Just Finished Reading: Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us (About Life, Philosophy and Everything) by Jordan Erica Webber and Daniel Griliopoulos (FP: 2017) [324pp]

I hadn’t read any pop-Philosophy for a while and as a Gamer this seemed to be an ideal way to get back into a sub-genre I’ve enjoyed in the past. The authors are both writers specialising in video games rather than philosophers with a gaming interest so the focus of the game is definitely from the gaming and gaming industry point of view. It was also less about the philosophy itself (which is what I was expecting it to be about given the title) and much more about the philosophical underpinnings used by various game developers in their games. Interesting but not a huge focus as far as I’m concerned. Although games can work well with a coherent underlying philosophy I never really gave it that much though as I hacked or shot my way through hordes of Orks or Zombies trying to kill me. Much like my interest in music – I like what I hear without knowing much or anything about the artist or group – my knowledge of individual developers or even gaming ‘houses/companies’ is minimal. I certainly recognise the names of companies [like Blizzard] that I’ve played games by before but I’ve never been one to seek out (or avoid) particular ‘brands’ unless they’re consistent stinkers or simply don’t produce the kinds of games I usually play (like sports games which I have zero interest in).

That’s actually just a long and somewhat involved explanation as to why this book really didn’t ‘do’ it for me. One thing was that the games they chose to illustrate various points I hadn’t, by and large played – BioShock, Ultima and Portal for example. Although it was passing interesting having their developers interviewed and explaining exactly what they were hoping to achieve it left me fairly cool about the whole thing. The philosophical discussions were generally reasonable although a few times I thought that the authors had either missed the point or misunderstood some of the underlying actual philosophy under the game version. It raised the odd eyebrow anyway! A few of the discussions – notably about the philosophy of Mind (which is of particular interest to me) were interesting but, overall, they didn’t really push the envelope much as far as I was concerned. Despite not being a bad book per se I couldn’t help but be disappointed in it for the simple reason that it wasn’t really what I was expecting or wanting going in to it. I had expected/hoped that it was going to be much like the previous pop-Philosophy books I’d read before. Unfortunately, from my own personal interest point of view, it wasn’t. A reasonable read – especially if you’re interested in particular games philosophy rather than the philosophy of games or Philosophy in general.