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Can video games be philosophical?

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Thomas J. Spiegel
Thomas J. Spiegel
Thomas J. Spiegel
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Some video games are said to be philosophical. Despite video games having received some attention in academic philosophy, that contention has not been sufficiently addressed. This paper investigates in what sense video games might be properly called “philosophical”. To this end, I utilize Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing to get into view how some video games might be properly called philosophical. This leads to two senses of being philosophical: a conventional sense of expressing philosophy through propositions, i.e., through saying, and a sense of being genuinely philosophical by expressing philosophical thought through showing. I argue that the conventional sense is not sufficient to call video games philosophical, leaving the question whether there are video games which satisfy the conditions of being genuinely philosophical. I furthermore contend that there are at least some examples of video games which qualify as being philosophical, e.g., Papers, Please and The Stanley Parable.
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Synthese (2024) 203:144
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04580-5
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Can video games be philosophical?
Thomas J. Spiegel1,2
Received: 9 August 2023 / Accepted: 25 March 2024 / Published online: 27 April 2024
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2024
Abstract
Some video games are said to be philosophical. Despite video games having received
some attention in academic philosophy, that contention has not been sufficiently
addressed. This paper investigates in what sense video games might be properly called
“philosophical”. To this end, I utilize Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and
showing to get into view how some video games might be properly called philosophi-
cal. This leads to two senses of being philosophical: a conventional sense of expressing
philosophy through propositions, i.e., through saying, and a sense of being genuinely
philosophical by expressing philosophical thought through showing. I argue that the
conventional sense is not sufficient to call video games philosophical, leaving the ques-
tion whether there are video games which satisfy the conditions of being genuinely
philosophical. I furthermore contend that there are at least some examples of video
games which qualify as being philosophical, e.g., Papers, Please and The Stanley
Parable.
Keywords Video games ·Computer games ·Digital games ·Metaphilosophy ·
Methodology ·Game studies ·Propositional contents ·Philosophy of Mind ·
Wittgenstein
1 Introduction
The relatively new academic genre of game studies has not yet found its ‘true’ identity
under a unified conception of methodology or unifying paradigm. Or perhaps: The
identity of game studies lies precisely in the lack of a unifying paradigm. Game
studies gather a number of different approaches and disciplinary influences, such
as psychology, ludology, social sciences, literature studies, sports science, computer
science, cultural studies, economics, media studies, and philosophy (Nguyen, 2017 for
BThomas J. Spiegel
thomas.j.spiegel@gmail.com
1Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
2Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, 1 Chome-104 Totsukamachi, 169-8050 Tokyo, Japan
123
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
... First, we have those who write that at least some films (e.g., [76,77]), video games (e.g., [78,79]), and comics (e.g., [80,81]) can contribute to philosophical enquiry by other means, for example, by developing medial metareflection, illustrating prior philosophical knowledge, inspiring "big questions", posing enlivened thought experiments, etc. Secondly, we have those who write that philosophers should not limit themselves to write that, but need to challenge in first person the current text-centred academic practice by exploring other visual ways of doing philosophy, i.e., through videos [82] as well as comics [83] and video games [84][85][86]. Thirdly, we have those who actually engage in alternative ways of philosophizing in an academic sense: this happens by designing research outputs in the form of video games [87] 2 and comics [88], but also by resorting to computational or data-driven methods and resources to renew the traditional, textual work of philosophers by making them enter the world of data viz, which changes the very writing/reading interfaces and reserves a prominent role to diagrammatic, conceptual images of many kinds, making new aspects of philosophical knowledge explorable (e.g., [89][90][91][92][93][94][95]). ...
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