itch.io

Hi, again! Is it possible to send in a late submission?

Hello, everyone! My apologies for the slight delay in posting the winners (at least, relative to my timezone). With no further ado, they are as follows:

🔹 Panel winner: PM-CYOA by LogicalAtomist
🔹 Runner-up: Sweet Justice by alexandeer
🔹 Popular winner: Aristotelian Development & Deduction by ClutchFumble 

Thank you all so much for your submissions, and a special thanks to those of you who left comments on others' submissions, too! We spent quite some time with them all as a panel, and in the coming month I'll be posting notes from our discussions alongside my personal impressions either to your submission pages or to your projects' pages themselves. We hope you find this feedback instructive and enjoyable. You should all be able to see the full results on the results tab, and winners should either be marked "panel winner" or "runner-up" (this is to distinguish the entry that received the most votes for "popular winner" from the rest). If you have any questions or comments, please do drop us an email at the address listed on the jam landing page.

Winners, take note: You will receive a detailed emailed from us in the coming days regarding next steps for publication (and, in the case of the panel winner, monetary compensation).

Thanks again, everyone, and happy holidays!

Hi, everybody! 

I'm incorrigible, and I'm planning on submitting at least one series (suit? suite?) of letter prompts loosely based on a neglected character archetype in some of the philosophy I like reading/working on (no spoilers, hehe).

Having said, that, I've been wondering: Is it possible to submit an entire deck's worth of prompts to this jam as a hack of the original ghostbox? I found the game very fun and fruitful to think/write with, and I got a little carried away in the brainstorming stage with archetypes I might like to explore. No worries if that wouldn't be acceptable! 

I'm looking forward to seeing/playing others' submissions. :)

Hi, again! Your voting link is ready -- just click here. Let me know if you have any issues with it!

Hi, again! Your voting link is ready -- just click here. Let me know if you have any issues with it!

That worked! Thank you so much.

Hi, again! I decided it'd be simplest to keep both of your submission entries active and to simply aggregate the votes for them when the time comes. :) Hope that works for you!

Yes, sure! Please send them to critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com, thank you!

Thanks for your response!

To take the makephilosophy account as an example: Whenever I click on their username on their jam submission page, I'm taken to a URL with the following format: https://itch.io/profile/makephilosophy 

Even when I manually input a URL in the other format (i.e., makephilosophy.itch.io), I'm automatically redirected to the first URL. When I try to input either of them on the Contributors & Judges panel for my jam, I get an error that claims this account doesn't exist.

I hope this additional information is helpful! And thanks again for your time.

Hi, everyone! 

I'm trying to add some people from my jam as judges so that they can vote, but for some reason, their profiles don't show up with the usual username.itch.io format. They're only accessible using a itch.io/profile/username link, and it's not possible to add accounts with such URLs to jams as judges. One person has changed their username/URL, but that hasn't fixed the problem, either. Some additional information: Both persons have posted a game, and at least one of them has made several posts to their own jam submission page.

Does anyone know what could be going on and how we might fix it? Many thanks in advance!

Fantastic! Thank you so much. I'll give it a whirl tomorrow. In the meantime, please click on this link to change your project page for the competition. Once I've seen you've done so, I'll remove your original entry. 

Yes, thank you so much!

Oh, that's so strange! Would you mind emailing me a screenshot of what your settings' profile page looks like, if you're comfortable doing so? 

Hi, again, everyone! 

All contributors to the competition should be able to vote if they click on the unique link I've left them in a comment to their submissions. The original message said that a few minutes after posting you'd be able to vote, but I hadn't realized I had to manually generate unique URLs for you all (as opposed to just selecting you as voters from the host interface). My bad. If you have any trouble at all with your link, please do let me know on your submission page or by replying to this post. 

Here's a copy of the message I've left you on all of your submission pages:

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

I hope you all enjoy the submissions! I'm really happy with their quality and scope. :) Thank you very much, all of you, for trying something new!

Hi, there! It should become possible for you to vote if you click on this link.

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi, there! It should become possible for you to vote if you click on this link.

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi once more! It should become possible for you to vote if you click on this link.

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi, there! It should become possible for you to vote if you click on this link.

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi, there! It should become possible for you to vote if you click on this link.

