Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
As a philosopher who designs videogames and as a game designer who is pas-
sionate about philosophy, I develop videogames that overtly pursue the
objectives of:
Making certain philosophical notions playable
Materializing thought experiments
Experientially and interactively disclosing worlds
3
that are alternative to the ones
human beings can experience in their everyday engagement with the world com-
monly labelled as 'actual'.
Practical examples of videogames designed with philosophical scopes and
themes will be illustrated and dissected in their design and playful interactions in
the fourth and fi fth sections of this essay.
4.2
Problematizing Play
In this section, I will articulate a perspective on why the virtual worlds that are
disclosed by digital simulations and videogames (see note 3) can be considered to
be practicable ways of communicating philosophical notions.
When discussing the various effects of digital mediation on culture and its grow-
ing involvement in social as well as artistic practices, it is not uncommon to observe
that contemporary academic discourses gravitate around the unique affordances of
computers. In other words, when we discuss the digital medium, we tend to talk
about how its specifi c ways of granting access to information 'classify the world for
us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, colour it, argue a case for what the
world is like' (Postman
2005
, 10). Both the potential for artistic expression and the
cultural relevance of digital mediation are understood as derivations of the specifi c
ways in which computers disclose interactive experiences. According to this per-
spective, the cultural meaning of interactive digital media content cannot be under-
stood as simply emerging from
decoding
of such content - as was the case for
traditional forms of mediation such as textuality - but also from acting within medi-
ated content: from 'doing'.
world with the intercession of technical artefacts. Borrowing the words of Robert Musil, 'projec-
tivity' is 'a conscious utopianism that does not shrink from reality but sees it as a project, some-
thing yet to be invented'. (Musil
1996
, 11) This position derives from a fundamental standpoint
which understands technology as the materialization of the innate tendency of human beings for
overcoming their physical, perceptual and communicative limitations.
3
The understanding of what a 'world' is proposed by this essay was inspired by Heidegger's exis-
tential phenomenology. I understand a 'world' as an interrelated set of beings and relationships
among beings that are stably perceivable and persistently intelligible within a certain spatial-
temporal context. This interpretation permits to establish a clear distinction between the experi-
ences of virtual worlds and the less stable and accessible ones of dreams and hallucinations. In line
with this defi nition of what a 'world' is, I propose to understand simulations as mediators that grant
an interactive access to worlds.
