Contemporary Mediums
EarthBound becomes an uneasy but tenacious game. It serves as its semiotic and moral embrace of a universe. The heroic search for recognition becomes futile as it becomes unrest, and the emptiness of meaning surrounds such a game itself. However, there is one reassuring thing. It is the game’s demonstration of appropriate defiance. The hopeful individual potential of being in such a cruel environment while mastering.
It notices how the layout of the game’s narrative design is so in sync with the main philosophy. In such matters, it is about how video games and philosophy itself have become two of the most contemporary mediums that have ever existed. The players can see how the game redefines an independent study. The oddities of the narrative also move the game as the player’s ontology scope expands.
Regardless of whether it’s a pun, it always tends more toward the macabre. The game asks its players to consider an idea. The idea goes beyond the players’ significant heroics in the game itself. Therefore, comprehensive theory becomes a broad analytic series. To be able to understand the rules, the game breaks so many rules. Before starting a survey about the status of the game in semiotic roles, there is a need to consider the game’s rote treatment of heroic roles.
Video Games and Philosophy
Both in terms of dictation, procedural moralism, and the significance of order to significance. EarthBound begins early in the plot development, distinguishing it superficially as an aesthetic work. The most timeless yet true reality of gaming does not characterize it to some extent. However, it also follows the bloodline. Like Ness, the protagonist of the game, the players are also alone in the universe.
There is no mercy or anything else. On the other hand, it isn’t enough when explaining how the attainment of Ness and the universe changes nothing. When talking about nothing convincingly, game theory tries to describe how such terms explain the real definition of it. However, we must first know why we play video games. According to an article titled Videogames and Philosophy by Alex Fisher, three elements underlying philosophy and video games: ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics.
In ethics theory, hurting others is wrong. Therefore, most video games do not involve hurting real people. There are numerous examples of how the media attempts to make a connection between children and video games. In many cases, they draw the same conclusion: video games negatively affect children. Many video games contain extreme violence.
The Virtual Reality of Ethics
On the other hand, people consider killing in video games to be morally wrong. As the years go by, most people will consider virtual child abuse to be wrong. But if virtual killing is okay, why is virtual child abuse okay too, or vice versa? The point is, most people don’t want to say that virtual child abuse is harmless. However, such an assessment cannot be right or wrong. In distinguishing moral status, it shows that it is okay for an individual to commit virtual child abuse.
Many people will believe that it does not attract consequences on its own. However, human moral standards might only condemn harassment in the virtual world. It could also be that it goes against common intuition. The world in EarthBound is based on a 1990s landscape RPG. However, unlike Final Fantasy XI with its extra-terrestrial digression (which is the same as well), it has dulled medium-sized cities.
It is populous but barely teeming with struggle, life, and diversity. The players can see their faces in the plastic covering the box. When the gaze meets the cover face, it returns its gaze with a certain brash challenge. Their faces merged with what they saw. It’s like they’ve met an “alien,” and a combination of Eastern and Western cultural tropes need to understand its context.
Silent Obligations
Apart from being unaffected, the template for RPGs like EarthBound calls for an unspoiled myth. The myth will rush over the edge, leaving no way out. Likewise with moralism in classic games, stories full of powerless knights saving princesses revive the scope of ethics between good and evil. Romance novels are also influenced by such a dichotomy; whether the players are good people or bad people is up to the reader’s interpretation.
However, in contrast to the sounds of Chrono Trigger, it serves as a symbol of the silent obligations the players have undertaken. They act as ethical standard-bearers for the hero. Everyone they meet within a given game’s boundaries will tend towards a clear function relative to heroic quests. It facilitated cynicism by allowing them to attack the panic cover’s shield. Generally, it becomes a pathologically evil way of extinguishing the light of their choosing.
During the early days of the home console era, the nature of video game storytelling rewarded notions of heroic significance. It entered with historical precedent in previous centuries. It is frequently militaristic and opposes heroism to active pursuit. The opposite of the fictitious domain is when the hero must give meaning to the world through ethical actions.
Universalism and Egocentrism
Their position acts as an affirmative symbol of universal meaning. Therefore, they must be a living argument. In addition to being ethical laws, they must also support universalism and the supernatural living argument. In addition to being ethical laws, they must also support universalism and the supernatural. On the other hand, they guard the allies against nothing. In another sense, they are in a position of emptiness.
In addition, the natural human tendency to retreat cannot go beyond the belief in conquest. Of the negative elements, EarthBound negates moral values with ethically wrong elements. In terms of ethics, medieval role-playing always takes its concept of the times and fashion sense into consideration. The empty NPC, in its opinion, has once again reinforced the universe’s eternal egocentrism.
In a nutshell, the game replaces the grotesque monsters of traditional RPGs. However, it begins with contemporary settings and features: monsters become punks, swords become frying pans, and the so-called fantasy theme becomes a modern small town. Such aesthetic changes are not what distinguish the game from its descendants. In such cases, it raises a lump of fear in the players.
On the other hand, it does not form a wider story outline. Even in the 1990s, the chosen one fighting crime had a cute design. Instead, it embraces the universe both ethically and aesthetically, beyond the player’s heroic pursuits.