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi, there! For some reason, I'm unable to generate a link for you to be able to vote in the competition. I see your URL is a bit different from others' -- it has an itch.io/profile/username format instead of a username.itch.io format. Could I ask you to modify your account registration in such a way that it takes the username.itch.io format? I believe you can do so if you go to your account settings and choose a unique URL for your profile. If this isn't possible for whatever reason, we can find another solution. :)

Regardless, here's the voting information:

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi, there! For some reason, I'm unable to generate a link for you to be able to vote in the competition. I see your URL is a bit different from others' -- it has an itch.io/profile/username format instead of a username.itch.io format. Could I ask you to modify your account registration in such a way that it takes the username.itch.io format? I believe you can do so if you go to your account settings and choose a unique URL for your profile. If this isn't possible for whatever reason, we can find another solution. :)

Regardless, here's the voting information:

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi, there! It should become possible for you to vote if you click this link.

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi, there! It should become possible for you to vote if you click this link.

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi, there! It should become possible for you to vote once you click this link.

Please give only one 5-star rating to a single project -- that is, please vote only once, for your very favorite project, that isn't your own. This is to ensure that the popular winner doesn't go to the project that happens to be rated the most times.

Voting will close when the counter on the jam page reaches zero, at 23:59/11:59PM CET/GMT+1 on December 12th, 2022! Your vote will not be made public until the full results for the competition are announced on December 15th on the jam page and on the jam community board.

While you can only vote for one submission, please leave as many comments as you like on all the submissions that strike your fancy! This goes for anyone who entered the jam or who stumbles upon it on the site, even if they didn't submit anything or can't vote! It'd be wonderful to get some good discussions going. If you're not sure where to start with evaluating projects, I've prepared a list of questions to ask yourself as you explore and reflect upon your experiences with each one here. I hope they're helpful to you!

As always, if you have any questions, please either reply to this message or post on the jam's FAQ here. Thank you!

Hi! Sorry for clogging up your page with messages! I've just realized it may not be possible for you to edit your submission without my giving you permission as the host (which would in turn give everyone else permission to edit their projects). I'm sorry to ask you to do something so troublesome, but would you mind re-uploading your project on a new game page where it runs in-browser? I'll then email you a unique submission link where you can re-submit this new page as your project for the competition. Many thanks in advance!

Hi, again! Thanks for re-uploading your sources as a Google doc. I've tried running your game on a computer, but it doesn't work. It seems to crash immediately upon opening the file. Would it be possible for you to re-upload your game to play in-browser on the itch.io site? Thanks in advance!

My pleasure! It works perfectly, thank you.

Hi, there! Would you mind re-uploading your sources as a Google doc page? Thank you!

Hi, there! Would you mind re-uploading your sources to a Google doc page? Thank you!

Hi, Alexander! Would you mind setting the sources document you've linked to "public?" Currently, it's inaccessible unless you're logged into a Google account. Thank you!

Hi, everybody! Thanks so much for all your interest and inquiries over the last few months, and thank you especially to everyone who has already submitted! 

Submissions close just a minute before midnight tonight in your timezone. (What could be spookier than a shifting deadline, huh?? Happy Halloween... !) UTC-12. Turns out the truly spooky thing is not understanding how a website's timekeeping works... ! Because of my mix-up in this announcement, submissions will now close at 23:59 October 31st, 2022 in the UTC-12 timezone, which is 12:59 November 1st, 2022 in UTC+1. You can check what time this is in your own timezone on this website -- just use "Baker Island" as one of your locations. This is the last place on Earth from which someone could submit a piece (though it seems this particular island is uninhabited). Should you be forced to miss this window for whatever reason and still wish to submit something, please get in touch at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com and we'll see what we can do. That goes for all other concerns and questions, too!

Public voting for submissions will begin one week from today on Nov. 7th, 2022. You will have until the end of November to vote for your favorite piece. I encourage you all to (at the very least) leave a comment on the work you vote for explaining your choice, but you're all more than welcome to comment on everyone's pieces to your heart's content. It'd be really wonderful if we got some positive, constructive discussions going! As a member of the evaluation panel, I (Carlota) cannot leave comments on your projects during this time, but I will do so once the competition is over. You'll all be sure to get at least one comment from someone who's spent some time with your piece. :)

Only those who have submitted to the jam will be given permission to vote, but everyone is welcome to leave comments. We'll give submitters a special "judge" title by Nov. 7th that will let them vote. Please leave a comment on this topic if you have any trouble using this feature once it's in effect.

Prior to the start of the public voting period, the panel will take a preliminary look through all submissions to make sure they fit the competition prompt and don't break any rules. Should your submission be disqualified at this stage, we will let you know before Nov. 7th.

That's it, everybody! Thanks as always for reading.

Hi, there! 

