pet, is acquiring new formats related to communication in the virtual space. The authors analyzed such a phenomenon as a virtual pet that has been developing since the early 90s of the 20th century on the basis of more than 100 different virtual pet modifications. The most popular among users and purchased more than 1 million times a year around the world are examined in (...) details in this research (video game Petz, Tamagotchi, Furby, Nintendogs, Neopets, My Talking Tom). Thus in this study the evolution of a digital pet is represented. We analyzed how a person models it according to his needs and identified the main trends of the virtual pet development. These basic directions are advanced similarity with a real pet, development of entertaining aspect, virtual pet applying for practical purposes. We proposed four main factors for analyzing changes in the human-virtual pet relationship: touch, game, communication and social interaction concerning the pet. (shrink)

Morality has always been a pressing issue in video game scholarship, but became more contentious after “realistic” violence in games became possible. However, few studies concern themselves with how players experience moral dilemmas in games, choosing instead to focus on the way games affect postplay behavior. In my thesis I discuss the moral choices players encounter in the Metal Gear series of games; then, I analyze and compare the responses of players with and without martial career experiences. My argument is (...) that the moral choices players encounter during gameplay affect them differently, particularly if they have life experiences related to medical trauma, law enforcement, fire fighting, or military career fields, and that the behavior of those players will be observably different from players without the same experiences. In chapter one I present my personal history with Metal Gear, before moving on to the literature review in chapter two, which focuses on scholarship about the Metal Gear series of games and video game research as a whole, particularly studies concerned with how violent content affects players. In chapters three and four, I analyze Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004) and Metal Gear Solid V (2014/2015) in order to gain insight into the moral dilemmas posed by each game. In chapter five I report the results of a survey about player responses towards the game dilemmas given by martial and non-martial groups to identify observable patterns of behavior in how they act and react towards each scenario. (shrink)

Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But, should players worry about the morality of their virtual actions? A common argument is that games offer merely the virtual representation of violence. No one is actually harmed by committing a violent act in a game. So, it cannot be morally wrong to perform such acts. While this is an intuitive argument, it does not resolve the (...) issue. -/- Focusing on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies, Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy advances debates about the ethical criticism of art, not only by shining light on the interesting and under-examined case of virtual fantasies, but also by its novel application of a virtue ethical account. Video games are works of fiction that enable players to entertain a fantasy. So, a full understanding of the ethical criticism of video games must focus attention on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies. -/- Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy engages with debates and critical discussions of games in both the popular media and recent work in philosophy, psychology, media studies, and game studies. (shrink)

Considers the significance that Hume attached to mental activity -- the "craving ... of the human mind ... for exercise and employment" -- with respect to the phenomena of truth-seeking, amusement and morality.

Is there a right or wrong way to play a game? Many think not. Some have argued that, when we insist that players obey the rules of a game, we give too much weight to the author’s intent. Others have argued that such obedience to the rules violates the true purpose of games, which is fostering free and creative play. Both of these responses, I argue, misunderstand the nature of games and their rules. The rules do not tell us how (...) to interpret a game; they merely tell us what the game is. And the point of the rules is not always to foster free and creative play. The point can be, instead, to communicate a sculpted form of activity. And in games, as with any form of communication, we need some shared norms to ground communicative stability. Games have what has been called a “prescriptive ontology.” A game is something more than simply a piece of material. It is some material as approached in a certain specified way. These prescriptions help to fix a common object of attention. Games share this prescriptive ontology with more traditional kinds of works. Novels are more than just a set of words on a page; they are those words read in a certain order. Games are more than just some software or cardboard bits; they are those bits interacted with according to certain rules. Part of a game’s essential nature is the prescriptions for how we are to play it. What’s more, we investigate the prescriptive ontology of games, we will uncover at least distinct prescriptive categories of games. Party games prescribe that we encounter the game once; heavy strategy games prescribe we encounter the game many times; and community evolution games prescribe that we encounter the game while embedded in an ongoing community of play. (shrink)

