Introduction: (Video)games and violence/1. Violence and Self-Cultivation: Embodied Orientalism/2. Digital Embodiment and the Dōjō/3. The Virtual Ninja Manifesto/4. From Techno-Orientalism to Gamic Orientalism/Conclusion: Videogames and Emancipation/Bibliography/Index
Chris Goto-Jones is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Humanities at the University of Victoria. He is also a Professorial Research Fellow of SOAS, University of London.
Often misunderstood, marginalized, and mistreated, we, the gamers,
train to acquire strategic thinking and analytical skills while
making life-time friendship through fighting games. Goto-Jones
uncovers this kind of engagement as the practice of pure
discipline. This eye-opening and ground-breaking study is
deeply significant to us, the gamers, revealing the connections
between what we have gained through those experiences and the
martial arts. As a gamer-philosopher, Professor Goto-Jones
exposes the wonders of fighting games from an academic standpoint
with unusual insight and passion. I completely agree that
Street Fighter has made me the “better person” that I am
today. Now kids have a legitimate reason to argue with their
parents.
*Daigo 'The Beast' Umehara*
By turns playful and profound, The Virtual Ninja Manifesto sticks
to the pragmatic question: what sort of truths do we make playing
video games? Demonstrating that the truths of video games cannot be
judged in isolation from the benefits they produce for individuals
in their everyday lives, Chris Goto-Jones overturns everything you
thought you knew about video games but to forge a new path: this is
everything you are already doing with video games but were too
afraid to know!
*Tom Lamarre, Professor, McGill University*
There’s been a lot of talk about competitive gaming as ‘eSport'
lately, but the connection between videogames and sports has always
been rhetorical more than material. Goto-Jones offers a creative
and smart correction, thanks to Street Fighter: maybe mastery in
competitive games can be re-interpreted as mastery in the martial
arts, rather than expertise in sports. Anyone who’s interested in
contemporary competitive gaming, from CounterStrike to WarCraft,
Street Fighter to League of Legends, needs to read this book.
*Ian Bogost, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology*
This magnificent book does what I thought was impossible: it makes
virtual ninja real. For aren’t fighting games spaces of deep
learning and transformation, the training grounds for a prosthetic
selfhood that is both virtual and real? Isn't synthetic violence a
mode of personal cultivation that deserves respect? Chris
Goto-Jones succeeds with his own 'miraculous reversal play,'
bringing the virtual worlds of ninja into a contemporary, living
public sphere, and offering a deep meditation — both philosophical
and spiritual — on the timeless desire to face worthy opponents.
For all you would-be ninja, this is a must-read gem.
*Ian Condry, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology*
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