CfP: Digital Artifacts – Metaphysics Journal – March 15, 2024

We invite submissions on the topic of “Digital Artifacts” for the next issue of the open-access, peer-reviewed, online journal, Metaphysics, co-edited by Kathrin Koslicki and Michael Raven. (http://www.metaphysicsjournal.com)

 The guest-editor for this issue is Alexandre Declos (University of Neuchatel). 

Submission Deadline: March 15, 2024

Description: The category of digital artifacts includes things such as computer programs, simulations, websites, data, virtual environments, memes, videogames, NFTs, digital artworks, or smartphone apps. Although these entities have become pervasive in our daily lives, they have received comparatively little attention in the recent metaphysics literature. 

This special issue shall be dedicated to investigating the ontological issues raised by this peculiar sub-class of artifacts. We invite contributions around, but not limited to, the following questions:

• What differentiates digital artifacts from other types of artifacts?

• Are there different kinds of digital artifacts? 

• How do digital artifacts fit in or challenge extant accounts in the philosophy of artifacts?

• Do digital artifacts depend on the mind? If so, does it threaten their reality?

• Are digital artifacts material or immaterial? Can they be located? Are they reducible to a physical basis? 

• Are digital artifacts abstract entities? If so, how are we to explain the fact that they can be perceived, interacted with, or created? 

• How should we construe the relation between a digital artifact, seen as a type, and its various instances or tokens?

• Must we differentiate digital and virtual artifacts? If so, what sort of relation do they have to one another? 

• Can (some) digital artifacts be understood as social entities? 

• What makes the identity of a digital artifact? Its algorithmic structure? The intentions of its creator(s)? The use to which it is put? Its capacities or affordances?

• What are the persistence conditions of digital artifacts? For instance, what kind of change could a program survive?

• Are digital artifacts essentially defined by their function? How should we account for cases of multifunction, malfunction (e.g., bugs), or repurposing?

• Do digital artifacts have essences, whether as kinds and/or as individuals?

• What sort of process is involved in digital artifact production? Does it differ from what is involved in the production of non-digital artifacts?

• Should digital byproducts (e.g., bugs) count as digital artifacts?

• Do digital artifacts challenge common assumptions about creativity, authorship, or authenticity?

• Can digital artifacts be created by non-human agents? For instance, can ChatGPT’s  outputs be seen as digital artifacts?

InstructionsPapers should be submitted through the journal’s online platform. Prior to submitting your paper, please consult the journal’s submission guidelines: https://metaphysicsjournal.com/about/submissions/

For any query, please email: alexandre.declos AT gmail.com

New Book: The Clouds – An Experiment in Theory-Fiction

Prof. Stefano Gualeni, well known contributor to the game philosophy community  (Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta) just released a new book with Routledge! The book is titled The Clouds and is a science-fiction novella. The Clouds is a unique kind of publication. It is not only a work of fiction, it is also a philosophical text. Its experimentation with its narrative format sets the stage for the exploration of a handful of philosophical ideas that might be especially relevant for game scholars and sci-fi scholars.

A particularly original aspect of The Clouds has to do with its editorial structure. The novella is only the first half of a larger book titled The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction, which contains

  • eight parts of fiction (the chapters of the novella)
  • three parts of non-fiction (three canonical essays), and
  • a dash of meta-reflection (the afterword by the author).

The various philosophical themes of the book are, thus, first presented as fictions (weaved into the narrative of the novella, typically as key components of its development), and then in the more traditional form of the essay (that is, explained argumentatively by leveraging actual facts as well as existing works on related themes).

As an example that hopefully resonates with game scholars, it might be useful to refer to the many fictional games that are featured in the novella. Fictional games are playful activities and ludic artefacts that are encountered exclusively in works of fiction, and whose uncommon qualities serve a number of interesting functions within the work of which they are part (see Gualeni & Fassone, 2022). Some of these functions relate to the fictional context in which the novella takes place, adding detail to the fictional world and contributing to the indirect characterization of the protagonists. Some other fictional games are less oriented on the narrative, and instead serve speculative and more broadly philosophical purposes. This second kind of fictional games invite the readers to infer the ideologies that are at work in certain scenarios or to think along their implausible and often uncanny rules and behaviours.

