Halo and Philosophy
Page 26
Frasca, Gonzalo
Freeman, Gordon
French, R.M.; on Associative Priming; Seagull Test
Full Spectrum Warrior
Gaiman, Neil
Game Developers Choice Awards
gameplay depth
games and religion
games of truth
Gee, James Paul
Genesis (Bible)
Grand Theft Auto
the Gravemind
Guilty Spark
Guitar Hero
Half-Life
Half-Life 2,; science-fiction elements in
Halloween (movie)
Halo: Combat Evolved; critique of; easy mode; emergence in; grenades in; heroic mode; humans in; legendary mode; normal mode; progress and skills in; unpredictable moments in; weapons in
Halo Encyclopedia
Halo: Evolutions
Halo: The Fall of Reach
Halo: The Flood
Halo: Reach
Halo series: agency in; AIs in; and anger; anonymity in; and apocalypse; archetypes in; the Ark in; ascent in; and Buddhist enlightenment; challenge of; and consumerism; environment of; as escapism; and flame wars; the Flood in; Forerunners in; Halos in; “heavenly geography” in; and the “I,”; immersion in; influences on; and Internet; and loneliness; ludus in; magic circle in; messianism in; multiplayer; music in; mythos of; and narrative; opening scene; and otherworldly guides in; Pacifist Run in; paidia in; and parable of burning house; Portal in; possible futures in; and possible worlds; precursors of; religious imagery in; repetition in; ringworld in; and role playing; sales of; science-fiction elements in; secularism in; and self-injurious behavior (SIB); single player; skill in; social function of; and stereotypes; ticking clock in; UNSC in; as upāyic; warfare in
Halo 3; close of; multiplayer; ODST; secrets in
Halo 2,; fan reactions to; humans in; music in; sacrifice in; sound in
Halo universe, as magic circle
Hamlet
Harvard, John
Hector
Hellholm, David
Hello Kitty
Herodotus
High Speed Halo
Hitchcock, Alfred
Hobbes, Thomas; De Corpore; Leviathan
holodeck
Homer
Homeworld
homunculus
Hood, Lord
Horatio
Howard, Robert E.
Huizinga, Johan: Homo Ludens; on play
identity; and clones; historical continuity; material continuity; of persons; and psychological continuity. See also personal identity
Iliad
Imitation Game
immersion, in videogames
immersive experience
Internet: and connectivity; social function of
Ion
Isla, Damian
jeep jumping
John (Biblical)
John-117
Johnson (character)
Jung, Carl
jus ad bellum
jus in bellum
jus post bellum
Just War Theory
kedusha
Keyes, Miranda
Knight, Damon
Kyunyo, Master
Lacan, Jacques
LeBlanc, Marc
Left Behind: Eternal Forces (videogame)
The Legend of Zelda
Leggat, Graham
Leiber, Fritz
Leibniz, Gottfried
Leitmotiv
Lente, Fred Van
Lewis, David
life, absurdity of
Linderoth, James
Lindström, Berner
Locke, John; Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Loebner Prize Contest
Lotus Sutra; repetition in
Ludendorff, Erich von
ludus
machinima
magic circles
Mario 64
Markula, Pirkko
Master Chief; Assault Rifle of; as Bodhisattva; descriptions of; exo-skeleton of; identity of; and just war; as messianic; MJOLNIR armor; responsibility of; silence of; as Stoic; weapons of
McCarthy, John
merkavah literature
Metroid Prime series
Miller, Cody
mimesis
Minos, King
mirror stage
MJOLNIR armor
modding
Modern Warfare
Moonshot Games
Muehlenkamp, Jennifer J.
Multiple Route Principle
music: and Apollonian myth; definitions of; and Dionysian myth; indigenous Australian; Western versus non-Western
necessary conditions
the Needler
Nephilim
nerdrage
Neuromancer
Nicholls, Peter
Niven, Larry: Ringworld
Nock, Matthew K.
Nogueira, Paulo Augusto de
noosphere
Norvig, Peter; Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach
O’Donnell, Martin
Odysseus
Odyssey
orbital
otherworldly journey
paidia
parable of the burning house
Parfit, Derek
Perfect Dark; the Reaper in
persona
personal identity, thought experiments on
persons: and historical continuity; and material continuity; and psychological continuity
Peter and the Wolf
Phoenix Wright: Justice for All
Planescape
Plasma Gun
Plasma Rifle
Plato; Crito; Ion; The Laws; on mimesis; Republic;—as mimesis
play: characteristics of; mimicry in
Plutarch: Parallel Lives
politeia
Pong
possibility space
possible worlds; in videogames
Power-Knowledge
Power-Knowledge-Self
Powers, Jane L.
