

Rust LTD is composed of four avant-garde artists who are experimenting with political philosophy as game design through surrealist narratives and open world sandboxes of resolving paradox through play. I spoke with Rust’s CTO Anton Hand about Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades at GDC where we talked about guns, morals, and capitalism, and I just had a chance to sit down with Rust CEO Adam Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz about how he embraces paradox and confusion in his game design process to explore thought experiments in political philosophy.

We cover a lot of ground in this EPIC 2-hour conversation that explores his “No Method” theory of game design, experiential design inspired by political philosophy thought experiments, pragmatic advice he gives his game design students, the struggle of being a designer, the role of providing feedback, the ethics of journalistic photogrammetry, the ecological sustainability of immersive technologies, immersive poetry, how play allows us to escape closed systems of logic, and what it means to be a democratic citizen in today’s society. We also cover a wide range of ideas in political philosophy including Rawls’ “Veil of Ignorance,” Plato’s ideal size of a polis, Aristotle on politics as matters of communal concern, Tip O’Neill on “All Politics is Local,” Sheldon Wolin’s Politics and Vision, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Community, Stoicism’s Enchiridion, and John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education. We cover a wide-range of deep questions about what it means to be a designer and artistre within our current political and economic context.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/d1icj85yqthyoq.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Voices-of-VR-711-Adam-Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz.mp3

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality