Features editor Carrie Gouskos wants to make a video game based on The Tractatus. Join the crusade at [email protected]

　　I'm sure Sony and Nintendo designed these controls with some ideal hand of some ideal person in mind. I'm just not really sure who this person is. This is where you, the reader, come into play. I'd like to get your opinions on the controls of whichever handheld console you own, your age, and your hand size, if possible. To measure your hand size, get a tape measure or ruler and start measuring your hands from your wrist to the end of your middle finger--measurements of both hands would be ideal--and send it, along with your thoughts on how each handheld console feels in your hands, to [email protected]. Together, we can find an ideal hand size, or at least figure out how to avoid getting sore fingers.

　　Prince of Persia's narrative is the video game equivalent of the motion picture Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

　　With the ideal hand size in mind, we'd reach some kind of utilitarian utopia for everyone who plays video games. Everything we interact with could conform to that one, perfect size, and then over time, who knows--maybe our hands would evolve. The small-handed and the large-handed members of the species wouldn't impress people of the opposite gender with elite, video-game-playing skills. Unable to procreate, they wouldn't pass on their inferior hand-size genes. The question is, would that be better or worse for us? Would we be stuck in a rut if everyone had the same hands? Isn't it better that we aren't all streamlined to be some kind of perfect being? Some of us join the Peace Corps, and some of us write about video games.

　　A friend and former philosophy professor of mine once asked me if I ever felt any kind of moral conflict about a profession pertaining to video games. Several of my classmates were applying to law schools, teaching, and going for careers that have a political or a sociological impact. And then there's me--loudest mouth in the class, the one who'd attempt to take up arms against Kant (and fail 9 times out of 10), the one who wrote an aesthetics paper about how Prince of Persia was an example of video games as an emerging art form. And while everyone else was panicked to take their GREs or applying to the very best law schools, I sauntered over to the GameSpot offices and took a seat (and then they hired me! Huzzah!)

　　I just told Wittgenstein I'd like his help with a video game. As you can see, he's not amused.

　　So when he asked if I felt guilty for being so hedonistic, I said no. I said that I believe video games are as entrenched in our sociopolitical environment as everything else and that just because their effects on people are usually considered to be nothing more than diversionary (from the "important" stuff), that's not to say they don't have any effect at all, and possibly even an important one.

　　I could have been saying that just to see how it would sound coming out of my mouth. As I mentioned, I was a philosophy student, and that's one of our fortes. But at the risk of sounding naïve, I actually believe it. Since I'm completely entrenched in video games, everything I see is related to my profession in one form or another. Even my other hobbies (well, if I had any). Even articles in the newspaper. It's a blessing and a curse, because on the one hand, I can do something entertaining and feel like I'm still serving a purpose, and on the other, I'm only ever able to relate to my gamer brethren, because in an academic setting, comparisons between World of Warcraft guild hierarchies and Plato's Republic are always met with sighs and eye rolls.

　　Well, almost always. It began in my last year of undergraduate school. I was taking an American philosophy class, which was being taught by an unbelievably brilliant teacher, but I had an 8:00 a.m. class on those days, and I stayed up really late "studying" (playing WOW), working three jobs, and suffering all the general headaches of a poor undergraduate student with an online gaming addiction. So, as much as I'm ashamed to admit it, I was fighting the urge to stare off into space, or worse, fall asleep. (As an aside, I've never actually fallen asleep in a class, and for that, I'm quite proud. Remember: skip class, don't nap in one.) This teacher, who is smarter than even "unbelievably brilliant" gives him credit for, was giving a lecture on Charles Peirce's pragmatism, and in the middle of the lecture he says "...but then you've got a level 48 necromancer at home that you need to level up." I'm pretty sure that at that point, I fell out of my chair.

　　On the walk back to the main campus, he caught up with me and confronted me about my reaction. I told him that I actually found his point to be instantly relatable (except that my character was level 51 and a paladin). And so, my true academic career began. It was during those walks after class that he began to talk to me as an established philosopher and an avid gamer--and that I realized that the fundamental aspects of human nature are as apparent in video games and in video game players as they are in shadows on a cave wall. Could video games be the new medium through which we learn more about ourselves? Actually, that seems pretty likely. Will they help us to resolve that pesky problem with the tree falling in the forest? Not quite.

　　Answering the question of whether games can actually provide philosophical or psychological insight into human nature depends entirely on finding the subject matter. I got a glimpse of that answer in the past few weeks when I was researching the latest hot trend in neuroscience, mirror neurons. I was reading this article in the New York Times, and then it struck me. The mirror neuron, a subject that is decidedly easier to grasp than most other neuroscience studies, has the potential to reach the pop-science status of something like "zero-point energy," that is, an easily consumable term that can be simplified to the point of abstraction. So, my mission was clear. I had a great fear that Senator Hillary Clinton might actually read scathing indictments of the game industry in her local paper, but also a great desire to explore video games as a medium beyond mere entertainment. The way I'd resolve those two conflicting forces would be to present them in the same way as mirror neurons--an easily understandable term that hinted at a great deal more depth.

　　Hideo Kojima's efforts to provide a message are inspirational.

　　My conclusion was that we all need to help video games earn their place among the other more widely recognized (and respected) forms of entertainment. This means that parents need to know what they're dealing with and not treat games like they're full of wonder, mystery, and cooties. One of the experts I interviewed, researcher Gonzalo Frasca, seemed absolutely certain that the shift is happening right now and that in the next few decades most adults will have had experience with games. When I signed off the interview with him, he told me not to worry; this would all be a nonissue in a matter of years. But that won't happen if changes aren't made within the game industry itself, or if efforts aren't made to stop targeting video games toward children only, or if we don't develop more mature methods of expression through video gaming.

　　But how far away are we from adult games that are adult for reasons other than sex and violence? When will we see a World War II game that expresses the emotions behind the battles in the same fashion as The Thin Red Line? Where's the narrative comparable to Kieslowski's Bleu? Can video games even accomplish that? I'd like to think that they can--that they will--and I hope it will happen before the medium is challenged once and for all by the remaining political and social forces that don't understand it.

　　Next Up: Freeplay by Conor Egan