Within the fiction part of The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction, these games are encountered by the reader as part of their subjective relationship with the fictional world. As a counterpoint to this narrative invitation to imaginatively explore philosophical and speculative ideas, the non-fiction part of the book offers a more canonical analysis of each of the fictional game in the novella with frequent references to academic literature concerning games in fiction, philosophical games, and fictional games in particular. It should now be clear that the essayistic part of the book takes a detached, analytical approach to the same philosophical themes treated in the narrative part, explicitly articulating broader and more general perspectives on themes such as the philosophical uses of games within fiction.

Recent works that also experimented with mixing fiction and theory in the context of philosophical enquiry include the 2021 volume Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories, edited by Helen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt and Eric Schwitzgebel, but also Federico Campagna’s Prophetic Culture: Recreation for Adolescents (also published in 2021) and Jack Bowen’s The Dream Weaver: One Boy’s Journey through the Landscape of Reality (2006).

Does The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction manage to meaningfully combine theory and fiction? Will it convince game scholars and philosophy enthusiasts that there is more to their discipline than academic texts, lectures, or blog posts like this one? Well, pick this new book up and find out!

Works cited

Bowen, J. (2006), The Dream Weaver: One Boy’s Journey through the Landscape of Reality, New York (NY): Ace Books.

Campagna, F. (2021), Prophetic Culture: Recreation for Adolescents, London (UK): Bloomsbury Academic.

De Cruz, H., De Smedt, J., & Schwitzgebel, E. (eds.) (2021), Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories, New York (NY): Bloomsbury Academic.

Gualeni, S. & Fassone, R. (2022), Fictional Games: A Philosophy of Worldbuilding and Imaginary Play. London (UK): Bloomsbury.

 

Call for Papers: “The Genre Buster – On Terminology, History, Worldbuilding and Gameplay of the Immersive Sim”

Dear community of the Game Philosophy Network,

it is my pleasure to share with you the Call for Papers “The Genre Buster – On Terminology, History, Worldbuilding and Gameplay of the Immersive Sim.
It will be a special issue for the online journal Paidia and was conceptualized by me dear colleagues Hajo Backe (ITU Copenhagen), Felix Zimmermann (University of Cologne) and me.
At a glance:
  • Research/research projects on all possible facets of Immersive Sim welcome (see below for possible topics and questions)
  • Abstract by 04/10/2022 (max. 300 words) to paidia(at)germanistik.uni-muenchen.de (blind peer review process)
  • Feedback by the end of May
  • Full paper to be submitted by 10/15/2022
  • Contributions in German and English possible

One of the most talked-about, well-reviewed, and awarded1 games of 2021, Deathloop (Arkane 2021.) stands in a long tradition of digital games like System Shock (Looking Glass Studios 1994.), Deus Ex (Ion Storm 2000.) and Bioshock (Irrational Games 2007.) that are often referred to as “immersive simulation games” or “immersive sims”, for short. Are these games a genre, a style, a school, or a mode? It doesn’t make things any easier that the name “immersive sim” is an actual misreading of the text it originates in: Warren Spector’s Postmortem of Deus Ex uses the term, but in a descriptive fashion for only one of the many facets of the game, when he characterizes it as “part immersive simulation, part role-playing game, part first-person shooter, part adventure game”.2

Deathloop’s developer, Arkane Studios, has specialized in immersive sims, like 2K Boston, Irrational Games, and Looking Glass Studios before them. These developers are often credited with pioneering countless innovations of action-adventure gameplay that have permeated into the mainstream of digital games, to the point that immersive sims are effectively declared passé by one of the former studio bosses of Arkane, Raphael Colantonio, when he claims that “the genre will eventually disappear because its values must migrate to all genres eventually”.3 What is more, these games themselves, despite their acclaim and influence, have notoriously under-performed in terms of sales. Deathloop has fallen short even of its predecessor, Prey (Arkane 2017), in both copies sold4 and number of concurrent players.5 So why are these games so revered by fans and game developers alike, yet fail to attract a large player-base? Why are they considered so influential and at the same time inaccessible and somewhat obscure? Are they, to borrow the words of Forbes contributor Paul Tassi, “not designed to sell very well”?6 And in addition: why are they, given their critical acclaim and often non-commercial attitudes, not embraced as game art to the degree that many indie games are?

