12 KiB
Rationalist Video Games
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Author: u/xamueljones My arch-enemy is entropy*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2ochbd/rationalist_video_games/
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Score: 15
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Created: 2014-12-05T07:44:51
Post:
On this sub-reddit, I am always reading about rational thinking, applying rational thinking, or books/movies with examples of rational thinking.
Are there any other mediums which foster rational thinking? Video games, visual novels, paintings, sculptures, songs, phrases or any other way humans communicate ideas.
Current List:
Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier
Nitpick: While books and movies are not what I'm looking for, I consider comics to qualify by my criteria.
Comments:
u/rationalidurr [+6] If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! (6 hours later)
I wouldn't call it rational or even HSF but Dead Space is like a horror story where the protag is actually trying to stay alive:
-wears high tech hazard suit meant for work on space stations
-uses power tools to cut limbs of undead
-stomps enemy on the ground (game rewards stomping corpses, zombies sometimes get up)
-scavenges materials and supplies to build better weapons and armor
bonus points:
-has limited telekinesis, can't grab enemy but can grab spikes, circular saws and explosives and shot them at enemy at high speeds
-has limited time stop spells, can shot at enemy and stuff but it uses ammo
To be fair though, he is an engineer and superpowers are available for everyone. Also his first contact with the zombie ship was on a routine scavenge mission or something like that. And his armor is standard package for all engineers anyway.
u/xamueljones [+5] My arch-enemy is entropy (21 minutes later)
Does anyone think Miegakure might qualify? It hasn't been released yet, but its premise is about experiencing a 4D world which can teach us how to understand new systems of logic in an intuitive way, which can be helpful for rational thought in my opinion. Granted, I am biased by the fact I think it's beneficial for anyone to play it.
Of course if I'm going to be recommending great mind-expanding, time-sucking video games, then people have to play:
Witness -Not out yet.
They are all good puzzle games with interesting twists on the puzzling aspects. But I don't think they are necessarily teaching anything in terms of rationality.
u/None [+11] (an hour later)
Antichamber, if you are desperately trying to pull any semblance of rationality from anything, at least fosters a bit of unorthodox, time-ignoring and space-ignoring logic. Most of the rest seem to simply be problem solving and spacial reasoning, which, while good, aren't exactly rational(ist)-only.
u/EricHerboso [+5] (15 hours later)
Have you seen Kaj Sotala's Bayesian Network game? It's as yet unfinished, but I believe it shows a lot of promise.
u/RolandsVaria [+8] (38 minutes later)
Rationalist video games? You're lucky to find a video game plot that matches the quality of the average summer blockbuster.
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (9 hours later)
The reason that's the case is that most videogames are about the experience of playing the game, rather than a narrative. When the player can only meaningfully interact with the world down the barrel of a gun and can't speak (or at best, only have three or four conversational options), you're not left with much. There are a lot of strategies that game makers employ to get around this inherent separation of narrative and play, but it's really hard to do successfully, and most of the time the game makers don't even try. I really like Bioshock as a narrative and as a game, but there's so much of a disconnect between the narrative elements and the gameplay elements (a disconnect that got a lot worse in Bioshock Infinite).
With that said, there are a lot of games that encourage better (and different) thinking merely by virtue of their gameplay elements.
u/rp20 [+1] (a day later)
I see you are channeling errant signal. I like his reviews.
u/None [+3] (9 hours later)
I think the closest thing would probably be Minecraft and any similar game. The world has its own consistent physics, which you can exploit to generate gold, farm iron, and keep track of time. Dwarf fortress, and certain other rouge-likes, may qualify, but Minecraft avoids the issue of having dumb npcs by having all npcs be animals.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (19 hours later)
In Far Cry 4, hardly a realistic look at anything otherwise, if you simply do the logical thing, you get to immediately complete your stated objective, leave the country peacefully, live what ones imagines is a long life in the developed world without eagles the size of flying pitbulls trying to eat your face, and you (the player) win the game.
u/Tholo [+4] (11 hours later)
http://paperdino.com/save-the-date/
Free indie dating sim where your date keeps dying. In the early stages, the game forces you to experiment before you make progress. In the later sections, your date makes astonishingly Level 1 intelligent responses to the situation. This game is one of a handful that managed to make an emotional impact on me just through good writing.