Players of videogames describe their gameplay in the first person, e.g. “I took cover behind a barricade.” Such descriptions of gameplay experiences are commonplace, but also puzzling because players are actually just pushing buttons, not engaging in the activities described by their first-person reports. According to a view defended by Robson and Meskin (2016), which we call the fictional identity view, this puzzle is solved by claiming that the player is fictionally identical with the player character. Hence, on this view, (...) if the player-character fictionally performs an action then, fictionally, the player performs that action. However, we argue that the fictional identity view does not make sense of players' gameplay experiences and their descriptions of them. We develop an alternative account of the relationship between the player and player-character on which the player-character serves as the player's fictional proxy, and argue that this account makes better sense of the nature of videogames as interactive fictions. (shrink)

As described in Benjamin Hale’s Introduction to “Philosophy Looks at Chess”: -/- “Deb Vossen asks whether chess can rightly be considered a game in the first place. She concludes, much to the surprise of many readers, that chess is not a game. Her evocative claim turns on a distinction between a game and the idea of a game, which evolved out of Bernard Suits’s phenomenally underappreciated work The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. She advances this position by way of a (...) technical argument that employs Suits’s discussion of “prelusory” goals and “lusory” attitudes. The word “lusory” generally means sporty or playful; and in Suits’s sense, it means that when we engage in the play of chess, we must enter the lusory attitude. She uses the notion of a prelusory goal to argue that such goals exist in a game (in this case, a game of chess) but not at all in the idea of the game (in the idea of chess).”. (shrink)

Traditionally, acts of sportsmanship have been upheld as worthy of praise. The purpose of this paper is to discern whether Bernard Suits’ Grasshopper -- in "The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia" -- would share this approval. The paper begins with a conceptual analysis of good sportspersonship. From this, four action categories are identified including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, not trying, and lusory self-handicapping. A strategy for evaluation is derived from the Grasshopper’s theory. Game-playing (...) is defined as action reflecting lusory attitude acknowledgement. Game-spoiling is introduced as action demonstrating lusory attitude abandonment. Three of the four actions categories are characterized as game-spoiling including good sportspersonship in the forms of game desertion, changing the game, and not trying. It is concluded that genuine good sportspersonship is characterized solely by altruistic forms of lusory self-handicapping. (shrink)

Some theorists claim that games are “transmedial”, meaning that the same game can be played in different media. It is unclear, however, what are the limits of transmedial games. Are all games in-principle transmedial, or only some? One suggestion offered by Jesper Juul is that, if games are understood as sets of rules, then a game is transmedial if its rules can be either implemented or adapted into some new media. I argue against this view on the grounds that the (...) rules of many games are dependent on the game’s media such that they cannot be adapted to a new medium. As such the games-as-rules view of transmediality is not restrictive enough. To add the necessary restriction, I suggest that games are transmedial, not only when they contain the same rules, but also when it requires the same set of skills to play each. I further argue that a skill-set view of transmediality is better able to account for many common intuitions about games. (shrink)

Decisions in democracy are binding not in virtue of being true or good, but on account of being an outcome of the majority voting procedure. For some, this is a proof of an intricate connection between democracy and moral relativism. The ‘militant democracy’ model, on the other hand, is premised on the idea that certain political actors and choices have to be banned for being fatally bad for democracy. This gives rise to the claim that protected democratic fundamental values of (...) freedom and equality enjoy the status of absolute moral standards. This article dismisses the intuition that justification of ‘militant democracy’ depends on unpacking the relation between democracy and meta-ethics. Instead, following Bernard Suits’ analytical exposition of the important features of games, it demonstrates, first, how democracy is like a game and, then, it argues that a plausible justification of ‘militant democracy’ stems from its game-like character. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

In 'The Grasshopper' Suits proposes that ‘playing a game’ can be captured as an attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs (prelusory goal), using only means permitted by rules (lusory means). These rules prohibit more efficient means, and are accepted because they make the activity possible (lusory attitude). I argue these conditions are not jointly sufficient. The starting point for the argument is the idea that goals, means and attitudes can pick out their content in different ways. They can (...) involve a direct reference (‘crossing this specific finish line’), or a description that picks out something (‘crossing a line on the track after running 100 m’). I provide cases in which one’s attitudes, accepted goals or accepted means pick out their content by a description such that the person does not play a game, even if Suits’s conditions are satisfied. I show that this demands an epistemic condition for playing a game that also applies to commitment based accounts. Finally, I discuss what such an epistemic condition could be. I argue that the condition does not require personal knowledge of all goals and means, but merely enough epistemic access that the goal and permissible means can guide one’s behavior safely enough. This might be satisfied by social extensions, such as access to tools (e.g. a rulebook) or other people (e.g. referees). (shrink)

