All games have rules. What is perhaps most interesting about video games is that they are formed completely by rules. Unlike other types of games, there is no room for negotiation, improvisation, interpretation or cheating, unless allowed for in the rules. The nature of the computer, the digital medium, is such that everything encoded into the game must be based on rules.

The medium of the video game is ultimately a medium of rules.

And that, I suppose, probably sounds pretty scary to a lot of people.

People get put off by rules. Rules constrain and constrict. Rules appear to take away freedoms. Rules tell you what not to do and define punishments for breaking them.

Of course, this is a naive point-of-view. As quickly as rules can take away freedoms, they can also protect them. The 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a rule that the government is supposed to follow to ensure that its citizen can say what they want. This rule takes away something from the government and gives it to the people.

I want to come back to this legal conception of rules in a minute. But to provide a broader context, let’s back up for a second and look at the source of rules—the human pursuit of rationality.

The history of philosophy, at least Western philosophy as conceived by the ancient Greeks, is a history of the search for reason. To play the game of philosophy, you must think things through using a consistent set of rational concepts.

Suddenly, we can see that our experience of playing a video game reflects the philosophical dream of reason (to borrow a term from Anthony Gottlieb’s fine philosophical history, The Dream of Reason). Inside a video game, there is absolute truth, beauty and justice. We can choose to leave a game of Halo if we don’t like what is happening, but we can’t argue about who is supposed to be shooting whom. There is little need for philosophy inside a video game.*

Philosophers have built towering infrastructures of rational thought in attempts to understand the world and the people in it. Philosophical revolutions have happened as new thinkers invented better ways of explaining experience. At times, the philosophers did such a good job of describing physical reality that they lost the title of “philosopher” and put on the cap of scientist. Isaac Newton considered himself a natural philosopher but hard science has since claimed him as one of their own. This is a quick way of saying philosophers have a long tradition of trying to sort out the rules that govern reality.

Just as important, philosophers established the tradition of trying to figure out what the rules of human society ought to be based on the rules of the universe. Look at Plato as a perfect example. Not only did he cook up a complex metaphysical cosmology. He laid out the plan for the perfect Republic based on it.

This tradition is carried on today by politicians who talk about “natural rights” and “social contract”. The legal systems of the Western world are based on fundamental philosophical conceptions of the world. Theological conceptions of the world taken into political life

This history of rationality is carried into games. Game developers build their systems of rules based on the rules of the (game) universe. The game designer is the towering dictator or benevolent monarch of their realm. They issues the legal code, define punishment and reward, establish redress and hear the pleas of their gaming citizenry.

In a compression of the philosophical concern of reconciling universal rules with the rules of man, the game designer also acts as the god of their domain, deciding what is possible, creating the material and motive for everything in their digital Garden of Edens.

Merging the legal and theological aspects of game design, the game designer is the Sun King---they are the legal ruler will all rights to the divine—within the limits of the virtual walls they build with code.

In the real world, we struggle to understand the rules of the universe, the rules of mind, the rules of heaven and to perfect the rules of man. We foster classes of scholars known as scientists, psychologists, clergy and judges to do this work. In the world of video games, the lines blur and the game designer acts the initial impetus for all. In video games, rationality reaches its event horizon and achieves a logical singularity.

Where I would like to go next with these thoughts is to better clarify the connection of the divine with the mundane—to clarify the game designers place as sometime world builder, setting the star and moon into motion and crafting the laws of gravity, with that of the designer as social architect, giver of laws and enforcer of contracts. I’d also like to better sketch out how early philosophy cornered many of these issues early on, asking about the nature of the state and the place of the gods.

For now, I’ll just have to leave all this dry conceptual kindling lying around and look for a spark to get the flames roaring.

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* “There is little need for philosophy inside a video game” I would point out, that I can imagine a game that goes in the opposite direction. Where the rules are obscured, and the game outcomes uncertain, perhaps a player inside a game could become philosophical. Imagine the fun of playing Grand Theft Auto: Athens, where Tommy Vercetti ponders his place in the world, questions the moral basis for his behavior and explores his artistic side exploring the aesthetic wonders of Greece. Eh, maybe not!