308: The State of Gaming Nature

Eacaraxe_v1legacy

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mattag08 said:
Reading a little too far into these games.

More likely these developers simply looked at the world around them and tried to mimic human nature as they saw it. The best media of any kind has always been that which was true to human nature.
See, the thing is that designers can and do integrate heavily intellectual concepts into game design, but when it's done well the footprint is so light that you only recognize those things if you observe the game through that lens. Look no further than BioShock (as much as I hate to invoke that considered I loathed the game) for an example of some hefty intellectual business going on under the hood of a first-person shooter; the game's backstory and plot was a thorough deconstruction of Objectivism as a political theory, with some free will stuff thrown in, and you'd never known it unless you read about it or had already read Rand.

More to the point, New Vegas was written by Chris Avellone -- the guy who wrote games like Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, and Knights of the Old Republic 2. Look at any of those games and tell me there's not some deep intellectual stuff going on under the hood. The guy knows his stuff and integrates it well into the games he writes. Did Avellone sit down and decide when working on FO2, VB, NV, or the FO Bible "I'm going to envision a Hobbesian state of nature!"? probably not (especially considering the FO universe would be a poor reflection of a truly Hobbesian state of nature to begin with), but stuff like PS:T, KoTOR2, and (not Avellone's, but fits here) BioShock aren't created in a vacuum; a working understanding of the underlying concepts is necessary to craft a piece of work and translate it to an audience, while leaving a light enough footprint to not dominate the piece.
 

AgDr_ODST

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Fantastic article, it was very delicious and filling food for thought all in all. As for the debate I see abit of middle ground that can be reached between the two games/schools of thought. But since Im unable to find a philosopher and a game to go with this view point I hold Im more inclined to side with Red Dead Redemption and Rousseau.
 

grigjd3

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Both arguments are wrong-headed. Freedom is the willingness to deal with the consequences of one's actions.
 

Woem

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Andrew Bell said:
The State of Gaming Nature

Judging by Fallout: New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption, centuries-old philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau would've made pretty good game designers.

Read Full Article
As a fan of both games, I really enjoyed this article. One note though: on page 2, it's "New Austin", not "New Austen".
 

Coldster

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I think John Locke would have also been a good game designer. Funny that I had to just do a report on those three.
 

Viking Incognito

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I don't really know what to say other than that was great. I personally can't decide between two camps, but I will say I was always more of A John Locke fan than Hobbes. Locke was always more about the combine efforts of people rather than the divine right of single leaders. That doesn't have much to do with the state of nature thing but whatever. Locke however did agree that without community and civilization, people were basically animals.

Eacaraxe said:
Which, as a sidenote, was little other than pro-monarchical propaganda at the time, until Locke took the concept of the social contract and ran with it in his essays supporting William of Orange. Why yes, I'm still a little sore over my article pitch about vidjagame morality systems being constrained by designer-dictated and -enforced objectivity (and necessarily consequentialist) being rejected.
Exactly.
 

Gunner 51

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What a wonderfully worded and thoughtful article, Mr Bell. I really enjoyed reading it - I'd love to see more gaming articles here on the Escapist if they'll let you publish them. :)
 

Jammy Fingers

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the one fallasy of Hobbes is that if as an individual Mankind is a savage beast, what as a collective forces them to civilise? apparently it's this "social contract" we all agree too but I think that is bullshit.
Rosseau is a better start point as it explains that injustices created by society force man to become cruel and uncaring rather than that being their base nature explaining how inequalities in the artificial construct of a civilisation creates "bad" men rather than trying to explain how "bad" men make "good" civilisations.

Hobbes' political philosophy came at a time when it was becoming difficult to keep a lid on parliamentarians. Hobbes had the philosophy that we at nature fight each other for resources. to protect ourselves we surrender power to a monarchy and in return they protect us. it pissed a whole lot of people off. he pissed off parliamentarians because he thought there should be a monarchy and pissed off monarchists because he denied the divine right to rule. they were going to burn him and his books but he was saved by Charles II whom he had tutored while self-exiled in France.
 

Eacaraxe_v1legacy

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Aw, hail naw. Nobody f*cks with my social contractualist homies. Why yes, I am writing while so abundantly drunk that Locke, when writing about his proviso which would later be adapted to the Norman yoke, would have thought "oh damn, just have some coffee and go to bed, dude". Therefore...well, tongue-in-cheek, grain of salt, et cetera.

