Welcome to the first, and possibly last, instalment of Kotaku AU Bookclub: a little nook on the interwebs where Aussie gamers can come together and discuss nerdy literature. So tell me: what’re you reading?
As always, I’ve got a few books on the go at the moment, but the one I’m gonna talk about today is a little tome called Philosophy Through Videogames, by Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox. According to the blurb on the back, the purpose of this book is to “investigate the aesthetic appeal of videogames, their effect on our morals, the insights they give us into our understanding of perceptual knowledge, personal identity, artificial intelligence, and the very meaning of life itself.”
Lofty goals indeed. Perhaps a little too lofty. See, the problem with this book – and books like it – is that it clumsily shoehorns games into what is basically an introduction to Western philosophy text. Cogburn and Silcox don’t really talk about philosophy THROUGH videogames so much as they talk about philosophy AND videogames. The connections between scholarship and subject matter are tenuous at best, laughably inadequate at worst. Or at least that’s the impression I get from reading the first couple of chapters. Maybe it gets better later on. I certainly hope so: the damn thing cost me 50 bucks.
So! That’s what I’ve been reading. How about you?
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