This note is new at Alltop Philosophy News : -------------------------------------- Saturday, April 14, 2012 Philosophy: The Video Game
_This_ (http://www.philosophynow.org/issues/52/Philosophy_The_Video_Game) would be awesome...Join me on _Twitter_ (http://twitter.com/#!/PhilosoraptErs) or _Facebook_ (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002457521549&sk=wall) for updates. Please email suggestions, links and questions to [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) ------------------------------------------------------ this is linked to the Philosophy Now site : Philosophy: The Video Game Shannon Kincaid test drives. The latest release by Dialectic Games has stunning visuals on every platform (from PSP to Xbox), and it is that rare game which effectively combines aggressive gaming with intellectual challenge. You won’t make it through this game if you can’t think and fight. While the single player ‘quick’ missions are a lot of fun (Leibniz battling his way through the ‘Best of All Possible Worlds’), the multiplayer games are awesome. If you can imagine Zeno and Heraclitus in the Ring of Paradox, you get the idea. But it is in Philosopher Career Mode that the action really begins. -------------------------------------------------------------------- It is mind-boggling to try and conceive what a new philosophy video game might be like. Marx shooting it out with Feuerbach ? Hegel in a speeding car trying to chase down Condorcet and run him off the road ? Nietzsche setting fires to the houses of Aquinas, Plato, and Aristotle ? The possibilities are endless. This brings up the thought of a Radical Centrist video game :-) What would that be like ? It would need to have David and Goliath characteristics, Goliath being a 2-headed monster that is half red and half blue. So we need a color of our own. Purple is OK but has one disadvantage, widespread non-RC usage. How about gold ? Gold is neither Red nor Blue and has been used by TV to designate the Reform Party in past elections, and since the Reform Party is now effectively defunct the color would seem to be free. Gold also denotes value. Well, this can be debated. Maybe a better choice would be sepia, which is a nice version of brown ( which combines many colors ). We can't use green, which has been taken. Pink denotes Democratic Socialism. The Anarchists have Black. Anyway color is one consideration for a video game. What, to try and characterize Radical Centrism, lends itself to video game visualization ? We combine political ideas. We are Independents. We sometimes try to think up interesting and new philosophical reasons for our views. We are unafraid to challenge the political orthodoxies of Left and Right. We have a broad range of interests, everything from economics and education, to criticisms of Islam and sometimes self criticisms of religions we identify with, to commentary about social issues , to creative ideas for political reform. How can any of this be reconceptualized in terms of visual metaphor ? Not just any metaphor, but some kind of action metaphor ? Maybe partly by visualizing ourselves. David as a Texas gunslinger. Ernie as a mad scientist in a computer lab. Chris as sort of a Daniel Boone type in the rugged mountain West. Mike as a rogue CIA agent. Lennart as a business exec from Mad Men , but for the good even though others have sinister motives. Norman as a sort of James Bond.. Tom in Chicago as a crusading newsman. Maybe myself as a populist rabble rouser. OK, not perfect, but as a start. In other words, a video game could feature dramatis personae, plot lines, and action suitable for dramatization after the manner of a soap opera, with one episode after another. If this is episodic, and it is hard to think it could be anything else, maybe imagine a video game as an unfolding TV show. All right, what moves the story from episode to episode ? What drives it ? We need to establish motives and provide an avenue for expression. How about a political campaign in video game format ? What if ? Or possibly along the lines of a board game like Monopoly, with "deals" and gambling ( wagering on changes in value of properties ) and trying to get to desired destinations ( Park Place of Boardwalk ). Along the way, try not to Go To Jail or suffer a Chance setback This is thinking out loud, trying to come up with a workable conception for a video game. Do we want to play on the theme of competition between ourselves, "West Coast" Radical Centrism, vs East Coast Atlantic monthly RC ? How do we pull all of this together in a coherent way that is not confusing to others ? If only Tom Sawyer --the TV writer who created the "Murder She Wrote" series-- was in our group. We could pick his brain to good effect for advice on these matters. How about an element of mystery ? This could build interest by engaging everyone's fascination with puzzles and trying to learn concealed truths. Also everyone's desire to see the bad guys unmasked and justice done The bad guys are Republicans and Democrats, and sometimes Others. But we need to be careful because Democrats and Republicans and Others can also be good guys ; it depends. Here are some ideas to work with for openers. This is all in rough form. Basic considerations, nothing here is final in any way. But the problem of designing a Radical Centrist video game could be very useful to us. For sure it would help us "boil down" what is essential about RC so that we can communicate our ideas more effectively to the 'multitudes.' The process of doing so might result in new insights about the nature or Radical Centrism itself as we continue to develop our political philosophy. And, who knows ? Just maybe a popular game of some kind might emerge which has market potential. Billy -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
