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Only a Game

"Hah," She thought, "Here shall be a new game."

Redirecting to Mythology of Evolution

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  • Revised and Expanded!
    A brand new edition of the original Game Writing how-to guide, out in paperback, hardback, and ebook on 28th January 2021
  • Evan Skolnick
    "Comprehensive coverage of writing for games. Other books have been published since the first edition came out, but none have surpassed it."

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  • Read my 'Wikipedia in Exile' Entry

  • Michael Moorcock
    "a genuine philosophy for the 21st century"
  • Mary Midgley
    "this matters - read it!"
  • Kendall Walton
    "wonderfully refreshing and inventive"

Recent Comments

  • Chris on What is Pseudoscience?
  • Chris on Citizens
  • Nathan Frost on Citizens
  • Chris on Player Motives, Player Practices
  • Paul Gestwicki on Player Motives, Player Practices
  • Chris on Citizens
  • Chris on Concerning Your Opinion
  • Chris on Game Dissonance (2): The Aesthetic Flaws of Videogames
  • Nathan Frost on Citizens
  • Chris Billows on Game Dissonance (2): The Aesthetic Flaws of Videogames

Recent Posts

  • What is Pseudoscience?
  • Slowly Awakening
  • Player Motives, Player Practices
  • Limited Service
  • Write To Me
  • Game Dissonance (3): Elegant Narrative Design
  • Game Dissonance (2): The Aesthetic Flaws of Videogames
  • Game Dissonance (1): What is Game Dissonance?
  • Please Wait...Shuffling the Deck
  • Return to the Green Room

Out Now!


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    "immerse yourself in the strange new dilemmas of the future with this wonderful, mind-bending book"
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    "Cyberspace is as good a place as any to start finding our way back to who we really are, and to who we can be"
  • Babette Babich
    "a fresh and vigorous philosophical voice"
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Zero Books Trilogy




Foreword

  • A Brief Introduction to My Philosophy
  • Player's Handbook
  • Trouble Commenting?

Republic of Bloggers

  • What is the Republic of Bloggers?
  • Prelude: Virtuous Discourse
  • Taxation as Injustice
  • Games, Guns, and Gender
  • The Rules of Game Worlds
  • The Value of Art
  • The Dragon of Chaos
  • Expertise as Involvement
  • The Echoes of Genre
  • Latour contra Badiou
  • The Merit of Letters
  • Horror and Punishment (Silent Hill 2)
  • The Politeness of Tutorials (Japanese vs. Western Game Design)
  • Knowing That We Know
  • The Game of Art
  • Wisdom in Practice
  • Beyond Space

My Blogs

  • Only a Game (Philosophy)
  • ihobo (Games and Game Design)
  • Shadowtail (Squirrels!)

Game Design




Science Fiction & Fantasy

  • Moorcock's Metaphysics
  • Religion in Science Fiction
  • Orthodox Science Fiction
  • Moorcock on Fiction (Interview)
  • Cyberpunk is Dead
  • Faithful Adaptation and The Hobbit
  • Fifty Differences Between The Desolation of Smaug and Tolkien's Work
  • Exterminate! The Dalek and the Drone Assassin
  • Corporate Megatexts
  • A Study in Psylocke

Philosophy: Fictionalism

  • Mimesis as Make-Believe (Serial)
  • Game Design as Make-Believe (Serial)
  • Walton on Make-Believe (Interview)
  • Pluto and Eris - a dialogue
  • The Authorized Stories
  • Yablo on Fictionalism (Interview)

Philosophy: Epistemology

  • Why the Wikipedia Knows Nothing
  • Knowledge as a Practice
  • Knowing That We Know
  • The Subjective Knowledge of Squirrels

Philosophy of Mind

  • Voiding The Hard Problem of Consciousness
  • Is Free Will Too Cheap?

Philosophy: Ethics

  • Preface
  • Relative Ethics
  • The Golden Rule
  • Duty, Virtue and Consequences
  • Tit for Tat (Selfishness)
  • Kant's Yardstick
  • Ethics of Metaphysics
  • Future Ethics (Consequentialism)
  • Freedom of Belief
  • Abortion vs Suicide
  • Joanna Zylinska on Bioethics (Interview)
  • Enemy: A Morality Tale (Pentenary Special)
  • Midgley on Philosophy (Interview)
  • A Categorical Imperative for the Other
  • Alain Badiou's Truth
  • The Ultimate Moral Computer?
  • Getting Wasted (A Moral Question)
  • Allen Wood on Ethics (Interview)

Philosophy: Metaphysics

  • Introduction
  • Popper's Milestone
  • Marxism
  • A Deck of Realities
  • Fate
  • Ethics of Metaphysics
  • Rumours of God's Death
  • Absurd Doubts
  • Immortality
  • Kant's Critique of Judgement
  • Midgley on Philosophy (Interview)
  • Immortality Stories