Jammy Fingers said:
the one fallasy of Hobbes is that if as an individual Mankind is a savage beast

Blah blah F*ckin' blah.

they were going to burn him and his books but he was saved by Charles II whom he had tutored while self-exiled in France.
No, Hobbes was a monarchist writing in response to the English Civil War and the Treaty of Westphalia. He liked monarchy, and in response to the burgeoning Enlightenment philosophers sought a rationalist solution to the question of why monarchy is necessary. The Hobbesian state of nature was concluded, and the contract created, out of mankind's capability to reason the Hobbisan state of nature would end in tragedy. That's kind of a PITA, so in order to save our individual asses, we contracted with one another to create society under an autocracy, whether that be by monarchy, aristocracy, or democratic tyrant. It's evolution, baby! Mutually assured destruction. That's what Hobbesian society seeks to avert, and why the Leviathan is Pretty G*dd*mn Important.

In other words, we had the capacity to figure out life was nasty, brutish and short. We didn't like that. So we averted that with...society! Ya dun like it? Read that other half of Leviathan -- you know, that half where he talks about religion and scriptural literacy by monarchical right; somebody loved them some Henry VIII and his multitude of headless bizzitches. Yep, he cheesed off a lot of folks...the same ones who'd be licking Locke's William of Orange-loving, Irish-f*cking, taint-sweat screaming "YUM YUM BEEYOTCH!" and doing middling crap like writing the Declaration of Independence another century later. Suck it.

Country Whigs represent, yo. West Say-eed, bizzatch. French land redistributed to enfranchise the common man to create a yeoman-farmer society for everyone! F*ck the man, and anybody trying to craft an a priori argument as to why tyranny is a Good Thing can lick my 100% Flag-Waving Jingoist who knows his Modern Philosophy American ballsack.

Rousseau? You mean the proto-Marxist, pre-Hegelian, dialectic mofo that was into some kinky ass shizzite like nun spankings a-plenty and was so balls-out rockstar he got kicked out of David Hume's house for chrissake? Oh yeah, 18th Century philosophers were
HARD FUCKING CORE.
Human reason was the basis for the desire to own property. The Rousseauvian state of nature was absent the capacity for reason, which makes him such a world-grade cock towards the Native Americans. Don't make me bust out my personal copy of A Discourse on Inequality or The Social Contract for citations. Everything else is secondary, including the desire to regulate and institutionalize inequality. Which, by the way, was a intermediary step for the development and enactment of the General Will, which would make any given Tea Partier on Earth crap their pants and run home screaming for the warm and gentle embrace of Sarah Palin's saggy grandma derp-baby funbags.
 

thereforecrowbar

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I do find this article enjoyably interesting, in particular the ideas that would have never crossed my mind, such as how the sleeping mechanic in both of these games reinforces the themes.

For Fallout, I might argue that sleeping in a bed you own represents sleeping in a place you feel comfortable and safe, rather than some bed whose inhabitants have seemingly disappeared (or maybe the guilt of taking someone else?s bed?), not necessarily a promotion of civilization. In fact, Fallout could, overall, be an ?anti-civilization game? since the current state of the world, a radiated wasteland, is thanks to civilization and its bombs (perhaps Fallout 3 does a better job of representing this, since many of the more civilized groups like the Enclave and leadership structure of Vault 101 are more blatantly corrupt). The Vaults themselves, many of them social experiments, also may demonstrate the corruption of civilization, perhaps. In addition, I?m surprised that the endings of Independent New Vegas or siding with Mr. House weren?t mentioned, since they do provide a different flavor to the message of Fallout: New Vegas. One might interpret those endings as siding against civilization (or rather something more civilized like the NCR and the Legion, since none of the endings are absolutely anti-civilization).
 

kelevra

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Oh God, but Hobbes would've advocated a Sovereign whom tyranically rules in supression of our inherent evilness. Oh wait. Its EA. Nevermind.

OT: Great article. Great to see my politics and philosophy courses paid off SOMWHERE ;)
 

clanknfrends

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I dont think that a game can adopt one philosophical perspective, there is bound to be more than one view in there. But I do agree. This was a fantastic article, keep on writing stuff like this
 

theklng

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wow those philosophers are SO OLD. that means that their philosophies are no longer applicable in our time right? i mean sun tzu's art of war isn't a spetacular literary work because it holds up today, but because it was written in ancient times right?

and excuse me, but at what point does a game explicitly force a player to philosophize about his or her actions? i'd be more inclined to think that philosophizing is an attribute of the player and not the game itself, and it is the player's choice whether to philosophize or not.

what a load of bull.
 

wammnebu

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There is more to Leviathan than chapter 13.

life is nasty brutish and short UNLESS men follow the laws of nature, hobbes chief point on man in the natural state was that it could be left