Games: Agency as Art

Author/Contributor(s):	Nguyen, C Thi
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date:	04/08/2025
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

This volume presents a new theory of games that insists on games' unique value in human life. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part of how we become mature, free people. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. We can pursue goals, not for their own value, but for the sake of the struggle. Playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life, and the fact that we can engage in this motivational inversion lets us use games to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, then, are a special medium for communication.