Welcome to another episode of Armchair Gaming. The goal for this show is simple: I want to help you learn more about philosophy, and I’ll be using video games as an instrument to help teach it.
Today, while playing Square Enix‘s MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, we will begin talking about what happens when you turn off the console, and how both player characters and non-player characters can be used as analogs for discussing consciousness, death and alternative realities by logging in and engaging with them as the player. As we are playing Final Fantasy XIV, we will look at how story sensitive, non-story sensitive, and hostile NPC’s differ from each other.
We will also take a look at how the persistent world of MMORPG’s changes what logging in and out of a game does for the existential “status” of NPCs and PCs alike.
About Armchair Gaming
I had the chance to explore philosophy in high school and I loved it so much that I went on to study it at Trent University, where I obtained a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in philosophy. I feel so strongly about the subject that I often find myself going through the books I had purchased over my university career, as well as adding to the collection regularly.
Philosophy is an amazingly exciting subject that can teach us not just what to think, but how to think. Unfortunately, a lot of people see philosophy as some intimidating monster, with difficult concepts and theories to grasp. Conversely, some see it as a waste of someone’s time and intellect. As someone who has dedicated their life to the subject, this Scholarly Gamer wants to bring philosophy to you in a way that is approachable, sometimes funny, and presented through a medium of great importance to himself and millions of other people around the world: Games.
I hope you’ll join us on this journey. And remember, you never go a day in your life without living some philosophy.