Are you a current/former/aspiring/despairing/anti-/whatever academic in the humanities? Are you tired of writing conventional journal articles for your CV for no pay, let alone readership? Have you gone into a marginally more reasonable line of work yet still find yourself reading extremely long books written by extremely dead people for fun? Has someone expressed concern about your obsession with the relationship between form and content? Do you like philosophy? Games? Interactive fiction? 

If you said yes to any of the above, then please check out the Critical-Creative Philosophy jam, on from now until midnight, October 31st, 2022! Yes, we've just extended our original deadline by a month!

Critical-Creative Philosophy is a half-year jam running from the beginning of March 2022 until the end of October 2022. Participants are asked to create a “critical-creative” piece based on a canonical work of philosophy. This means that their (and their audience’s) critical engagement with the work of philosophy they’ve chosen should take a creative form. For some examples of what we have in mind when we say this, please see the FAQ on our jam page.

Artistic pieces inspired by the lives and works of famous philosophers are ubiquitous, but few of these make substantive, lasting contributions to the ways their philosophies are understood by academics or by the general public. Academic scholarship is difficult for the general public to access, too, and does not do as much as it could to enrich their approaches to the canons, traditions, and problems they’d like to learn more about or explore for themselves. 

Our jam aims to bridge this gap between academic philosophy and philosophy as an activity that anyone might enjoy. We want you — yes, you, regardless of your philosophical background and experience — to create pieces that combine the critical and the creative, such that anyone with an interest in the philosophical work you’ve chosen will learn something about it, see it with fresh eyes, or simply enjoy (re)visiting it in a new form.

To encourage participation from a wide variety of people, we offer the following prizes:

• 🔹 Panel winner (x 1): $500 in compensation and publication in the digital review. This prize is awarded by our panel of judges.

• 🔹 Runners-up (x 2 or 3): Publication in the digital review. This prize is also awarded by our panel of judges.

• 🔹 Popular winner: Publication in the digital review. This prize is chosen through itch.io’s jam voting system by jam participants. It goes to the highest ranked piece that has not been selected as the panel winner or as a runner-up.

• 🔹 Anywhere from 4 to 5 pieces will be chosen for publication in issue 03 of the digital review, "counter-works," to be released late 2023.

For more information (ex., our panel of judges, FAQ, Rules, and Resources), please check out our jam page. Feel free to ask questions here or in the FAQ board of our community. You can also find us on Twitter here. 

Thanks for reading!

Exactly what it says in the title! The deadline for the competition has been extended to midnight, October 31st, 2022! Just to be clear, this means that you have until 23:59/11:59PM on October 31st to submit your piece. As always, email us at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com if you have any concerns or questions, and feel free to make modifications to your submission up until the new deadline . Please also note that we've made a few more questions in the submission window mandatory, so if you have not filled those out already, please do so before October 31st! Thanks, everyone.

Hi, there! 

Are you a current/former/aspiring/despairing/anti-/whatever academic in the humanities? Are you tired of writing conventional journal articles for your CV for no pay, let alone readership? Have you gone into a marginally more reasonable line of work yet still find yourself reading extremely long books written by extremely dead people for fun? Has someone expressed concern about your obsession with the relationship between form and content? Do you like philosophy? Games? Interactive fiction? 

If you said yes to any of the above, then please check out the Critical-Creative Philosophy jam, on from now until September 30th, 2022! I would've posted an advertisement to this community back in March but only just realized it existed... my bad.

Critical-Creative Philosophy is a half-year jam running from the beginning of March 2022 until the end of September 2022. Participants are asked to create a “critical-creative” piece based on a canonical work of philosophy. This means that their (and their audience’s) critical engagement with the work of philosophy they’ve chosen should take a creative form. For some examples of what we have in mind when we say this, please see the FAQ on our jam page.

Artistic pieces inspired by the lives and works of famous philosophers are ubiquitous, but few of these make substantive, lasting contributions to the ways their philosophies are understood by academics or by the general public. Academic scholarship is difficult for the general public to access, too, and does not do as much as it could to enrich their approaches to the canons, traditions, and problems they’d like to learn more about or explore for themselves. 

Our jam aims to bridge this gap between academic philosophy and philosophy as an activity that anyone might enjoy. We want you — yes, you, regardless of your philosophical background and experience — to create pieces that combine the critical and the creative, such that anyone with an interest in the philosophical work you’ve chosen will learn something about it, see it with fresh eyes, or simply enjoy (re)visiting it in a new form.

To encourage participation from a wide variety of people, we offer the following prizes:

• 🔹 Panel winner (x 1): $500 in compensation and publication in the digital review. This prize is awarded by our panel of judges.

