Mario, Roguelites, and Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence (Minigame 1)

Explicit content warning

03/22/24 • 14 min

How would you feel if you had to live life over and over again? Would it be like playing Slay the Spire? Or maybe Super Mario Bros?

How would you feel if you had to live life over and over again? Would it be like playing Slay the Spire? Or maybe Super Mario Bros?

Previous Episode

1.1: Philosophical Plumbing and Games of Truth

This episode of How to Do Things with Games begins with Mary Midgley’s 1974 question: “Why do philosophers talk about games so much?” Well, why do they (she continues)? I’m not sure, but I’m sure there’s work that needs to be done on the philosophy of games, philosophical infrastructure that can, like plumbing, help ideas flow.

I also discuss the difference between analytic and continental philosophy, the way that philosophy itself is a game, and whether or not Ludwig Wittgenstein helps or hurts us to create some philosophical plumbing:

References:

“The Game Game” by Mary Midgley - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3750115
“Philosophical Plumbing” by Mary Midgley - https://philpapers.org/archive/MIDPP.pdf
“Trotsky and the Wild Orchids” by Richard Rorty - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/901738
Games: Agency as Art by Thi Ngyuen - https://objectionable.net/games-agency-as-art/
“The Final Foucault” by Michel Foucault - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/019145378701200202
Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

Next Episode

1.2: Wittgenstein and Game Definitions --Jonne Arjoranta

Jonne Arjoranta the of Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies joins me to talk about games and definitions in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. You can find Jonne's articles on the topics below:

"Game Definitions - A Wittgensteinian Approach"

https://gamestudies.org/1401/articles/arjoranta

"How to Define Games and Why We Need to" - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40869-019-00080-6