Philosophy Through Video Games

If there is one theme that appears to be present throughout many of the existentialist essays that I have read to this point in the semester, it is the silently accepted fact of the inevitability of death. Even the most outright religious philosophers that I have read, such as Kierkegaard and now Heidegger, have rarely touched upon questions of existence after death, the question of that follow life before death seem to be of much greater importance. With the impact that the inevitability of death appears to have on the deepest philosophical musings of the human race, it raises the interesting question of how mankind's overall philosophical trends would change if death was no longer relevant. Heidegger describes this connection in this excerpt from Being and Time,

“In dying, it becomes evident that death is ontologically constituted by mineness and existence”(Solomon 141).

I am reminded of an enemy faction in an old computer game, System Shock 2, The Many. The Many is a single organic consciousness that consists of a hive mind of many individual entities. In the game, The Many acts in opposition to the goals of the protagonist, however it does not act against the player in malice or hatred. The Many acts against the player purely out of philosophical differences that put it at odds with the goals of the player. The Many, as a single hive mind consisting of many individual parts, does not have any concept of individual death, as each individual consciousness is absorbed into one umbrella consciousness. Without the concept of death, how would the philosophy of a consciousness such as The Many differ from the philosophy of an individual being? Throughout System Shock 2, The Many tries to convince the player that joining the hive mind is in the protagonists best interest. Although the game portrays The Many as the enemy, this motivation casts The Many in a different light, perhaps it sees individuality as a disease that inevitably leads to death. As much as the plot of the game is structured in a way to cast individual consciousness as the ‘correct’ choice, it seems very possible that the logically superior choice is actually the hive mind consciousness.

Solomon, Robert C. Existentialism. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.