The Aesthetics of Video Games
At the beginning of the narrative, EarthBound doesn’t write deeply; subtlety is seen when the game avoids big questions like such. Ness is not the overpowered character that gamers always want. He was like an ordinary child who reflected the players’ anxiety. His mother pampered him but was neglectful as well. In addition, his father is an absentee debtor. Players only focus on a sudden meteor fall, heralding the arrival or tragic death of more oracle-bearers.
To save the universe, Ness, at the end of the game, goes into the “womb” of evil. It is ontologically ambiguous, yet it is Giygas. With hints of American culture as well, the game glorifies absurdism. It reverses the trope in which humans are born or languish in relative obscurity. In every story, including the game, JRPGs form the best relationships and promise heroic justice. The game operates within the concept that “every human being is not alone.”
Therefore, aesthetics is very important in video games. When it comes to whether video games can be works of art, they really can. Video games are similar to interactive films and art. In short, it’s like video games, which always involve their players.
Interaction and Art
Regardless, the experience in such cases is very different from traditional works of art. The reason is simple: we are involved in the experience of the games we play. We often play as player characters, imagining that we are the characters. The alternative is that instead of imagining ourselves as player characters, we have specific proxies in the game world, either objects or actions on behalf of the player.
In the modern era, video games are increasingly developing both in terms of interaction and art. However, the drawback is the referrals. Video games often do not have explicit directives on methods or discourses. So, one could argue that we can “fail” at playing video games. All artwork has a prescriptive framework, which means when a player is running a video game quickly, it is cheating, periodically, but if we don’t play the game, then the lines between the definition and philosophy of interactive are very blurred.
In EarthBound localization, it becomes a big job. When the scale gives a sense of how rigorous the process is, the various tropes bring out the original incarnation of the game. For example, the early stages of the game embodied Shigesato Itoi’s view of the game and left his players confused.
Normative Sense
The fact is that battle trials in such areas are extremely difficult. On the other hand, Ness was still facing his enemy alone. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, which is purely sentimental. The game has made its players, at such stages, have a vision of order. In Peaceful Rest Valley, the disorder becomes a cruel prank. Threats of violence and transactional societies coexist anarchically in cities.
It suddenly devolved into near-total isolation. As the game progresses, the challenges start to grow more and more absurd. Therefore, we have to save someone, whether a teenager or a stranger, who is in Happy Happy Village. The very nature of the village is a haunting commentary on its fanatical nature. In full, Ness’s resting place in Peaceful Rest Valley epitomizes the uncertain irony that runs through the game.
Ironically, the entire aesthetic of the village began to tarnish Ness’ heroic intentions. Not to mention that as the level of difficulty increases, we no longer have directions but only companions. Adults have little hope for law enforcement and everything else. There is no normative sense in character to strengthen ourselves in the face of adversity. Therefore, Itoi’s vision of desperate gamers encourages a sense of guilt for being subject to adversity.
The Narrative of Metaphysics
The taste is almost as if it doesn’t exist. There is no narrative predicament at all, and no metaphysical sense compatible with a noble deontological aim. With skillful nature, such a sense of disorder becomes illusory. However, EarthBound‘s narrative treatment of solitude and protagonist ethics indulges the prejudices of each player. It is a step into the final philosophy of why video games and philosophy cannot be separated.
It is metaphysics. When it comes to what distinguishes a video game, virtual objects and copyright are hotly debated. As well as involving lawsuits over the game, it often relies on metaphysical issues. Changes in significance can also affect its formality, such as changing a game rule that causes the game to cease to exist. The problem is that the algorithm in a video game often changes, be it bugs, nerfs, or buffs.
Each patch, intuitively, does not create a new game. The concept can be seen in many online games. There are many different examples in different media. However, without a common set of rules for all instances, the existence of a virtual object could decide a case of origin. The alternative is that virtual objects already exist as digital objects.
The Heated Debate
Like the real world, EarthBound itself glorifies dark, cracked, pastel-colored works. As the game progresses, we will always see a lot of theoretical developments regarding conspiracies and fears. The dialectical engine is so effective that it’s as if the pursuit of metaphysics in the game is something we can’t take seriously. Were it not for the comical component, the thematically important bright side wouldn’t purely act as a relief.
Indeed, the game’s conception of metaphysics and its significance are procedurally bold. When the game first introduced Jeff, it consolidated a prolonged but enjoyable misery. One of the wide open but often uninhabited spaces in the game world design the area on the screen at any point dominates a tone’s palette. Without directions or boundaries, the restless feeling of emptiness promises nothing to the players.
Not only if the game causes a gradual early irregularity. The contrast between Ness’ early quest and the game’s narrative methods, on the other hand, serves as indifference to emptiness. At such a point, it understands that the other side isn’t the only thing that exists. Rather, crime becomes a subject unto itself in the world of Ness. With future developments, such ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics of virtual action may become more pressing.
However, philosophy in video games can help spark a heated debate by answering various ethical questions.
Bibliography
- Fisher, A. (2021). Videogames and Philosophy. 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology.
- Gorynski, M. (2018). A Guide to Nihilism in EarthBound. With A Terrible Fate.
- Gotterbarn, D. (2010). The ethics of video games: Mayhem, death, and the training of the next generation. Information systems frontiers, 12(4), 369-377.
- Schulzke, M. (2014). Simulating philosophy: Interpreting video games as executable thought experiments. Philosophy & Technology, 27(2), 251-265.
- Smuts, A. (2005). Are video games art?. Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive), 3(1), 6.