Video games are still generally viewed as entertainment. And yet, behind the beautiful wrapper, there is often something deeper hidden, right down to whole philosophical concepts. Cybersport.ru offers a look at eight games based on certain philosophical themes – from existentialism to immortalism.
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The first part of the series by game designer Ken Levin told about the underwater city of Rapture, created so that artists, writers and scientists from all over the world can hide in it and create freely, without being distracted by the problems of the outside world. The main character found himself in the city when almost nothing remained of the ideal utopia: people turned into monsters, and society fell under the weight of its own ambitions. In addition to yet another appeal to determinism and free will (everyone who has played remembers the key “Be Kind”), BioShock takes the position of criticizing objectivism, a philosophical idea put forward in the early 20th century by Ayn Rand, a Russian-born American writer.
The central idea of Rand’s concept is the desire for the most objective assessment of the surrounding reality, as opposed to more abstract or subjective approaches. Among other things, Rand’s ideas clearly sounded the idea that people should pursue their own ambitions freely, without interference from government, religion or other social institutions – exactly how the underwater Rapture was supposed to live. At the time of the events of the game, the city is the clearest demonstration of how fragile a self-regulating society, consisting entirely of individualists, is, and a kind of argument against the very concept of “rational egoism”.
Traditionally, the Silent Hill series is usually viewed through the prism of psychology: the main narrative of the games in the series is built around various psychological phenomena such as defense mechanisms – most often we are talking about the distortion, displacement, sublimation or projection of various memories and ideas. Nevertheless, many things in the series can be analyzed from the point of view of epistemology – the section of philosophy about the study of knowledge as such. And if in the first and fourth parts the heroes find themselves in alien worlds, and in the second and Shattered Memories the characters have to fight their own distorted minds, then the heroine of the third part is an ordinary girl who suddenly finds herself in the center of a nightmare. And it is with this example that it is easiest to view the epistemological beginnings of the franchise.
One of the questions raised in epistemology is is our understanding accurate and does it manipulate reality? Silent Hill 3 makes full use of this: for example, if you read a newspaper on the subway about a man who died under the wheels of a train, his ghost will push Heather onto the tracks. If the girl misses the note about the suicide, then the ghost will not appear. The symbolism inherent in the series does not disappear anywhere (moreover, Heather, who is going through a difficult growing up, sees symbols everywhere, hinting at abortion and violence), but shifts towards closer proximity to reality. At the same time, the thin line between the perception of reality and personal reality casts doubt on literally everything that happens in the game.
Another game from the creator of The Stanley Parable goes into a completely different territory. This time, instead of a parable about determinism, Davey Vreden suggests looking at the nature of creativity and trying to analyze it using one specific example – through the study of games created by a friend of the developer with the nickname Coda.
Each new game in The Beginner’s Guide is accompanied by Vreden’s comments with interpretations of what is happening in the works of Coda, the interpretation of embedded symbols and how the personality and state of the creator can influence what he has created. Creativity has been an important subject of the study of philosophy since antiquity, and each new era brings a new perspective on things. In The Beginner’s Guide, of course, much more attention is paid to the psychological aspects of creativity, but this does not at all mean that there is not a word about philosophical motives: as in antiquity, creativity is considered here, among other things, as an attempt to achieve the highest contemplation of the world. Yes, and the Renaissance with its vision of genius as a bearer of creativity cannot be eliminated: Coda is presented as a unique creator who is quite different from the common man.
The last part of the series of military shooters surprised with an extremely unusual approach. Already on the title screen, an inverted American flag flaunted, which contradicts the US flag code and from the first minutes shows that nothing good will be ahead. The story of Walker and his Delta squad, trapped in ruined Dubai, touches on many difficult topics – from violence in video games to all the same determinism. Here, however, the player does not always have freedom of choice.
At the center of the game is the main question that can be seen on the loading screen towards the end: “Do you feel like a hero?” Despite the fact that Spec Ops: The Line moves along fairly standard paths for a shooter, during the passage the user is repeatedly faced with the fact that it is not so easy to find excuses for the actions of Walker and his team. The issue of the ethics of what is happening, the consequences of events and the moral right to action is more acute here than ever. And the developers are not going to give any answers – you need to analyze what is happening yourself.
