Welcome to Abstracting Games!
A blog devoted to looking at games a little more closely.
Peruse essays on the intersection of gaming and philosophical inquiry.
Latest from the Blog
On Speedrunning
One of the weirdest and yet most fascinating method of approaching video games is speedrunning: attempting to complete a game in the fastest way possible. In this essay I’ll be taking a brief look at what makes speedrunning so fascinating, and the role of community in making speedrunning possible.
Talking about Games: Counter-Recommendations
Giving game recommendations is just an everyday component of being a gamer. We have games we like we want to share, and we’d like others to do the same for us. But sometimes loving a game and how we express that love can hurt the chances that other people will share in our enjoyment. In…
Peer Pressure and Puzzles
Puzzle games are often associated with “intelligence” – if you play a lot of puzzle games, you must be smart. But that association often cultivates some bad behavior: it can lead us to insist on playing puzzle games even when we aren’t having fun. In this essay I will be examining the social pressures that…
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