Games
Agency As Art
Published on 22. May 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
264 pages
978-0-19-781565-6 (ISBN)
Description
Games are a unique art form. Games work in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be and what to care about during the game. Game designers sculpt alternate agencies, and game players submerge themselves in those alternate agencies. Thus, the fact that we play games demonstrates 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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
This book is a total joy to read. Thi Nguyen's energy radiates from every page * the prose is truly delightful, with all sorts of poetic turns of phrase enlivening the arguments and a whole world of games vibrantly described in rich detail. Indeed, if you're sceptical that games could be art, it may be because your game playing is limited to the likes of chess and gin rummy, and you are totally unaware, as I was until reading this book, of the incredible richness of the world of games.Gwen Bradford, Mind Association * Nguyen's stunning book is philosophically deep, playful and incredibly readable. It changed how I think about games and art and (ultimately) life. * Aaron Meskin, Professor and Head of Philosophy, University of Georgia * Nguyen's book is simultaneously a field-defining treatment of the aesthetics of games, a deep (and very cool) move in ethics and theory of agency, and the strongest, mostexciting work I've seen on practical reasoning since the mid-2000s * Elijah Millgram, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Utah * Nguyen (philosophy, Univ. of Utah) analyzes games as aesthetic creations engaging the "art of agency," whose ultimate higher-order goals include the development of a "library of agencies"-the discovery (or creation) and practice of modes of achieving goals in general. Despite the obvious (and acknowledged) debt to Bernard Suits's The Grasshopper (1978), this is no mere echo or defense of Suits's view of play, but rather a sophisticated and updated elaboration thereof, with many carefully chosen examples to support a variety of nuanced theses. ... This work significantly advances the philosophy of games, and will be a rewarding read for anyone interested in the other fields mentioned above, regardless of their level of experience. * S. E. Forschler, CHOICE * Nguyen.s book is lively, provocative, and immensely rich...Games is undoubtedly the most important philosophical monograph on games since Suits's 1978 The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia. It also makes important contributions to aesthetics more broadly, ethics, and political philosophy. It is a delight to read. * Jonathan Gingerich, King's College London *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 230 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
360 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-781565-6 (9780197815656)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Previous edition
Book
07/2020
Oxford University Press Inc
€45.17
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
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.
Content
Chapter 1: Agency as art PART I: GAMES AND AGENCY
Chapter 2: The possibility of striving play
Chapter 3: Layers of agency
Chapter 4: Games and autonomy PART II: AGENCY AND ART
Chapter 5: The aesthetics of agency
Chapter 6: Framed agency
Chapter 7: The distance in the game PART III: SOCIAL AND MORAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Chapter 8: Games as social transformation
Chapter 9: Gamification and value capture
Chapter 10: The value of striving
Chapter 2: The possibility of striving play
Chapter 3: Layers of agency
Chapter 4: Games and autonomy PART II: AGENCY AND ART
Chapter 5: The aesthetics of agency
Chapter 6: Framed agency
Chapter 7: The distance in the game PART III: SOCIAL AND MORAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Chapter 8: Games as social transformation
Chapter 9: Gamification and value capture
Chapter 10: The value of striving