Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Post Mortem: Philosophy of Game Design series

So my Philosophy series at the Escapist has finally wrapped up with part 4. You may now rejoice.

Here's what I'm guilty of:
  • Taking on a crazy writing schedule when I still have to grow more as a writer.
  • Attempting a survey of 2 vast fields of study (philosophy and game design) and attempting to compress them into four measly articles.
  • Not really knowing that philosophy in detail, but using it more as an excuse to talk about games.
  • Putting too much stock in what people on the internet think.
  • Not really knowing how to categorize Tale of Tales. I think they claim to be Neo-Aristotelian (whatever that means) but I think they're more Postmodernist, or at least their design essays are.
Here's what (many, but not all) readers are guilty of:
  • Rampant anti-intellectualism that's going to destroy every Western democracy as we know it.
  • Not realizing that I'm attempting a survey and expecting incredible depth, when my word count limit won't let me get past "junior high textbook" levels of depth. 
  • Not giving Marxism enough credit in influencing contemporary discourse about virtually anything.
What I learned:
  • Any communication problem is ultimately the author's fault. So, don't talk to gamers about theory using four 1600 word essays. Talk to them using games. (To that end, I'm going to propose a "Philosophy of Games" game project to my design theory seminar and hopefully finish that in December, assuming my proposal gets approved. Going to look into Unity for wider deployment, otherwise probably just going to be another HL2 mod that might replace Byzantine Perspective in Radiator Vol. 2.)
  • Don't strain my working relationship with the lovely Susan Arendt like that ever again.
  • People who study philosophy... take it really really seriously.