That none of these questions is easy to answer is maybe unsurprising given that there’s little consensus about what defines these games. There is a whole range of commonalities between them. To highlight just three: (1) Their game design emphasizes alternative solutions to problems, usually favoring stealth and cunning over brute force. With regards to both Dishonored games and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal 2011), among others, most levels are laid out as branching, multi-path structures embodying different modes of play and thus reward the player with diverse solutions to solve a quest or parts of it. Hence, immersive sim architectures are tightly interlaced with a certain openness of the quest design; (2) in addition, their lead designers – Warren Spector, Harvey Smith, Ken Levine, to name but a few of the most prominent figures – are often considered game auteurs; (3) finally, an immersive sim gameplay experience can lead to a specific empowerment of the player, while at the same time, it can evoke an “aporetic experience” in the sense of Darshana Jayemanne, meaning that the player can be overwhelmed by a game situation and has to gain advantage out of her own uncertainty.7

Immersive sims, or what has come to be known as immersive sims, appear to be very much “genre-busting” as Warren Spector already proclaimed for Deus Ex.8 It seems only natural, then, that where a new alleged immersive sim emerges, a discussion about this prevalent but ephemeral term follows. Again, the recent Deathloop can serve as an example. For the online magazine Edge, Alex Spencer takes the release of the game as an incentive to talk about the history and future of the “imperfect label” that is immersive sim.9 He even goes so far as to say that Deathloop “seems to have been designed to address some of the flaws of the immersive sim”.10 Or consider the piece on The Escapist by Andrei Pechalin who claims that Deathloop is a “subversion of immersive sim expectations”.11 The aforementioned stealth and cunning that appear to be significant for immersive sim games have been, according to Pechalin, replaced by a decidedly “quick pacing” which, however, “saps some of that atmosphere” characteristic for the immersive sim experience of earlier games.12 But does this mean that Deathloop isn’t an immersive sim anymore? Or is it just a different, maybe more accessible version of it? Considering all these critical thoughts, one can also ask if Arkane created Deathloop with the intention of being self-reflective or a meta commentary on their past games and on the specific peculiarities of the immersive sims in general.

One would be mistaken to assume that this discussion confines itself to circles of experts. A quick search on the subreddit for Deathloop reveals numerous entries on immersive sim. Similarly to the argument brought forth by Pechalin, players discuss if and to what degree Deathloop “will work and help the genre become more popular in the future” because of its more action-oriented gameplay.13 Others ask whether Deathloop even still is an immersive sim, or a “light immersive sim” in comparison to previous titles like Prey or Dishonored (Arkane 2012).14There even is a – albeit small – subreddit specifically dedicated to immersive sims (r/ImmersiveSims).

It is noticeable that these discussions almost always go the way of comparing new entries to the manageable number of games in what appears to be an immersive sim canon. Players as well as journalists often collect these games in listicles15 with usual suspects like Thief: The Dark Project (Looking Glass Studios 1998)Dishonored and Deus Ex always making the cut. More controversial picks like the 2016 reboot of the Hitman series (IO Interactive 2016-2021) signify the volatility of these canon-like collections and the term “immersive sim” as a whole. Nevertheless, it appears to be impossible to talk about games that could be deemed worthy of this label without considering the tradition, the historical context of their existence.

However, while – as we have shown – journalists and players alike regularly engage in discussion on the use and limitations of the immersive sim terminology, the scientific community remains surprisingly absent from these debates. This is not to say that there is no scholarly research on the aforementioned games. Although games like Bioshock Infinite  (Irrational Games 2013)16 or Dishonored17 have drawn attention, we still see the need for a unifying approach which considers these and other games specifically in light of their status as immersive sims.

With this special issue, we aim to engage – for the first time, to our knowledge – in a scholarly debate about the fundamental implications of the immersive sim term. Hence we encourage interested researchers from all disciplines to reflect and argue critically on topics and questions that include, but are not limited to, the following:

– The historicization of the immersive sim

– The question of whether the immersive sim is a genre, style, or mode, or something else

– The distinct properties of the immersive sim (e.g. agency, choice making, worldbuilding, environmental storytelling, possibility space)

– The originality, tradition and/or innovation within the immersive sim phenomenon

– The question of how to deal with cases where the “genre-busting” genre immersive sim adopts influences from other genres or styles (like rogue-like)

– The question of perspective (e.g. is the first-person/subjective point of view a constitutive part of the immersive sim?)

