Here's the deal: Blowhards, some time ago, posted on the death, or at least dissolution, of print. I had something to say, which was: I love the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a seriously long and, to most Anglo-spherites, obscure Chinese epic. I have my favorite character (Zhou Yu!), my favorite section for humour/martial prowess/trying to get to sleep at night. What does this have to do with the death of print? I found it through the game Dynasty Warriors 2.
Which game is much fun. You take the role of one of the great heroes of the books, and run around slaughtering thousands of underlings without a care, until you come to a named character, all of whom are from the book (although liberties have definitely been taken: Sun Ce, anyone?), and slaughter him, which is harder. So this great book was only brought into my purlieu by that scorned medium, the video game. Yay non-print media, right?
Well, not really: the game is fun, but no substitute for the book, and no other form of the story can substitute for the book. Indeed, to claim that we are nearing the death of print (which Blowhards didn't, but the meme races round the Internet now and again (Psmith has played the game)) is a return to an odd sort of nominalism. There are concepts which we cannot and do not receive from experience; and here I am thinking of morality. Nobility, justice, virtue: all of these are a priori. We recognize them, but they cannot be derived a posteriori. Abstract concepts are difficult to convey by means of pictures, and impossible to convey with appropriate clarity.
By the way, I count twenty games based on the Romance. Why not the Iliad?
