Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games

by Ian Bogost

How filling life with play-whether soccer or lawn mowing, counting sheep or tossing Angry Birds -- forges a new path for creativity and joy in our impatient age Life is filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how we can overcome our daily anxiety; transforming the boring, ordinary world around us into one of endless, playful possibilities. The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games. Play Anything, reveals that games appeal to us not because they are fun, but because they set limitations. Soccer wouldn't be soccer if it wasn't composed of two teams of eleven players using only their feet, heads, and torsos to get a ball into a goal; Tetris wouldn't be Tetris without falling pieces in characteristic shapes. Such rules seem needless, arbitrary, and difficult. Yet it is the limitations that make games enjoyable, just like it's the hard things in life that give it meaning. Play is what happens when we accept these limitations, narrow our focus, and, consequently, have fun. Which is also how to live a good life. Manipulating a soccer ball into a goal is no different than treating ordinary circumstances- like grocery shopping, lawn mowing, and making PowerPoints-as sources for meaning and joy. We can "play anything" by filling our days with attention and discipline, devotion and love for the world as it really is, beyond our desires and fears. Ranging from Internet culture to moral philosophy, ancient poetry to modern consumerism, Bogost shows us how today's chaotic world can only be tamed-and enjoyed-when we first impose boundaries on ourselves.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Philosophy, Games, Game Design, Self Help, Plays

281 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 13, 2016

About the author

Ian Bogost is a video game designer, critic and researcher. He holds a joint professorship in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and in Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Chair in Media Studies.

He is the author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism and Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames as well as the co-author of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System and Newsgames: Journalism at Play. Bogost also released Cow Clicker, a satire and critique of the influx of social network games. His game, A Slow Year, won two awards, Vanguard and Virtuoso, at IndieCade 2010.

Reviews

[Michael Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ian Bogost's Play Anything is a book about how play emerges from the limits in the world around us. Ian introduces "the world" as a giant playground waiting to be discovered, ironoia as the mistrust of things and thus a barrier to emergent play, fun as the novelty and play as emergent quality of things (not of us, individuals), and discusses emergent fun as an opposite of happiness. Overall, this is the worst book I've read from Ian Bogost--there is little structure, much negative tone without much logical argument, and limited novelty.

I've liked in this book the creation of ironoia as the mistrust of things (think paranoia, mistrust of people or systems of people) and the numerous references (albeit, not truly novel).

I've disliked so many things:
1. Limited novelty: I found myself asking what can one learn from this book. In terms of playing anything, anywhere, despite Ian Bogost's quick dismissal, the concept has already been introduced by Miguel Sicart in Play Matters. I also can't stop thinking Raph Koster has already addressed the concept of fun in his A Theory of Fun, going deeper, broader, and more humanely about it than what I am reading here. (There's also Bernard De Koven.) Here are the key concepts discussed extensively in this book, in my view without the author adapting or improving on them: play from Johan Huizinga; simple living from Henry David Thoreau's Walden; optimism from Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836 essay Nature) and Henry David Thoreau; freeplay from Jacques Derrida; creativity from Alfred North Whitehead (1926 Religion in the making and 1929 Process and reality); self-reliance, self-help from Norman Vincent Peale (1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking); flow from Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi; working for the social good from David Foster Wallace; loss of children play from Peter Gray; paradox of choice from Barry Schwartz; digital devices dehumanize us from Sherry Turkle (but not Dan Tapscott); Easterlin paradox of happiness increasing with earning only to a point and Daniel Kahneman's adaggio; spend on experiences, not things from Thomas Gilovich; experiential goods that facilitate activities from Darwin A. Guevarra and Ryan T. Howell; affordances and constraints as keys of user-centered design from Donald Norman; happiness from Sonja Lyubomirsky.

2. Loosely structured, poorly written: the book should have been rigorously edited, so that its core is not lost in rambling text lacking structure. For example, I almost lost the key thesis, which is now buried on page 151:

"Today, we have the opportunity to restructure parts of our lives to focus more on constraint and less on restraint. Instead of seeing freedom as an escape from the chains of limitation, we need to interpret it as an opportunity to explore the implications of inherited or invented constraints."


I also almost missed an important reason for writing this book, which is thinking about his father's approach to life:
"We could all benefit by being reared by the blind."
writes Ian Bogost, after explaining how his father went nearly blind in a car accident. With all due respect, I don't think so.