There are well-known problems for formalist accounts of game-play with regards to cheating. Such accounts seem to be committed to cheaters being unable to win–or even play–the game, yet it seems that there are instances of cheaters winning games. In this paper, I expand the discussion of such problems by introducing cases of pre-game cheating, and see how a formalist–specifically a Suitsian–account can accommodate such problems. Specifically, I look at two (fictional) examples where the alleged game-players cheat prior to a (...) game-instance in such as a way as to cast doubt on whether the alleged game-players are truly playing the game. To escape the worries brought about by these examples of pre-game cheating, I will appeal to the concept of nested games. This concept will give us the needed tools to explain how the alleged players are cheating and how the alleged players are players. On the whole, this discussion should help illuminate some important issues with regards to cheating and rules on a Suitsian account of game-play, and help give support for formalist accounts more generally. (shrink)

Games have a complex, and seemingly paradoxical structure: they are both competitive and cooperative, and the competitive element is required for the cooperative element to work out. They are mechanisms for transforming competition into cooperation. Several contemporary philosophers of sport have located the primary mechanism of conversion in the mental attitudes of the players. I argue that these views cannot capture the phenomenological complexity of game-play, nor the difficulty and moral complexity of achieving cooperation through game-play. In this paper, I (...) present a different account of the relationship between competition and cooperation. My view is a distributed view of the conversion: success depends on a large number of features. First, the players must achieve the right motivational state: playing for the sake of the struggle, rather than to win. Second, successful transformation depends on a large number of extra-mental features, including good game design, and social and institutional features. (shrink)

This article explores the nature and theoretical import of a hitherto neglected class of fictions which we term ‘self-involving interactive fictions’. SIIFs are interactive fictions, but they differ from standard examples of interactive fictions by being, in some important sense, about those who consume them. In order to better understand the nature of SIIFs, and the ways in which they differ from other fictions, we focus primarily on the most prominent example of the category: video-game fictions. We argue that appreciating (...) the self-involving nature of video-game fictions is key to understanding various otherwise puzzling phenomena concerning the ways in which consumers respond to them. Video-game fictions are, however, far from being the only extant example of this class; and we suggest that the recent philosophical interest in video games would be better focused on the wider class of self-involving interactive fictions. (shrink)

In his ‘Rules and Obligations,’ Bogdan Ciomaga defends a pluralist account of moral obligations to follow sport rules by arguing that no single explanation of such obligations will plausibly apply in multiple contexts. I dispute this claim by showing that consent generates rule-following obligations in a very wide variety of the contexts in which sports are played, including each of those Ciomaga cites in support of his pluralist account. The contractualist or consent-based theory of rule normativity therefore offers a substantially (...) unifying – though not a unitary, for reasons I go on to explain – source of moral obligations to follow sport rules. (shrink)

The existence of the obligation to follow rules in sport is widely accepted, but there are only a few studies that provide accounts that justify it. Building upon Wolff's challenge to traditional political theories, this study proposes a theory that limits the level of normativity to which participants in sport contests are bound in an effort to maximize their autonomy. Instead of constructing a unitary theory of obligations to follow sport rules, a pluralistic account is offered, one that allows for (...) multiple sources of normativity, thus augmenting the freedom of communities to play games according to their values. (shrink)