• 🔹 Runners-up (x 2 or 3): Publication in the digital review. This prize is also awarded by our panel of judges.

• 🔹 Popular winner: Publication in the digital review. This prize is chosen through itch.io’s jam voting system by jam participants. It goes to the highest ranked piece that has not been selected as the panel winner or as a runner-up.

• 🔹 Anywhere from 4 to 5 pieces will be chosen for publication in a 2023 issue of the digital review.

For more information (ex., our panel of judges, FAQ, Rules, and Resources), please check out our jam page. Feel free to ask questions here or in the FAQ board of our community. You can also find us on Twitter here. 

Thanks for reading!

Hi, everyone!

Originally, competition winners were to be published in a student journal. We've since partnered up with the digital review, a journal specializing in just the sort of work we're looking for, and will be publishing winners there in a 2023 issue.

Please note the following changes to the jam site:

*PRIZE CHANGES*
To encourage participation from a wide variety of people, we offer the following prizes:

• 🔹 Panel winner (x 1): $500 in compensation and publication in the digital review. This prize is awarded by our panel of judges.

• 🔹 Runners-up (x 2 or 3): Publication in the digital review. This prize is also awarded by our panel of judges.

• 🔹 Popular winner: Publication in the digital review. This prize is chosen through itch.io’s jam voting system by jam participants. It goes to the highest ranked piece that has not been selected as the panel winner or as a runner-up.

• 🔹 Anywhere from 4 to 5 pieces will be chosen for publication in a 2023 issue of the digital review.
  

*RULE CHANGES*

• 🔹 3. Submissions need not be new, previously unpublished, nor expressly created for this jam. !! Change on April 15th, 2022  !! Pieces chosen for publication must be removed from itch.io a few months before the digital review issue that features them goes live. If you have published (a version of) your piece elsewhere, please contact the jam host at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com to determine its eligibility for the competition.

As always, please shoot us an email at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com with any questions or concerns you might have, and happy making!

Hi, all!

Thanks again for your interest in the jam! Needless to say, life happened and I was a wee bit ambitious with the original posting schedule... Features and pitches will now be posted to the blog on a rolling basis as they're completed. We hope you look forward to them!

Our first pitch has just gone live -- Botcrates, a Socratic chatbot, which you'll find on our blog over here!

Hi, everyone!

Thank you all for your interest in the jam so far! Starting TODAY, we'll be posting features of existing critical-creative works on Tuesdays and pitches to inspire you on Thursdays. Our first feature has just gone live -- David Kolb's Socrates in the Labyrinth, which you'll find on our blog over here!

We'll update this thread each time we post a new pitch or feature. Please note you're welcome to adapt our pitches for your own projects!

1. What do you mean by “critical-creative?”

Critical-creative work collapses what are typically considered two distinct activities: 1) Critical engagement with (in this case) a work of philosophy, where the object is to follow/reject/qualify its argument or to capture its spirit; and 2) the creation of an artistic work — something that solicits the imagination; plays with its medium; implicates artist or audience in the manner it unfurls.

We are interested in pieces where critical engagement with a work of philosophy takes a creative form, and where this interplay between philosophy and artistic creation is mutually illuminating. For examples, please see FAQ #3 and #4.

2. How should my critical-creative piece relate to philosophy?

Your primary source — a work of philosophy — should not just inspire your piece. It should not serve as a font for quotations, concepts, characters, axioms, etc., that you simply adapt to your piece’s subject matter (ex., “If one were to press me to say why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed. […  It is because he] was he; [and I] was I.” — Montaigne on friendship). Nor should it merely occasion your piece by featuring its buzzwords (ex., Wittgenstein’s language-games) or what are commonly thought to be its takeaways (ex., Nietzsche’s ubermensch makes their own law).

Rather, your piece should be in the service of the work(s) of philosophy you’ve chosen. It could enrich, challenge, or clarify your audience’s reception of the work(s). It could prompt your audience to enact the work’s argument; tinker with its system of description; connect with one of its characters; or fiddle with the raw text of the work itself. It could juxtapose one work with another such that your audience’s understanding of both is changed in a way that only this juxtaposition could make possible. It could upset some aspect of your work’s foundations, overhaul its structure, or bring it to bear on something that was unimaginable at the time of its creation. You could take some things and leave others. We welcome anything, so long as it is both a piece of scholarship and a work of art (broadly construed).

