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A jam submission

Il Principe (browser version)View game page

Submitted by limnological
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Il Principe (browser version)'s itch.io page

What work(s) of philosophy does your piece take as its primary source(s)?
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince.

Please tell us about your piece.
Machiavellis the Prince is one of those works that is often mentioned yet rarely read. I wanted to
make a tool for a reader who may be intimidated by the age of the treatise and its framing in the
politics and wars of late 15th and early 16th century Italy in which it was written. The original plan
for this project was much grander than what you can play with now, a full strategy game with the
fragments of philosophy and history more directly experienced through gameplay. As ever, the
original plan was impossible in the confines of time, thus the current form of the project: a map wich
provides summarised history of the various Italian states of the Renaissance and some interesting
and related fragments from the Prince.

The purpose of this is not to be any comprehensive telling of history, nor a replacement for reading
Machiavelli. Rather it is a starting point for a reader who wishes to get into the topic but might find
reading a Renaissance work of political philosophy difficult, not knowing the political context and the
various events of recent history to which Machiavelli refers often and does not fully explain, since
they were obvious to any educated contemporary reader, many of whom were actors in these
events themselves. The summarised histories of various states should provide enough information,
that upon finding some unclear statement in the Prince the reader can at least know where to start
looking for clarification and futher information.

I don’t have any background in philosophy and only stumbled to this jam a couple of weeks ago,
leading to the truncated nature of this game/philosophical experience. This project probably doesn’t
fully qualify under the jams strict rules but I found it fun to work on and if anyone finds it at least
interesting or neat, I will consider this a success.

What other sources have you used in your piece?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uL63Sls5Ix_MV3mwNM9Ls74nkNbZ8eyV8Tze8QeYPbM/edit?usp=sharing

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Comments

Jam JudgeSubmitted

As a teacher of Italian literature and culture, I think this project is an excellent idea and would be very useful to undergraduate students. The Prince is taught across the board in the Great Books curricula in the United States and the task of introducing Italy's complex Rennaissance history would definitely benefit from multimedia tools like this. I've used something similar in teaching Dante's Inferno and students really appreciate the visual mapping of Dante's structure of Hell and the integration of spatial and textual elements.  Looking forward to the complete piece!

Jam JudgeSubmitted

I love this project.  A great way to embed the text within its historical context. There are lots of directions to take this, too, like adding animations, sound or audio recordings (or readings of fragments and historical summaries), and who knows what else. Thanks for your creative work!