Pringle, Richard
Prinstein, Mitchell J.
procedural rhetoric
Project Freelancer
psyche, concepts of: imaginary order; mirror stage; the real; symbolic order
Psycho (movie)
psychological continuity; and memory
Putnam, Hilary
Red vs. Blue (RvB); AIs in; dialogue in; personal identity thought experiments in
Rehak, Bob
Reid, Thomas; Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man; On Memory
Rendezvous with Rama (novel)
Revelation (Biblical)
Rez
ringworld
Ringworld (Niven)
Rizzo, Dr. Albert
Robocop
the Rookie; armor of; silence of; weapon of
Russell, D.S.: The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic
Russell, Stuart; Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
Salen, Katie: Rules of Play
save states
Schafer, Murray; The Tuning of the World
science fiction; value of
Scott, Ridley
Searle, John; Chinese room thought experiment
secular apocalypticism
self-injurious behavior (SIB); cases of; emotional harm as form of; and loneliness; physical injury in; positive and negative reinforcement types; social reinforcement functions
Senet (game)
Shakespeare, William
Shoemaker, Sydney
Sisyphus
Skywalker, Luke
Snow Crash
Society of Biblical Literature
Socrates
Sophocles
Space Race
Spartan II Project
Spartan warriors; as anti–heroes; and meaning of life
spawn camping; arguments against; covering value for; evaluating; as winning strategy
Speed Demos Archive
speed running: ethical
substance in; ethical work of; mode of subjection in; “Pacifist,”; telos of; “Zero Shots,”
Starship Troopers (novel)
Stoics
Stone, Michael; Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period
Straw man fallacy
string theory
Sturgeon, Theodore
Suellentrop, Chris
sufficient condition
Super Mario Brothers
syzgy
Terminator (movie)
Theseus
Theseus’s Ship, paradox of
Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
thought experiments
Thucydides
Tolkien, J.R.R.
total war
Tower of Babel
Traviss, Karen
Truth and Reconciliation, weapon choices in
Turing, Alan
Turing machine
Turing Test
Two-Fold Truth
United Nations Space Command (UNSC)
upāya
Vergil
videogame players, life situation of
videogames: agency in; and apocalypse; death in; dualisms in; early graphics; and escapism; immersion in; introductions to; and intuition pumping; linear stories in; and music; narrative innovations in; as simulations of rule-based systems; ticking clock in; uncertainty in
Virtually Better (company)
Whitlock, James L.
Wiggins, David
Williams, Bernard
Wolf, Mark: The Medium of the Video Game
Zimmerman, Eric; Rules of Play
Zombie
1 Larry Niven, Ringworld (Orion Books, 1970), p. 68.
2 Roger Ebert, “Videogames Can Never Be Art,” Chicago Sun-Times (April 2010).
3 Chris Suellentrop, “Inside the Box,” New York Times (June 2010).
4 These statistics are from a gamrFeed article by Jacob Mazel entitled “The 50 Best Selling Console Games of this Decade (So Far),”
5 William Dietz, Halo: The Flood (Ballantine, 2003).
6 Eric Nylund, Halo: The Fall of Reach (Ballantine, 2001).
7 Translated by John Dryden in the late seventeenth century,
8 Recently translated by George MacDonald Ross,
9 For a popular discussion of this biological phenomenon, see Nicholas Wade’s piece “Your Body Is Younger than You Think,” New York Times (August 2005).
10
11 Halopedia
12 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (Vintage, 1991), p. 13.
13 Epictetus, A Manual for Living (HarperCollins, 1994), p. 17.
14 Since this chapter takes a highly contextual view of Plato, it’s probably worth saying that there are writers before Plato who are usually called “philosophers”—specifically, they’re called “pre-Socratic philosophers” (their names include Heraclitus and Parmenides)—but 1. they didn’t call themselves that, and 2. their work was very unlike what we know as philosophy.
15 We know next to nothing for certain about the procedural—as opposed to the substantive—side of Athenian education; in fact, most of what we do know comes from Plato, who’s hardly an unbiased source. For the state of the art, such as it is, in research on ancient education, see W.A. Smith, Ancient Education (Philosophical Library, 1955).
