Intendierte Lernergebnisse
Learn to critically approach contemporary game experience from a philosophical point of view. Understand the concept of Philosophical Practice. Delve into the philosophical consequences of how videogames transpose physical world into a digital environment (representation) and how narration and meaning is established in gaming experience (configuration). Approach one of the last phases of videogame development, its multilingual localization, through a critical discourse on language. Learn about the possibility to establish videogames as Multimedia Interactive Artworks and approach their key features from a philosophical perspective, with the help of first-hand experience in gaming.Final scope is to provide philosophical and phenomenological framework for a critical approach to videogames and gaming as philosophical practice.
Lehrmethodik inkl. Einsatz von eLearning-Tools
This seminar will be taught in frontal lectures (80% in person, 20% online), which will be complemented by a personal research, a group research, and gaming experience.
Inhalt/e
The course is split into an introductory session, four content blocks, and a restitution session.Introductory Session:The first session will briefly summarize course contents, present the methodology, and answer students’ questions in dialogue with all attendants. Course’s mode of exam will also be presented and students will be invited to form groups for the group research.Block 1 – Philosophical background:The first block will present the philosophical background of the course’s perspective. It will introduce the students to philosophical analysis, establish a lexicon, and provide base phenomenological and theoretical concepts. Aesthetics, Ethics, Theoretical Philosophy, Semiology, and Phenomenology will be focus of this block. A working definition of Multimedia Interactive Artwork will be presented. It will then briefly present an example of interdisciplinary approach: Huizinga’s anthropology, Moltmann’s theology, and Indian līlayā on the experience of gaming. At the end of this block, the mid-course quiz will be shared,.Block 2 – Gaming as Philosophical Practice:The second block will present the basis of Philosophical Practice and how it can be tied to the experience of gaming and narration. It will then build the ground from which the idea of videogames as a method of philosophical practice (both gaming and game-design) can be a valid philosophical proposal. Students will be invited to choose a title to play singularly during the next weeks according to the proposed methodology, which will be featured in the final quiz and be subject of the individual written assesmentBlock 3 – Representation:Second block will examine the topic of representation in videogames from a philosophical perspective according to three topics: World, Self, and Society. Lectures will expand concepts presented in Block 1 in the three topics, thus presenting a possible approach to a critical gaming experience thanks to di Letizia’s phenomenology of gameplay experience. Dedicated focus will be given to how the concept of spirituality can be represented in videogames from two different perspectives: representation of real-world religion and creation of world-specific religions. Students will be then invited to do a quick report on the status of their gameplay, approaching the gameplay critically, and to report their experience and notes.Block 4 – Configuration:This block will approach the subject of narration and meaning in videogames. The frontal lectures will delve into the concepts of Direct Narration and Indirect Narration and their peculiarities. Next, the concept of meaning will be analysed through the lens of gameplay and game-design of a selected range of videogames titles. A dedicate focus will be given to the issues related to localization and how Philosophy of Language can help an analysis of localization issues in videogames. Finally, some first-hand experiences of game design will be presented to further guide the proposed critical approach. At the end of this block, the questionary will be shared.Restitution session:Students will present the result of their group gaming experience through a collective presentation. A final round-up dialogical session will be held on the themes that will emerge from this personal experience. Each student will then propose their argument for the individual assessment.
Literatur
Suggested literature include, but is not limited to:- Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo ludens. Boston: Beacon Press.- Johnson, S. (1997). Interface culture. San Francisco: Harper.- Mukherjee, S. (2015). Video Games and Storytelling, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.- Keogh, B. (2018). A Play of Bodies. How we perceive videogames, Cambridge: MIT Press.- Bosman, F. (2019). Gaming and the Divine, London: Routledge.Additional references will be made available during the course.Previous experience of the following videogames is encouraged: Alan Wake, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, BioShock (any chapter), Dark Souls (any chapter), Nier: Automata, Deus Ex (any chapter), Firewatch, L. A. Noir, Life is Strange, No Man’s Sky, The Stanley Parable, Rusty Lake Hotel, the Myst saga, Cyberpunk 2077.