Life Is a Game
What Game Design Says about the Human Condition
Game design could be defined in many ways, but here the term is used to denote the practice of creating choices. Les mer
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Game design could be defined in many ways, but here the term is used to denote the practice of creating choices. Designing a game, in this sense, involves crafting limits, rewards, incentives, and risks in such a way that the person who interacts with the game - the player - makes choices that have consequences.
Edward Castronova urges readers to think about the fundamentals of the human condition and compare them to different games that we all know. In some ways, life is like an idle game: providing unchallenging distractions that fit easily into a person's daily routine. In other ways, life is like the game Minesweeper: You poke in different places to learn about what you don't know, taking care to avoid big explosions. Or, life is like a role-playing game: You adopt a persona and speak your part, always seeking adventure.
Bringing together questions relating to diverse fields - such as politics, economics, sociology and philosophy - Castronova persuades readers to broaden the scope of game design to answer questions about life's everyday obstacles. The object of this book is to take seriously the idea that life is a game. The goal is not to make readers wealthier or healthier. Its goal is to go on a journey into the human condition, with game design as a guide.
Introduction
a. Stances and the Strategic Layer
b. Concepts and Examples
c. Is there a Game Designer?
d. Life's Important; So Are Games
e. We Can Only Write From Who We Are
Part I: The Strategic Turn
1. Why
Do Great Thinkers Keep Saying That Life is a Game?
a. The Many Similarities Between Living, Gaming, and Playing
b.
Focus: Four Books that Come Close to Life, the Game
i. Hugo Rahner: Man at Play (1967/1949)
ii. Bernard Suits: The
Grasshopper (1978)
iii. Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everyday Life (1984)
iv. James Carse: Finite and Infinite
Games (1987)
c. What is the Game of Life, Really?
d. The Present Moment: An Insufferable Boredom
e. How Game
Design Responds to Boredom
2.The Environment of Decision
a. The natural world
b. Meaning and mind
c. Boredom
and Suffering
d. The Immaterial World
3. Is this a game?
a. First features of the game of everything
i.
Life as an idle game
ii. Life as Minesweeper
iii. Life as Role-Playing Game
b. What explains the similarity
of life to a game?
c. How game design illuminates social processes
d. How to play
4. The Strategic Layer
a. Layers
b. Strategy and tactics
c. The strategic layer
d. On victory conditions
e. Operational goals
5. Stances
a. Choosing stances
b. Four strategic comments about philosophical commitments
c. How to evaluate
a stance
d. How stances change
Part II. A Catalog of Stances
6. The Hedonistic Stance
a. Commitments
b. Victory conditions
c. Strategies
d. Assessment
7. The Excellence Stance
a. Commitments
b. Victory
conditions
c. Strategies
d. Assessment
8. The Heroic Stance
a. Commitments
b. Victory conditions
c. Strategies
d. Assessment
9. The Orthodox Stance
a. Commitments
b. Victory conditions
c. Strategies
d. Assessment
10. The Mystic Stance
a. Commitments
b. Victory conditions
c. Strategies
d. Assessment
Part III. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index