Games Agency as Art
the fluidity of our own agency. We can throw ourselves, for a little while, into a different and temporary motivations. This volume presents a new theory of games which insists on their unique value. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part our systems of communication and our art. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. Bridging
aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. When we play games, we can pursue a goal, not for its own value, but for the value of the struggle. Thus, playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life. We
adopt an interest in winning temporarily, so we can experience the beauty of the struggle. Games offer us a temporary experience of life under utterly clear values, in a world engineered to fit to our abilities and goals. Games also let us to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, it turns out, are a special technique for communication. They are a technology that lets us record and transmit forms of agency. Our games form a "library of agency" and we can explore that library to
develop our autonomy. Games use temporary restrictions to force us into new postures of agency.
| Publisher Name | Oxford University Press USA |
|---|---|
| Author Name | Hagendorf, Col |
| Format | Audio |
| Bisac Subject Major | PHI |
| Language | NG |
| Isbn 10 | 0190052082 |
| Isbn 13 | 9780190052089 |
| Target Age Group | min:NA, max:NA |
| Dimensions | 00.93" H x 00.06" L x 00.00" W |
| Page Count | 256 |
C. Thi Nguyen as of July 2020 is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. His research focuses on how social structures and technology can shape our rationality and our agency. He has published on trust, expertise, group agency, community art, cultural appropriation, aesthetic
value, echo chambers, moral outrage porn, and games. He received his PhD from UCLA. Once, he was a food writer for the Los Angeles Times. He tweets at @add hawk.