3. What kinds of pieces can I submit?

We will accept games of any stripe (board games, solo and collaborative tabletop roleplaying games, video games, etc.); visual, aural, or literary art; and works within the digital humanities (except straightforward archives such as The Nietzsche Source and The Wittgenstein Source). The piece must feature an interactive component and may be excerpted from a larger work. We especially welcome pieces that are born-digital and are not opposed to submissions that are drafts or outright vaporware. Here are some examples:

• 🔹 Socrates in the Labyrinth by David Kolb — explores what hyperlinked, non-linear philosophical argumentation might look like in a malleable interface, with sources ranging from Plato’s Socrates to Hegel

• 🔹 The University of Iowa’s Tractaus map — visualizes Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a subway system

• 🔹 let’s play shadowgraphs by Cr. Sal----- -----s — a playable reimagining of the “Shadowgraphs” fragment from Kierkegaard’s Either/Or

Please note that your piece must be (and remain) free for all to access. We accept submissions in any language. If you’re looking for inspiration, we frequently highlight examples of critical-creative pieces from other disciplines and pitch ideas for individual pieces on our Twitter feed. You are welcome to develop these ideas into your own projects – just link back to the original Tweet.

4. I still don’t really get it. Can you give me more examples of critical-creative work?

Here are some examples (of, I should note, works that we consider critical-creative but would not accept as submissions — compare FAQ question #3, above):

• 🔹 The Chinese Notebook by Ron Silliman — a book of poetry dealing with the form and subject matter of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (would not be accepted because it does not have an interactive component)

• 🔹 The Library of Babel by Jonathan Basile — a website that brings Jose Luis Borges’ short story “The Library of Babel” to life (would not be accepted because its primary source is a work of literature by a fiction author)

• 🔹 Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip — a book of poetry that wrenches the voices of the black men and women aboard the slave ship Zong from the legal decision that is the only testament to their massacre (would not be accepted because its primary source is the text of Gregson v. Gilbert, a legal document)

• 🔹 The Strangerer by Mickle Maher — a play that splices together Camus’ The Stranger and the 2000 United States presidential election (would not be accepted because it does not have an interactive component)

• 🔹 FICT.site — a group of academics who create and investigate artifacts from speculative timelines as a means of understanding the effects of European colonialism (would not be accepted because it is an academic practice; having said that, individual artifacts produced within this framework would be accepted were they to take a work of philosophy as their point of departure) 

If you’re unsure whether your project would qualify for this competition, please feel free to shoot us an email at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com prior to the submission deadline. We’re happy to clear your project or to point you in the right direction.

5. Who can submit a piece to this jam?

Anyone. We particularly encourage submissions from persons without permanent academic positions, such as graduate students, postgraduates, and independent researchers, regardless of their field. You do not need an institutional affiliation to submit a piece to this jam, nor do you need to be involved in academia.

6. What should I include with my submission?

Submissions should include your piece, a short description that reflects upon what it’s doing, and a link to a document that lists any relevant references and sources. We also ask that you tell us a bit about who you are. Please see our Rules for additional information about citations.

7. What works of philosophy are eligible as my primary sources for this jam?

Any work by any canonical philosopher from any philosophical tradition is eligible, provided the philosopher in question is no longer alive. Please feel free to shoot us an email if you’re worried about the eligibility of the work(s) you’ve chosen at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com.

We emphasize that your piece should not be about the life of a particular philosopher (ex., we would not accept a piece like 88 Constellations for Wittgenstein (to be played with the Left Hand) by David Clark — according to Clark, this piece is a metabiography).

8. What if I want to make a piece that deals with a particular philosophical problem, as opposed to a philosophical work?

You’re welcome to do so provided the piece is grounded in at least one work that fits the specifications set out in FAQ #7, above.

9. My piece deals with a work of philosophy that is also a work of art (ex., a novel by Simone de Beauvoir). Can I submit it to this competition? 

 Yes — but we urge you to clear it with us in advance, particularly if it is in the “philosophical novel” genre; is not written by a philosopher; or is predominantly discussed in literature departments (ex., Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which falls under all three categories).

10. I’ve never done this in my life and have no idea where to start.

Check out the examples mentioned throughout this FAQ, poke around our Resources, and scroll through our Twitter feed to see what catches your eye and if there’s someone in the likes/comments/retweets you might like to connect with. We also encourage you to chat with other participants in the Community tab forum on our itch.io page. We’re also available via email.

11. I have more questions!

Please email us at critcreaphil [at] gmail [dot] com or post your question to the extended FAQ topic in the Community tab on the jam’s itch.io site.