Morgan Luck raises a potentially troubling problem for gamers who enjoy video games that allow the player to commit acts of virtual murder. The problem simply is that the arguments typically advanced to defend virtual murder in video games would appear to also support video games that allowed gamers to commit acts of virtual paedophilia. Luck’s arguments are persuasive, however, there is one line of argument that he does not consider, which may provide the relevant distinction: as virtual paedophilia involves (...) the depiction of sexual acts involving children, it is therefore an instance of child pornography. I argue that virtual paedophilia involves the depiction of sexual acts involving children, which amounts to child pornography. I then draw on arguments to show that child pornography is morally objectionable. Finally, depictions of virtual murder are not instances of pornography, and so are not morally objectionable for this reason. So, there is a relevant moral distinction to draw between virtual murder and virtual paedophilia that is able to justify the former but not the latter. (shrink)

Zero-sum aspects of sport have generated a number of ethical concerns and a similar number of defenses or apologetics. The trick has been to find a middle position that neither overly gentrifies sport nor inappropriately emphasizes the significance of winning and losing. One such position would have us focus on the process of trying to win over the fact of having one. It would also ameliorate any harms associated with defeat by pointing out that benefits like achievement, excellence, and moral (...) development are available to winner and loser alike. Relying on the notion of ?frame? introduced by Polanyi, I argue that this approach underplays the poignant drama of sport (including the sting of defeat) and thus, seeks redemption at too high a cost. I argue for a version of red-blooded competition that is justified more by transcendence than mitigation, more by a willingness to play again tomorrow than civility during any single contest. I analyze sport in terms of its receptivity to such repetition and find that epistemological uncertainty, enhanced by the presence of chance in sport, renders repeat engagements both sensible and attractive. I conclude that sport verdicts, unlike outcomes in war, business, and love, do not settle things. Rather they invite both winner and loser alike to ?play again tomorrow? (shrink)

The philosophical and scientific literature on play is extensive and the approaches to the study, description, and explanation of play are diverse. In this paper I intend to provide an overview of approaches to play. My interest is in describing the most fundamental categories in terms of which play is characterized, explained, and evaluated. Insofar as these categories attempt to describe what kind of reality we are talking about when we make claims about play, I hope to clarify the metaphysics (...) of play. Once this categorical scheme is made clear, we will be in a better position to evaluate the task of definition, claims about the relation of sport and play, and assertions about the significance of play. First, I place the discussion in the context of Bernard Suits's account of play and some other recent approaches to play. Next, I distinguish the following approaches to play: (a) play as behavior or activity; (b) play as motive, attitude, or state of mind; (c) play as form or structure; (d) play as meaningful experience; (e) play as an ontologically distinctive phenomenon. There is a natural progression in the way the analysis unfolds. In the final section I argue that my analysis generates a pluralist, nonreductive account of play. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a particular amoralist challenge against those who would morally criticize our single-player video play, viz., “come on, it’s only a game!” The amoralist challenge with which I engage gains strength from two facts: the activities to which the amoralist lays claim are only those that do not involve interactions with other rational or sentient creatures, and the amoralist concedes that there may be extrinsic, consequentialist considerations that support legitimate moral criticisms. I argue that the amoralist (...) is mistaken and that there are non-consequentialist resources for morally evaluating our single-player game play. On my view, some video games contain details that anyone who has a proper understanding of and is properly sensitive to features of a shared moral reality will see as having an incorrigible social meaning that targets groups of individuals, e.g., women and minorities. I offer arguments to support the claim that there are such incorrigible social meanings and that they constrain the imaginative world so that challenges like “it’s only a game” lose their credibility. I also argue that our responses to such meanings bear on evaluations of our character, and in light of this fact video game designers have a duty to understand and work against the meanings of such imagery. (shrink)

Most people agree that murder is wrong. Yet, within computer games virtual murder scarcely raises an eyebrow. In one respect this is hardly surprising, as no one is actually murdered within a computer game. A virtual murder, some might argue, is no more unethical than taking a pawn in a game of chess. However, if no actual children are abused in acts of virtual paedophilia (life-like simulations of the actual practice), does that mean we should disregard these acts with the (...) same abandon we do virtual murder? In this paper I shall outline several arguments which attempt to permit virtual murder, whilst prohibiting virtual paedophilia. (shrink)

