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On games as philosophy experiments, from Fallout to Soma

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  • On games as philosophy experiments, from Fallout to Soma

    Editor's note: Jordan Erica Webber is co-author with Eurogamer contributor Daniel Griliopoulos of the weighty tome Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us: (about life, philosophy and everything), out this month. We've asked her to write a few thoughts on video games as works of philosophy. Beware: there are spoilers for Soma, the Mass Effect and Fallout series ahead.
    This might be a cliché, but the idea to consider video games philosophically came to me through BioShock. I was just two years out of a philosophy degree when BioShock Infinite arrived, and everything I'd learned about personal identity floated to the top of my mind as protagonist Booker DeWitt uttered his final words. BioShock Infinite is a game with problems, particularly around race, but its ability to raise subjects like these fascinated me.
    Inspired by the likes of The Tao of Pooh, myself and Dan Griliopoulos - an occasional contributor to Eurogamer - have put together a sort of pop philosophy of video games. After all, if we can have books about the philosophy of Harry Potter, Mad Men, and Star Wars, then why not the philosophy of Zelda, Fallout, and Mass Effect? In fact, as we argue in the book, video games may even be better placed than other media to spark philosophical discussion, thanks to their interactivity. In Mass Effect 3, one of Commander Shepard's missions is to fly to Rannoch, the abandoned quarian homeworld, and rescue Admiral Koris from the geth. When you get there, however, Koris begs Shepard to save his small crew of noncombatants instead. Do as he asks, and Koris will die so that his crew can live. Stick to the original plan, and the civilians will die but Koris will go on to save many more lives in the war against the reapers.
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