Philosophy 102

by CawdorMarx

The term "I hate philosophy" stings me a little.  I guess being a philosophy major means never having a real career but to hear a person come straight out and say that they hate philosophy is rough.  But then again, the editorial wasn't really about philosophy, was it? Rather, it was about the fact that games use it in order to add some deeper meaning, to make them seem greater than they actually are.  In one regard he is very correct; throwing in a Nietzsche quote to add to a game's mystique is like having Hitler for a bad guy.  The shock value is there for a moment, but in the end, it doesn't make the game any better.  But in another regard he is very wrong.

Philosophy is more than a logic problem (i.e. A=B, B=C, C does not equal D, therefore A=C, and A does not equal D.) Philosophy is what people use every day in order to make decisions in their life, whether it be to eat a cheeseburger, buy some new anime, or level a shopping mall.  Philosophy is the driving force behind what a person thinks, acts, and is.  I believe that the games may overdramatize the decisions of some characters, but isn't this the case with almost all mediums that are entertaining?  The writers give us characters that exaggerate our own feelings in life.  Whether we sympathize with the character or not is a whole different story.

As is standard in most RPG's, each person in your party has a very different personality.  There is usually the serious calculating one, the comedian, the one haunted by something in their past, the cold one, and then there is the one that loves everyone and everything.  There is a reason for the selection of these personality types; we each have something in common with at least one of these archetypes, if not all.  This allows us to sympathize with them, and it draws us into the story even farther.  The characters then lament about their current situation in life, often philosophizing about such topics as whether or not they even exist. Whether, if they are forgotten, did they even exist at all, or even if their word is in fact the measure of their honor.  These points in the story are what separate RPG's from some game where you go and kill things. You have to think, and you have to learn.

So in this sense a RPG is a philosophy lesson.  You are faced with a situation, you are given certain limitations and you are told you go to it.  You plod slowly through the game, running into dead ends, running down false trails and maybe leaving a few people behind.  With each realization, or victory, you move one step closer to your goal, but at the same time, new problems present themselves and you first must solve them to get back on the original path.  All this time you are learning new skills, gaining confidence in you abilities, and becoming an overall better player so that when you face and defeat the final obstacle you realize that it was more about the journey than the actual victory.

Philosophy, like life, and like a good RPG, is about what you learn along the way.  This is what makes philosophy and RPG intertwined, that single defining key: Thought.

Original Editorial: Philosophy 101