Political Philosophy

  • Hannah Arendt's "The Human Condition"
  • The Mandate of Heaven (Political Legitimacy)
  • The Prime Directive
  • Civil Disobedience
  • Ethics of War
  • Global Population
  • Freedom of Belief
  • The Activist's Argument (Everything is Political)
  • Creedism
  • No-one is Independent
  • The Seduction of Facts

Philosophy of Language

  • Language Games
  • This is Not a Tomato
  • The Power of Words (Hypnosis)
  • The Stories We Tell

Philosophy of Science

  • Farewell to Reason
  • Skeptics
  • Popper's Milestone
  • Cognitive Dissonance
  • The Boundary of Science
  • Teleological Games
  • Trust in Science
  • Genes and Behaviour
  • The Mythology of Science
  • Ethics of Science
  • Science vs Creationism
  • Myths of Evolution
  • Midgley on Philosophy (Interview)
  • Reiss Against Adaptation (Interview)

Idealistic Themes

  • Bucky's Big Idea (a Global Energy Network)
  • Mutual Respect & Communal Autonomy (Kant's Ethics)
  • Freedom of Belief

Temperament

  • Preamble: The Human Operating System
  • Introduction to Temperament Theory
  • Justifications and Criticisms
  • Statistical Disclaimer
  • 1. Rational
  • 2. Guardian
  • 3. Artisan
  • 4. Idealist

Religion/Non-religion

  • Einstein & God
  • Sufi
  • The Religious Cold War
  • Pascal's Wager & the Agnostic's Lemma
  • Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling"
  • The Meaning of Life
  • God's Dice
  • Hemp: The Illegal Sacrament
  • Christianity & Contraception
  • Don't Talk About Creationism, Or Else
  • Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age"
  • Islamophobia!
  • Religion in Science Fiction
  • Creedism
  • Science and the Sacred
  • Immortality Stories
  • Haught on Theology (Interview)
  • Ontology as Non-Theology

Rambling Nonsense

  • The Science Pope?
  • Don't Believe in Cthulhu
  • Reality, Optional
  • Considering Politics
  • Thought for Food

Other Curiosities

  • Agent Swarm
  • Agoners
  • All Ontologies Blazing
  • Always Curious
  • Angie Hobbs' Blog
  • Casual Game Design
  • Collision Detection
  • Cult of The Turtle
  • Curiouser and curiouser!
  • Design Synthesis
  • Dragonsfoot
  • Feet of Clay
  • First Person Scholar
  • Future Of Videogames
  • Retro Remakes
  • Game Bias (Jed Pressgrove)
  • Game Girl Advance
  • Game of Design
  • Game Ontology Project
  • GameProducer.Net
  • Games * Design * Art * Culture
  • Gausswerks
  • Ghosts in the Game
  • Grumpy Gamer
  • IEEE Task Force on Player Satisfaction Modeling
  • Industry Broadcast
  • Jay is
  • Jeroen D Stout's Tumblr
  • Journals of Doc Surge
  • King Lud IC
  • LCAD Art of Game Design MFA
  • Lost Garden
  • Ludus Novus
  • Man Bytes Blog
  • Monica’s Mind
  • Nature is not a Book
  • Neil Gaiman's Journal
  • Nongames.com
  • Notes on Game Dev
  • Omnivangelist
  • Out There
  • Philosophy and Life
  • Philosophy of Religion
  • Postcards From The Uncanny Valley
  • Purse Lip Square Jaw
  • Raph’s Website
  • Raven's Nest
  • Repeater Books
  • Science In Crisis
  • Science is a method, not a position
  • Science Pope
  • SIG: Cheap Speech
  • SIG: Christy Marx
  • SIG: Coray Seifert
  • SIG: Garbage Dump
  • SIG: Mildly Diverting
  • SIG: Red Flag
  • SIG: Richard Dansky
  • SIG: Subversified
  • SIG: Writing & Design
  • Sinistre and Destre’s noumenal realm
  • Slam
  • Snarkmarket
  • Sub Specie (Oscar Strik)
  • SubGamers
  • Susan Olmetti (Abstract Artist)
  • Synthetic Zero
  • Tea Leaves
  • Terra Nova
  • The Artful Gamer
  • The Designer's Notebook
  • The Dust Forms Words
  • The Kryptonite Cafe
  • The Lotus Window
  • The Thoughts of Chairman Bill
  • The World-Cave
  • Tiny Subversions
  • Top Of Cool
  • Wonderland
  • zenBen's Land of Words
  • Zero Books

Categories

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  • Ethics
  • Farewells
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  • Only a Game
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Archives

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