– Production contexts of the immersive sim (e.g. personnel continuities, auteur games, artistic ambitions, focus on aesthetics)

– The general role of specific developer studios (e.g. Irrational Games, Arkane) or publishers (e.g. Bethesda)

– The question of whether the immersive sim is a niche product, art, indie, or mainstream

– The metareflexive potential of the immersive sim e.g. as in revealing a possible status between toys and games

– Case studies of (classic) immersive sim games from current scholarly approaches (e.g. gender studies, queer studies or critical race studies)

– Exploring borderline cases of the immersive sim (e.g. Hitman reboot series, Cyberpunk 2077Dying Light 2 Stay Human)

– The connection between ludonarrative dissonance and immersive sims

– Explorations on the specific atmospheres or architectonics of the immersive sim

Important information:

Contributions will be accepted in either English or German.

If you want to contribute please send an abstract of 300 words until 10th of April to paidia@germanistik.uni-muenchen.de. Please use usual formats like pdf, docx or rtf.

The proposals will enter a blind peer review process, please anonymize your document.

The full paper shall not exceed 35.000 characters (including blanks) and has to be submitted by 15th of October so that the special issue can be published on www.paidia.de in Winter/Spring 2022/2023. PAIDIA is a scientific non-profit project which is why the published contributions are unremunerated.

For further questions concerning the topic ‘immersive sim’ please contact the editors of the special issue:

Hans-Joachim Backe: hanj@itu.dk

Marc Bonner: mbonner@uni-koeln.de

Felix Zimmermann: kontakt@felix-zimmermann.net

Abstracts deadline: May 1st 2022

Announcement of proposal acceptance: May 2022

Full paper submissions deadline: October 15th 2022

Book: The Aestehetics of Virtual Reality

It is a significant event that Grant Tavinor has a new book out. While it is about virtual reality rather than computer games, it will no doubt be read and used by many game philosophers.  This is the book description:

This is the first book to present an aesthetics of virtual reality media. It situates virtual reality media in terms of the philosophy of the arts, comparing them to more familiar media such as painting, film and photography.

When philosophers have approached virtual reality, they have almost always done so through the lens of metaphysics, asking questions about the reality of virtual items and worlds, about the value of such things, and indeed, about how they may reshape our understanding of the real world. Grant Tavinor finds that approach to be fundamentally mistaken, and that to really account for virtual reality, we must focus on the medium and its uses, and not the hypothetical and speculative instances that are typically the focus of earlier works. He also argues that much of the cultural and metaphysical hype around virtual reality is undeserved. But this does not mean that virtual reality is illusory or uninteresting; on the contrary, it is significant for the altogether different reason that it overturns much of our understanding of how representational media can function and what we can use them to achieve.

The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, philosophy of art, philosophy of technology, metaphysics, and game studies.

 

 

 

Journal Article: Ludic Unreliability and Deceptive Game Design

 

Stefano Gualeni and Nele Van de Mosselaer have a new paper out in the online first issue for Journal of the Philosophy of Games. This is the abstract:

Drawing from narratology and design studies, this article makes use of the notions of the ‘implied designer’ and ‘ludic unreliability’ to understand deceptive game design as a specific subset of trans-gressive game design. More specifically, in this text wepresent deceptive game design as the delib-erate attempt to misguide players’ inferences about the designers’ intentions. Furthermore, we argue that deceptive design should not merely be taken as a set of design choices aimed at misleading players in theirefforts to understand the game, but also as decisions devised to give rise to experien-tial and emotional effects that are in the interest of players. Finally, we propose to introduce a dis-tinction between two varieties of deceptive design approaches basedon whether they operate in an overt or a covert fashion in relation to player experience. Our analysis casts light on expressive pos-sibilities that are not customarily part of the dominant paradigm of user-centered design, and can inform game designers intheir pursuit of wider and more nuanced creative aspirations.

Journal Article: Why So Serious? The Nature and Value of Play

Mike Ridge has another paper out, this time in Philosophy and Phenomenology Research. Here is the abstract:

In this paper, I develop an account of play and playfulness, argue it is superior to its rivals and investigate the value of play so understood. I begin by laying out some interesting semantic features of ‘play’ which have not previously been systematically investigated (section 1). A failure to note these distinctions can lead theorists (and has led them) into unwitting equivocations and confusions. Drawing on this broader semantic framework, I lay out and motivate a positive account of the meaning of ‘play’ and the nature of play full-stop (section 2). I then survey some of this account’s main advantages (section 3) and argue that the theory helps us better understand the value of play (section 4), where this value should inform both moral theory and political philosophy. I then compare the proposal with rival theories (section 5). I conclude by suggesting directions for further research.

