Plumbing Game Studies (Graham Culbertson)

Martin Roth, of the Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, joins me to discuss Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga's 1938 study of play and culture. Martin and I discuss the way that Homo Ludens can be considered the first "game studies" book, but also all of the ways that it is more complicated and surprising than its reputation as a game studies classic attests.

Why do you feel anxious, according to Schopenhauer?

Excess energy!

What should you do about it?

Play a game!

Miguel Sicart, author of Playing Software, joins me for a playful, even anarchist discussion which was supposed to be about the work of Maria Lugones but ended up being about Lugones, Graeber, Almodóvar, Maradona, and much more.

You can find Miguel's work here: https://miguelsicart.net/

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

Simon Parkin, host of the podcast My Perfect Console and contributing writer (mostly on video games) to The New Yorker, joins Plumbing Game Studies to talk about his recent NYTimes article on modern video games. (Paywalls on both articles - no paywall on My Perfect Console though!)

Simon and I discuss the difference between modern video games and the console games of the previous decades, especially the relationship between art, commerce, and addiction.

Philosopher of games C. Thi Nguyen joins me to discuss his current work on the intersection of anarchism and games studies. The conversation was so much fun that I started this podcast to continue exploring this topic.

For more from Thi, here's his website: https://objectionable.net/

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 

This episode is co-hosted by David Hall, PhD Candidate in ECL at UNC. David and I are joined by Morgan Pitelka, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and of History at UNC - Chapel Hill, joins us to discuss representations of the early modern period in Japan, video games and otherwise. Over a discussion ranging from 8th century historiography through responses to the 3/11 disaster, we chart a broad historical outline of Japanese cultural production practices as the context out of which video games emerge in the latter part of the 20th century. 

Board game designer Amabel Holland joins me to discuss her recent board game The City of Six Moons. City of Six Moons isn't an ordinary game - the game is presented as an alien object, and the rules are in an unknown language. Amabel joins me to talk about what this means for games, rules, systems, communication, and knowledge itself. Along the way we also discuss one of her key design influences: the filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Checkout Amabel's video essay on rules as play: https://youtu.be/VDjK1jX93yM?si=RAWLAFzETNJpw7cM

You can see Amabel's games at her company's website, Hollandspiele: https://hollandspiele.com/

You can read the New Yorker profile of her here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-personal-political-art-of-board-game-design

And you can browse the Criterion Channel's collection of Fassbinder films here: https://www.criterionchannel.com/directed-by-rainer-werner-fassbinder

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?

Aris Politopoulos joins me to discuss David Graeber's essay "What's the Point if We Can't Have Fun?"

We also discuss Aaron Trammel's recent book Repairing Play, which you can find here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545273/repairing-play/

For more from Aris and to learn about his work at Leiden University, you can check out his appearance on my other podcast: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/23e2e876-b682-4df1-906e-77d15129dbe2/

Game designer Bryan Bornmueller joins me to discuss his new game The Fellowship of the Ring: The Trick Taking Game. This game pushes narratology and ludology together in a way I had never seen before: an adaptation of a story in which trick-taking (the abstract mechanic from bridge, spades, and hearts) captures the soul of a literary work. Bryan and I discuss how he took these two incredibly popular yet disparate things and combined them into one narrative game.

As of publishing, I believe this game is in print. You can find it here: https://store.asmodee.com/products/the-fellowship-of-the-ring-trick-taking-game

Thi Nguyen joins me to discuss The Grasshopper, a work which takes up Wittgenstein's challenge to define a game and does so in a very productive way. Thi and I discuss the Suitsian definition of a game, how it can redefine not just our sense of games but also the meaning of life, and what this definition of games means for our understanding of agency.

We conclude by discussing María Lugones' theory of play, which will be the subject of my next episode with Miguel Sicart.

You can find more from Thi here: https://objectionable.net/

Historian David Potter joins me to discuss the concept of agon, or competitive play, and how it animated everything in ancient Greek society from sports to education to politics to art. And Plato's The Republic, often considered the foundation of Western philosophy, was an attempt to end the agonistic nature of society.

Sociologist Donald MacKenzie joins me to discuss his recent article in the London Review of Books, "Hey Big Spender: What Your Smartphone Knows About You."

Game Studies rarely focuses on phone games - but billions of people are playing them. And they are mostly free. So getting you to pay for them is another game entirely.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n16/donald-mackenzie/hey-big-spender