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 video games 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 video game development, its multilingual localization, through a critical discourse on language. Learn about the possibility to establish video games 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 video games and gaming as philosophical practice.
Lehrmethodik
This seminar will be taught in frontal lectures and laboratories, which will be complemented by a personal research and gaming experience.
Inhalt/e
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.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 the focus of this block. A working definition of Multimedia Interactive Artwork will be presented. It will then briefly present an example of interdisciplinary approach. 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 video games 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 during the next weeks according to the proposed methodology.Third block will examine the topic of representation in video games 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 video games. This block will approach the subject of narration and meaning in video games. The frontal lectures will delve into the concepts of Direct Narration and Indirect Narration and their peculiarities. Next, the concept of meaning will be analyzed through the lens of gameplay and game-design of a selected range of video game titles. A dedicated focus will be given to the issues related to localization and how Philosophy of Language can help an analysis of localization issues in video games. Finally, some first-hand experiences of game design will be presented to further guide the proposed critical approach. Lastly, students will present their gaming experience to the class through the answers they gave in the questionary. 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 video games , Cambridge: MIT Press.- Bosman, F. (2019). Gaming and the Divine , London: Routledge.Additional references will be made available during the course.