Journal Article: How to Understand Rule-Constituted Kinds

An interesting paper about rule-constituted kinds was recently published by Manuel García-Carpintero in Review of Philosophy and Psychology.

Here is the abstract for the paper:

The paper distinguishes between two conceptions of kinds defined by constitutive rules, the one suggested by Searle, and the one invoked by Williamson to define assertion. Against recent arguments to the contrary by Maitra, Johnson and others, it argues for the superiority of the latter in the first place as an account of games. On this basis, the paper argues that the alleged disanalogies between real games and language games suggested in the literature in fact don’t exist. The paper relies on Rawls’s distinction between types (“blueprints”, as Rawls called them) of practices and institutions defined by constitutive rules, and those among them that are actually in force, and hence are truly normative; it defends along Rawlsian lines that a plurality of norms apply to actual instances of rule-constituted practices, and uses this Rawlsian line to block the examples that Maitra, Johnson and others provide to sustain their case.

Discussion Note: The Value of Value Capture, by Michael Ridge

A discussion note by Michael Ridge about gamification has recently been published in the “Online First” issue for Journal of the Philosophy of Games.

JPG is interested in pursuing the discussion note format, so please contact the editor if you have an idea for a discussion note about emerging issues in the philosophy of games.

The abstract:

Gamification, roughly the use of game-like elements to motivate us to achieve practical ends “in the real world,” makes large promises. According to Jane McGonigal, gamification can save the world by channelling the amazing motivational power of gaming into pro-social causes ranging from alienation from our work to global resource scarcity and feeding the hungry (McGonigal 2011).  Even much more modest aims like improving personal fitness or promoting a more equitable division of household labour provide some license for optimism about the ability of gamification to improve our lives in more humble but still worthwhile ways.  On the other hand, Thi Nguyen has argued that there is a dark side to gamification: what he calls “value capture.”  Roughly, gamification works in large part because it offers a simplified value structure – this is an essential part of its appeal and motivational power.  However, especially in the context of gamification which exports these value schemes into our real-world lives, there is a risk that these overly simplistic models will displace our more rich, subtle values and that this will make our lives worse: this is value capture. The point is well-taken.  The way in which number of steps taken per day can, for an avid user of “FitBit,” displace more accurate measurements of how one’s activities contribute to one’s fitness is a compelling example.   If I become so obsessed with “getting my 10,000 steps” that I stop making time to go to the gym, jog or do my yoga/pilates then that is not a net gain.  However, there is an important range of cases that Nguyen’s discussion ignores but which provide an important exception to his critique:  value capture relative to behaviours that are addictive and destructive.  Here I have in mind things like alcoholism, drug addiction, and gambling addiction.  With these kinds of activities, value capture can not only be good but essential to a person’s well-being because (and not in spite of) of its displacement of the person’s more rich, subtle values.  Interestingly, the point is not limited to cases of addictive behaviour, though they put the point in its most sharp relief.  Any situation in which making rational decisions one by one can leave one worse off than “blindly” following a policy which is itself rational to adopt also turns out to illustrate the point, thus further expanding the role for value capture as itself a force for good.  The more general point is that certain kinds of sequential choice problems carve out an important and theoretically interesting exception to Nguyen’s worries about value capture.  In these kinds of choice contexts, value capture not only does not make our lives go worse, it may be essential to making our lives go better.

 

Journal Article: Videogame Cognitivism

The latest online first issue of The Journal of the Philosophy of Games includes a paper on “Videogame Cognitivism” by Alexandre Declos (Collège de France).

Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine and defend videogame cognitivism (VC). According to VC, videogames can be a source of cognitive successes (such as true beliefs, knowledge or understanding) for their players. While the possibility of videogame-based learning has been an extensive topic of discussion in the last decades, the epistemological underpinnings of these debates often remain unclear. I propose that VC is a domain- specific brand of aesthetic cognitivism, which should be carefully distinguished from other views that also insist on the cognitive or educational potential of videogames. After these clarifications, I discuss and assess different broad strategies to motivate VC: propositionalism, experientialism, and neocognitivism. These map the different ways in which videogames can prove epistemically valuable, showing them to be, respectively, sources of propositional knowledge, experiential knowledge, and understanding. I eventually argue that neocognitivism is a particularly promising and yet underexplored way to defend VC.

