Welcome to the achievement machine: Or, how to value and enjoy pointless things

Abstract

Video games are perhaps the closest that technology has come to making Robert Nozick’s hypothetical “experience machine” a reality. Reflecting on video games may thus allow us to consider some of the principled and practical problems with attributing value to the achievements made within an experience machine. Questioning the value of gaming has a history, and a frequent criticism of video games in particular is that they are pointless. It is far from clear what such a criticism really means. A charitable reading of the complaint is that games have opportunity costs and prevent more worthwhile activities such as civic engagement, reading books, or writing philosophical papers. This is itself a value judgement on games that gamers may not share. Beneath this complaint, however, may be deeper questions about the activity of gaming and its value. Some may suspect that playing games is literally pointless, in achieving no valuable goal whatsoever. This paper offers an explication of several such criticisms, and a defence of the value of gaming.