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(4 reviews)
Author: Luke Cuddy
ISBN : B0050IGXRG
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Format: PDF
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Since the Doom series, First Person Shooter (FPS) videogames have ricocheted through the gaming community, often reaching outside that community to the wider public. While critics primarily lampoon FPSs for their aggressiveness and on-screen violence, gamers see something else. Halo is one of the greatest, most successful FPSs ever to grace the world of gaming. Although Halo is a FPS, it has a science-fiction storyline that draws from previous award-winning science fiction literature. It employs a game mechanic that limits the amount of weapons a player can carry to two, and a multiplayer element that has spawned websites like Red vs. Blue and games within the game created by players themselves.
Halo’s unique and extraordinary features raise serious questions. Are campers really doing anything wrong? Does Halo’s music match the experience of the gamer? Would Plato have used Halo to train citizens to live an ethical life? What sort of Artificial Intelligence exists in Halo and how is it used? Can the player’s experience of war tell us anything about actual war? Is there meaning to Master Chief’s rough existence? How does it affect the player’s ego if she identifies too strongly with an aggressive character like Master Chief? Is Halo really science fiction? Can Halo be used for enlightenment-oriented thinking in the Buddhist sense? Does Halo's weapon limitation actually contribute to the depth of the gameplay? When we willingly play Halo only to die again and again, are we engaging in some sort of self-injurious behavior? What is expansive gameplay and how can it be informed by the philosophy of Michel Foucault? In what way does Halo’s post-apocalyptic paradigm force gamers to see themselves as agents of divine deliverance? What can Red vs. Blue teach us about personal identity?
These questions are tackled by writers who are both Halo cognoscenti and active philosophers, with a foreword by renowned Halo fiction author Fred Van Lente and an afterword by leading games scholar and artist Roger Ngim.
Books with free ebook downloads available Free Download Halo and Philosophy: Intellect Evolved
- File Size: 786 KB
- Print Length: 242 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0812697189
- Publisher: Open Court (April 12, 2011)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0050IGXRG
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #313,372 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Free Download Halo and Philosophy: Intellect Evolved
Philosophy can be dry stuff. Explaining philosophical concepts in a familiar context makes it less so. This book does a pretty good job of discussing a lot of mainstream philosophical principles by looking at how they apply to Halo.
The essays are grouped using the levels of campaign difficulty in Halo: Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary. But I could not see much correlation between that grouping and the sophistication of the philosophy involved.
As with any book of essays by different authors, the quality varies a bit. I liked all the essays in the Easy group, but was especially fond of "Why Plato Wants You to Play Halo". The Normal group was good too, with "Enlightenment through Halo's Possible Worlds" as my favorite there.
After those two excellent groups, the Heroic group was a bit of a letdown. "Apocalyptic Halo" explored religious themes in Halo. It wasn't too bad, but I thought some of the comparisons and metaphors were a bit forced. The second essay in the group, "The Plasma Grenade is the New Razor Blade", explored psychology, particularly self-injuring behavior. I thought it was pointless, and not really very relevant to Halo. The third essay in the group, "Playing with the Spartan (Sub)Conscious" also had psychological themes, and seemed to display a lot of muddled thinking about the pyschology of videogames. By far the most thought-provoking essay in that group was "What's Wrong with Camping?", which uses the commonly derided camping strategy as an entry point into some aspects of ethics.
The Legendary group had some better essays, but also had one that was sub-par. "Sandbox Confrontations" explored the idea of Total War, and did it well. "Would Cortana Pass the Turing Test?" was quite good.