The paper is available here : https://journals.uio.no/JPG/issue/view/415

CfP: Philosophical Essays on “Uncharted” (Abstract deadline October 1)

This call might be of interest to some game philosophers. It specifically requests submissions of abstracts for “philosophical essays”.

 

Call for Papers – Uncharted [EXTENDED DEADLINE]

deadline for submissions: 
October 1, 2020
full name / name of organization: 
Łukasz Muniowski
contact email: 

Abstracts are sought for a peer-reviewed collection of philosophical essays related to the Naughty Dog action-adventure video game series Uncharted (2007-2017). The essays should refer to the games that are considered the canon of the series: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. As the production of the movie adaptation of the game has been once again put on hold, and it seems that Naughty Dog will not develop new entries in the series in the foreseeable future, a book of essays seems rather timely.

Uncharted was a groundbreaking series, which combined great characters, spectacular visuals, engaging puzzles, and captivating storylines to create a movie-like experience unlike that of any video game before it. At first, the game was dubbed “Dude Raider” – and indeed, it made its main character go to exotic locations, look for mythical treasures, and embark on other adventures reminiscent of Tomb Raider. In no time, however, Uncharted’s Nathan Drake was able to create identity dissimilar to that of Lara Croft. The character was portrayed as an everyman: he looked rather unimposing, yet was extremely smart, strong, and had an excellent aim. This dissonance created inevitable frictions between his likable persona presented in the cutscenes and in the game itself, as in the course of gameplay he shot multiple NPCs with no remorse.

All the games in the series followed a three-act structure similar to that of classic Hollywood movies, and at times, they were like interactive movies themselves. In a sense, they were the video game equivalent of the summer blockbuster genre. Throughout the years, the developers created numerous memorable sequences, such as the bar fight in Uncharted 4, the plane catastrophe in Uncharted 3, or the train derailment in Uncharted 2.

The series was already analyzed academically in regard to its violence, narrative, and gender representations. While these issues are worthy of further exploration, the game can also be discussed in the context of ideas such as: determinism, randomness, exploitation, orientalism, racism, tourism, civilization, continuity, consequences, war, addiction, white privilege, categorical imperative, or egotism.

Below are some quotes and questions for you to consider:

“Greatness from small beginnings” – is Drake’s social/economic/familial background to blame for his obsessive personality?

“It’s like a camera, you just point and shoot, right?” – why does the violence in the game come so frequently from unlikely characters?

“This is like trying to find a bride in a brothel” – can the series be regarded as sexist, or did its approach towards female characters change with time?

“Everything you touch does turn to shit” – how much oppression and damage does Drake actually cause (especially in the developing countries he frequently rampages through during his escapades)?

“You think that I am a monster, but you’re no different” – are the villains in the series significant? How are they different from its protagonists in terms of violence and chaos they create?

“You should play the hero more often. Suits you” – could Chloe turn into the true hero of the series in the future?

“You two can hold hands though” – how accurately does the game depict local customs and traditions? Does it exoticize and exploit them or represent them with respect and attention to detail?

“He would go to the ends of the world with you Nate” – is forming real-life bonds with NPCs possible?

“Why Nate? Why this obsession?” – the importance of Francis Drake for the story of the game

“Hey, are you happy?” – relationships, friendship, and family life in the series

“I don’t know why people get into video games” – do we really need an Uncharted movie?

“Same to you, cowboy” – how does Drake correspond with the cowboy archetype?

“A parasite who exploits our struggle in order to fatten her pockets” – how much of what the Uncharted’s heroes do is morally questionable?

“Nice work, partner” – what does the series teach us about cooperation?

Please submit abstracts of about 300 words with brief bios to: unchartedessays@gmail.com

Abstracts due: October 1st, 2020

Notification of accepted abstracts: October 5th, 2020

First draft of papers due: January 1st, 2020.

Final papers: 6,000 – 8,000 words

Łukasz Muniowski – holds a PhD in American Literature from the University of Warsaw, Poland. Co-editor of the collection of essays on the Altered Carbon Netflix series (Sex, Death and Resurrection in Altered Carbon, McFarland, 2020).

Kamil Chrzczonowicz –doctoral student at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland.His academic interests include humor theory, history of American satire, and digital humanities.