This poster presentation was delivered on October 20, 2022 at the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar 2022: Role-playing, Culture, and Heritage.
Description:
In Technologies of the Self (1988), philosopher and sociologist Michel Foucault summarizes his life work as an analysis of how various truth games explore “the relationships between truth, power, and self” and in this series of lectures he investigates the “practices whereby individuals, by their own means or with the help of others, acted on their own bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being in order to transform themselves to attain a certain state of perfection or happiness” (Foucault 1988, 15, 18). While Foucault provides a genealogy of religious and philosophical examples of these technologies of the self, those familiar with role-playing games (RPGs) recognize that their practice also meets these criteria. Even though most people play RPGs for entertainment and escapism, they are potentially transformative (Kemper 2020; Bowman and Hugaas 2021), especially erotic-horror RPGs, like Vampire: The Masquerade (VtM). This essay will explain how RPGs function as a type of truth game and how they can be understood as technologies of the self when played to achieve transformative bleed. It will also use Foucault’s thought to explain how some RPGs, like VtM, are better suited for transformative bleed because their technology of signs, i.e., the setting and rules that define meaning within the game, enable the development of more psychologically complex characters through game mechanics inspired by Jungian depth psychology (Bowman 2010; Beltrán 2012 & 2013).
Bio:
Dr. Spencer is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University where he specializes in American Philosophy, Existentialism, and Applied Ethics. His most recent book is American Pragmatism: An Introduction (2020) and he has written three e-Textbooks with Kendall Hunt: Philosophy of Sports (2020), Philosophy of Sex & Love (2020), and Philosophy of War (2021). He originally encountered role-playing games during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and considers them a gateway to his career in philosophy. The current renaissance of RPGs inspires him, and he is excited to turn his life-long passion into a subject of professional study.
Click here to read PDF of slides.
***
This seminar is hosted by the Transformative Play Initiative in the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. This seminar is made possible by financial support from the Sustainable Heritage Research Forum (SuHRF). The Transformative Play Initiative explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.
Click here to see the complete program.
Click here to learn more about Transformative Play at Uppsala and join the TPI mailing list.
Click here to learn more about the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design.
Click here to Like the Transformative Play Initiative on Facebook.
Click here to Like the Games and Society Lab on Facebook.
Click here to Subscribe to the Transformative Play Initiative on YouTube.
Graphic Design by Liliia Chorna. Music by Elias Faltin.