I argue that the term "interactive" should be considered a general-purpose term that indicates something about whatever it is applied to, whether that is art, artifact, or nature. I base my definition in the notion of "interacting with" something. First, I look for essential features of this relation, and then using these features, I develop a notion of interactivity that can help distinguish the interactive from non-interactive arts. Although I am skeptical of the benefits interactivity affords, interactive artworks are significant (...) in that they are the first instances of mass art to be truly "concreative." Prior to building a definition of interactivity, I provide a novel reading of Collingwood in order to revive his notion of "concreativity" for contemporary application. In order to develop my theory of interactivity as mutual responsiveness, I analyze four problematic definitions of interactivity: (1) the control theory, (2) the making use theory, (3) the input/output theory, (4) Dominic McIver Lopes' modifiable structure theory, and (5) Janet Murray's procedural/participatory theory. In each case, I reveal a problem that my final notion solves. After presenting a definition of interactivity, I defend the viability of my theory against skeptical remarks that interactivity is a useless concept. To highlight the significance of my analysis, I analyze an argument against the value of concreative art—that interactivity is incompatible with narrative immersion. (shrink)

Many philosophical and public discussions of the ethical aspects of violent computer games typically centre on the relation between playing violent videogames and its supposed direct consequences on violent behaviour. But such an approach rests on a controversial empirical claim, is often one-sided in the range of moral theories used, and remains on a general level with its focus on content alone. In response to these problems, I pick up Matt McCormick’s thesis that potential harm from playing computer games is (...) best construed as harm to one’s character, and propose to redirect our attention to the question how violent computer games influence the moral character of players. Inspired by the work of Martha Nussbaum, I sketch a positive account of how computer games can stimulate an empathetic and cosmopolitan moral development. Moreover, rather than making a general argument applicable to a wide spectrum of media, my concern is with specific features of violent computer games that make them especially morally problematic in terms of empathy and cosmopolitanism, features that have to do with the connections between content and medium, and between virtuality and reality. I also discuss some remaining problems. In this way I hope contribute to a less polarised discussion about computer games that does justice to the complexity of their moral dimension, and to offer an account that is helpful to designers, parents, and other stakeholders. (shrink)

An exploration of the way videogames mount arguments and make expressive statements about the world that analyzes their unique persuasive power in terms of ...

Using Bernard Suits’s brilliant analysis (contra Wittgenstein) of playing a game, this paper examines the intrinsic value of game-playing. It argues that two elements in Suits’s analysis make success in games difficult, which is one ground of value, while a third involves choosing a good activity for the property that makes it good, which is a further ground. The paper concludes by arguing that game-playing is the paradigm modern (Marx, Nietzsche) as against classical (Aristotle) value: since its goal is intrinsically (...) trivial, its value is entirely one of process rather than product, journey rather than destination. (shrink)

A critical approach that marries literary theory and information technology, reading digital and cultural artifacts—whether videogames, literature, or ...

This paper provides frameworks for understanding how ethics might be expressed in gameplay situations, and how we can study the ethical frameworks that games offer to players. There are many ways to delve into such topics, and this paper considers only a few approaches. It briefly surveys some of the important ques-tions and critiques arising from audience studies, theories of play and games, and work on cheating, and begins to build a framework for considering ethics in relation to games and (...) players that transcends the “place apart” that games are often constructed as. (shrink)

Computer and video games have become nearly ubiquitous among individuals in industrialized nations, and they have received increasing attention from researchers across many areas of scientific study. However, relatively little attention has been given to Massively-Multiplayer Online Games . The unique social context of MMOGs raises ethical questions about how communication occurs and how conflict is managed in the game world. In order to explore these questions, we compare the social context in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and Disney’s Toontown, focusing (...) on griefing opportunities in each game. We consider ethical questions from the perspectives of players, game companies, and policymakers. (shrink)

I argue that by any major definition of art many modern video games should be considered art. Rather than defining art and defending video games based on a single contentious definition, I offer reasons for thinking that video games can be art according to historical, aesthetic, institutional, representational and expressive theories of art. Overall, I argue that while many video games probably should not be considered art, there are good reasons to think that some video games should be classified as (...) art. I also show that the debates over the artistic status of chess and sports offer some insights into the status of video games. (shrink)