Journal of the Philosophy of Games

Video Game Fictions: A Dual-Work View

Karim Nader — 2022-12-31

Video games fictions are interactive: some of the content is set by the game designer and some is set by the player. However, philosophers disagree over how this interaction is reflected within the fictional content of video games. First, I will show that games and playthroughs are two distinct works of fiction with their associated fictional content. Second, I argue that players engage with both fictional works when playing a video game. They imagine the fictional truths associated with the game and those associated with their playthrough. Thus, I defend what I will call a Dual-Work View of our engagement with video game fictions. To do so, I show that games have accessible fictional content, that games are distinctively incomplete fictions, and that players engage with this distinctive incompleteness. My goal is to offer a clear account of the fictional content of video games.

Is Fun A Matter of Grammar?

Giles Field — 2022-12-31

This paper outlines an analysis of the word ‘fun’, as it is used in everyday English sentences to describe various activities and asks why some things are labeled as fun while others seem unable to be properly described as such. One common unspoken idea, for example, is that a fun activity is deemed fun due to having a particular phenomenology, in a way that might be comparable to being in a ‘flow state’. Due to the trouble such psychological accounts of fun have in explaining both the precise conditions of fun and also why some activities are thought to be enjoyable but not fun, a deflationary theory is instead introduced.

This proposed alternative account suggests that the use of the word ‘fun’, when describing activities in English sentences, signals that the sentence is a generic sentence, an idea based on a semantic distinction made by Greg Carlson (1989). Further, it is argued that the words ‘pleasurable’ and ‘enjoyable’ are reserved for non-generic sentences, leaving the use of the word ‘fun’ to signal something akin to a grammar relation, rather than referring to a feeling or psychological state.

Digital Games, Image-Consciousness and Superreality

Daniel O'Shiel — 2022-12-31

This paper argues that digital games are best understood as a type of image-consciousness (Bildbewusstein). First, I argue how our experiences of digital games are not perceptions. Second, I provide a summary of the phenomenological natures of three basic modes of consciousness in Hus-serl, Fink and Sartre—perception, phantasy and image-consciousness—in order to demonstrate that the latter ultimately finds its place between the other two. Lastly, I spell out the implications and contributions these insights can have for our understanding of digital games, including their quite unique character and force. Indeed, once one understands digital games as a quintessential instantia-tion of this intermediate kind of consciousness, one can also better understand the immense pull digital games can have on us, not least their ‘superreality’.