Self-reflexive videogames do not generally employ interactive and aesthetic techniques that try to make their players identify with the playing characters, unless with the intention of pulling that empathetic rug from under the players’ feet later in the gameplay. In analogy with Brecht’s epic theatre, their gameplay tends to be uncouth and drily instrumental to their experiential and critical goals. With those objectives in mind, these kinds of unsettling videogames typically disclose experiences that are not inherently enjoyable or rewarding. As Brecht phrased it, the spectators (or, in this case, the players of self-reflexive videogames) “need to develop that detached eye with which the great Galileo observed a swinging chandelier” (Brecht, 1964, p. In a similar way, the aesthetic and interactive experiences of self-reflexive videogames are designed with the overt intention of establishing – through astonishment and unfamiliarity – a degree of analytical distance between players and videogames, turning the latter (embraced together with their established conventions and tropes) into objects of critical analysis. Rodchenko’s works of photomontage and photography, Lev Tolstoy’s literary production, and the practice of Surrealist play. A few, particularly noteworthy examples are in this sense Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre, Alexander M.

This state of mind was recognized and sought-after by the Dadaists, the surrealists, and the situationists among others as the necessary pre-condition for demystifying representational as well as cultural conventions, and ultimately for reforming society (Laxton, 2003 Flanagan, 2009, pp. The bizarre and unfamiliar aesthetics embraced by several modernist currents explicitly attempted to unsettle the observer, the reader, the spectator, the player, and to elicit in them a state of detached, suspicious inquiry. From this perspective, they can be recognized as aspiring to produce experiential effects that are conceptually comparable to those pursued by some of the currents of the philosophical and artistic movement customarily labeled modernism. Self-reflexive video games typically question their own (generic) technical, interactive, and thematic conventions by intentionally provoking a sense of unease and unfamiliarity in their players and spectators. The subversion of representational and/or interactive canons, and the often jeering meta-representation of (video)ludic objects are design strategies that are frequently employed in the realization of such videogames.

Self-reflexive videogames are videogames that are deliberately designed to materialize, through their gameplay and their aesthetic qualities, critical and/or satirical perspectives on the ways in which videogames themselves are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, and understood as social objects. Īn introduction to self-reflexive (video)games The videogame discussed in this essay is freely available at. Video game, critical design, philosophy, virtual worlds, self-reflexivity In this section, I will argue that, both through the practice of game design and through the interactive experiences of virtual worlds, twenty-first century philosophers have the possibility to challenge the often-unquestioned understanding of written discourse as the only context in which philosophical thought can emerge and be developed. Taking off from the perspectives on self-reflexive videogames offered in the first part of the essay, the second half will focus on virtual worlds as viable mediators of philosophical thought more in general.With the objective of clarifying the philosophical aspirations of self-reflexive videogames – and in order to understand how those aspirations can be practically pursued – I will dissect and examine the design decisions that contributed to the qualities of NECESSARY EVIL as an example of “playable philosophy”. In the first part of this essay, I will discuss NECESSARY EVIL (Gualeni et al., 2013), an experimental videogame that I designed as a self-reflexive virtual artifact.Structurally, it is composed of two interconnected parts: This essay focuses on the use of virtual worlds as mediators, and in particular on the use of videogames to guide and encourage reflections on technical, interactive, and thematic conventions in videogame design and development. Self-reflexive videogames are videogames designed to materialize critical and/or satirical perspectives on the ways in which videogames themselves are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, and understood as social objects.

Fantasy general 2 artifacts