u/None [+2] (12 hours later)
QWOP, because it forces you to think through something you've done every day but never thought through.
u/None [+1] (21 hours later)
[removed]
u/None [+2] (a day later)
fixed
u/tilkau [+1] (a day later)
Thought-provoking and hilarious. Very hard to play on a non-QWERTY layout though (where O and P are not adjacent, but on opposite sides of the keyboard, different rows, and with O on the right relative to P) -- I managed 3 metres.
u/Saffrin-chan [+2] (16 hours later)
I wouldn't necessarily say the story is rational in this game, but Hack 'n' Slash was recommended on this sub before for its game play elements.
u/Escapement [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (9 hours later)
Antichamber felt the most 'exploring the science behind a world you don't understand the rules to' of any puzzle games I've played. It had a number of consistent rules and followed them pretty well, and identical objects encountered more than once behaved similarly, so you could learn the 'rules' of the fictional world. I really liked the game. Functionally no plot, though. Also, depending on player skill and completionism it can take up to ~3 hours to solve the main sequence of puzzles and then another ~2-3 for all optional puzzles - probably best to buy when on sale.
The Swapper is a really fun puzzle game that raised a few interesting questions about identity, duplication, and continuity of consciousness; It didn't, however, really address any of those questions that it raised in any coherent manner, and the puzzles are interesting but not in any really rationalist manner. It also had a really awesome aesthetic. You should expect ~2-3 hours of gameplay.
Planescape: Torment was one of the more philosopically interesting games I've played. A huge portion of the game is resolved through talking and the like, the combat and so forth is an incredibly minor concern. It's quite well written, and has a bunch of fairly interesting/neat ideas. Not really rationalist in any way, but still interesting in the sort of way that I imagine /r/rational likes than most games. Playtime correlates well to reading speed, takes perhaps 15-40 hours to clear playing blind (a lot of optional content).
u/VorpalAuroch [+1] Life before Death (17 hours later)
I felt Antichamber was flawed as a game for the same reasons that make it relatively rational; it starts out as a weird stream of 'What the hell is going on?' where you can't rely on anything to stay the same when you look away, but as it goes on the rules stay consistent and it loses the main appeal,which was the incomprehensibility of the early game.
u/None [+1] (10 days later)
Antichamber[1] felt the most 'exploring the science behind a world you don't understand the rules to' of any puzzle games I've played.
But... but... but... it's just graph theory!
u/Escapement [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (10 days later)
I felt that more about things like the cube-moving puzzles which use mechanics you work out for yourself, and the other cube manipulation puzzles. A lot of the scenery also repeats (eye-walls; spheres of birds that eat local scenery; trip lasers; etc). You learn the mechanics and how they work, then apply them to solving various puzzles. Solving the fill in greens puzzles, them moving yellows puzzles, etc. It felt much more like I was learning a weird universe with little connection to our own than many other great puzzle games do.
The fact that everything is connected in a nonstandard way and that there are connections in weird ways is not particularly difficult to deal with, but it is neat aesthetically.
u/Timewinders [+1] (10 hours later)
I don't know of any rationalist games, but there are many that inspire strategic munchkinry and are at least a little bit realistic. In Crusader Kings 2, for example, you control a medieval state and can arrange alliances, swear fealty to an empire, convert pagans, marry into another country's dynasty with the intent of gaining a claim on the throne, kidnap another country's heir and indoctrinate them to follow your religion and culture before releasing them, etc. Of course, in most games fun mechanics are prioritized over realism.
There are also some games where the conflict is because of differing beliefs and values instead of good or evil and the characters are creative in solving their problems. Tales of the Abyss did a pretty good job of this, in my opinion. The villain just had a different opinion on the best course of action to save humanity, and the characters were pretty creative in manipulating the magic system of their world to solve their problems, though the magic system itself was never fully explained. Nier did an excellent job with the characters' and villains' motivations, though the characters never really used creative approaches to solving their problems. Devil Survivor was good on both fronts depending on which choices you made; the differences between the Law and Chaos factions were more about security vs freedom than good vs evil, and the characters, especially Atsuro, were fairly creative in figuring out ways to survive.
u/hyenagrins [+1] (a day later)
Plotwise:
Planescape: Torment, Telltale Walking Dead, Vampire: The Masquerade.
u/hpass [+1] (4 days later)
nethack, of course.