16 Here and throughout this chapter, I use heavily adapted versions of Benjamin Jowett’s translation of the works of Plato.
17 The seven winning science-fiction games are Metroid Prime, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Half-Life 2, Gears of War, Portal, Fallout 3, and Uncharted 2. “Archives: Best Game” (2010),
18 “Sturgeon’s Law” (2010), at
19 The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World (Touchstone, 1998), p. 1.
20 John Clute and Peter Nicholls, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (Orbit, 1999), p. 314.
21 Noted in his introduction, “Of Time and Gully Foyle,” in the new edition of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (Vintage, 1996).
22 “The Fauna of Halo” (2010),
23 “Gravemind: Reception” (2010),
24 “The Bungie Guide to SciFi” (2006),
25 “Arbiter (Halo): Cultural Impact” (2010),
26 Frédéric Dajez, “La figurine interfacée, à propos de l’Odyssée d’Abe,” in L’image actée: scénarisations numériques, parcours du séminaire L’action sur l’image (Editions L’Harmattan, 2006).
27 James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
28 Jonas Linderoth, Berney Lindström, and Mikael Alexandersson, “Learning with Computer Games,” in Toys, Games, and Media (Erlbaum, 2004).
29 Alexander Kerezman, “The Player and The Game” (2010),
30 Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (MIT Press, 2004).
31 Michel Chion, Walter Murch, and Claudia Gorbman, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 188.
32 The Tuning of the World (Knopf, 1977), p. 6.
33 Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility, p. 31.
34 John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Faber, 1976), p.3.
35 A Leitmotiv (German for ‘leading-motive’) is a musical theme used recurrently to denote an object, a person, an aspect of character, or some other element in a story.
36 As reported in K. Delaney, “When Art Imitates Videogames, You Have ‘Red vs Blue’: Mr. Burns Makes Little Movies Internet Fans Clamor For, Shades of Samuel Beckett,” Wall Street Journal (April 9th, 2004), p. 1.
37 From RvB Season 1, Episode 1, transcript at
38 “Personal Identity and Individuation,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57 (1956-57), pp. 229–252.
39 Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (Cornell University Press, 1963).
40 Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity (Oxford University Press, 1967).
41 “Personal Identity,” Philosophical Review 80 (1971), pp. 3–27.
42 See J. Knobe, and S. Nichols, eds., Experimental Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2008).
43 “The Extended Mind,” Analysis 58 (1998), pp. 7–19.
44 “Philosophy and Our Mental Life,” Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 291–303.
45 The Modularity of Mind (MIT Press, 1983).
46 As John Gribbin notes in In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat (Bantam, 1984), science-fiction authors in the early 1980s would routinely “discover” the idea of possible worlds and then run with it for a story (p. 289).
47 Names have been changed to preserve identity.
48 The Lotus Sutra (Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 57–58.
49 It’s possible that the promise of enlightenment itself is a form of skillful means (upāya). Perhaps such a blissful state does not really exist. However, for our purposes, moving closer and closer to such an ideal state might be a good thing in itself—and might itself count as enlightenment. A great king can still be great without attaining the status of the greatest king.
50 Espen Aarseth, Cybertext (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 113.
51 Bob Rehak, “Playing at Being: Psychoanalysis and the Avatar,” The Video Game Theo
ry Reader, edited by Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (Routledge, 2003).
52 As discussed in: Amanda Schaffer, “Not a Game: Simulation to Lessen War Trauma,” New York Times (August 2007).
53 The Dalai Lama, The World of Tibetan Buddhism (Wisdom, 1995), pp. 81–82.
54 Nikkyō Niwano, Buddhism for Today: A Modern Interpretation of the Threefold Lotus Sutra (Kosei, 1976), pp. 90–91.
55 “Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics,” in Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, eds., The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (MIT Press, 2006), p. 439.
56 John J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14:1 (1979), p. 9.
57 John J. Collins, “The Jewish Apocalypses.” Semeia 14:1 (1979), p. 25.
58 John J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14:1 (1979), p. 6.
59 Marc LeBlanc, “Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics,” in Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (MIT Press, 2006), pp. 453, 443.
60 David Aune, “Understanding Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic,” Word and World 25:3 (2005), p. 237.
61 Frances Flannery-Dailey, “Non-Linear Time in Apocalyptic Texts: The Spiral Model,” Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers 38 (1999), p. 235.
62 Paulo Augusto de Souza Nogueira, “Celestial Worship and Ecstatic-Visionary Experience,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 25:2 (2002), p. 180.