3. Violent rhetoric: out of nothing, the book turns at times violent in its rhetoric, borrowing activist terms and attitudes. Think authentic, distortion, entitled, framing, irony, lens, scaffolding, and vibrant. After spending nearly thirty pages rejecting irony, Ian Bogost uses it to bash Miguel Sicart; fascism is mentioned. One page later, it is Mary Flanagan's turn to get some passive-aggressive discourse, regarding unplaying and subversive play: "Materials are harder to subvert than skip-deep opposition might suggest. (Or maybe it's Yoko Ono and her White Chess Set.)

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't books have editors any more? This one certainly needed another pass or two with a red pencil.

Look, Bogost is clearly a smart guy, and has some interesting insights into game design. And there are definite flashes of brilliance here, especially in his chapter on the concept of "ironoia".

Unfortunately, most of the book is an unfocused mess, with a tone that shifts wildly from pop-culture drivel (a la Malcolm Gladwell) to a deep dive into advanced programming. It's supposed to offer me amazing insights that will change how I view the world: instead, it changes how I feel about my decision to read this book. It feels less like a coherent book than an attempt to merge a half-dozen magazine articles into something book-length.

And the knowing, hipster attitude, especially his snobby visit to Wal-Mart, wears thin after a while. It's a little weird that a grown man actually spends time pondering the relative differences between reality cooking shows, let along telling us which one we should watch. A better title for this book: "Fun: You're Doing It Wrong".

Finally, the writing...I think that it's intended to be clever, but more often distracts from understanding. There are pithy statements that are clearly wrong, like "Pushed to its limits, wealth flips into poverty". And there are points where he's really trying too hard, such as "his dogged independence and overall bullheadedness contributed to his refusal to refuse".

[Emily Carlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unexpectedly gripping + fascinating + worthwhile. A lot of the big players in my personal canon were put into conversation (e.g. DFW x video game design).

I'm totally, one hundred percent convinced by Bogost and I can already feel the book subtly changing the way I live. Two things I want to critique, though:

(1) I want a better argument for why his approach isn't susceptible to the same critique he turns against gamification -- i.e. that it's sugar coating for shitty things. He critiques the sugar coating, but then talks about defamiliarizing the products at Walmart, aka late capitalist wasteland. I guess that's a practical approach to reality, sure. But how is it not sugar coating Walmart?

I think he includes the quote from someone about trapped people who have come to love their cage. Isn't his approach a way to do exactly that? Like, society is mind numbing and meaningless and sad but we can draw magic circles around things and approach them playfully. Is that a way of loving our cage as opposed to improving the cage? I'm not sure.

(2) Ironically, I guess, given the fact that I called his philosophy practical in point (1), I think that he doesn't do enough work around how this playful approach actually works or happens. It felt like a book full of a brilliant person starting to think through something but failing to complete the thought.

The whole reason I read books, though, in some ways, is for the secondhand satisfaction and learning associated with reading a thought being completed. So that was kind of annoying. But as I type this I guess I realize I should be grateful for having so many good thought-starters put into my head.

Oh also (3) I'm a little worried the wordful versus mindful distinction doesn't actually hold up (i.e. it is meaningless / vacuous), but it's still super super seductive to me on the surface.

[Billy Dean · Rating 1 out of 5]

The absence of politics--particularly anything even remotely resembling class politics--is more than conspicuous. Bogost claims that we "look down our nose" at Walmart and McDonalds because we mistake familiarity for a "lack of authenticity" (52f). But most of us recognize that something else is at work in these examples; there is virtually no mention of what kind of company Walmart is, what kind of people shop there, or how Walmart shoppers figure in our rhetoric and cultural imagination. Bogost implores us to take things "as they are," "on their own terms," but surely this is easier for him to say than it is for many to pull off. Despite an alleged attention to *things* and an ecology of things, he seems to forget that things cost money, that they come from somewhere.

Watering and cultivating an expensive lawn, buying a home in Atlanta (despite having a healthy salary in the tech industry, he notes, owning property was out of the question in California), taking his daughter shopping. He admires his daughter for finding a playground in the "drudgery of mall transit," but many of us have more to worry about than such drudgery. He scoffs at Katie McLaughlin for trying to cut back on what she perceives as over-indulgence, writing, "Imagine reading [McLaughlin's concern] through the eyes of a family in the Great Depression, or a college student starting her first job, or even an upper-middle class parent with an infant at home. Imagine how outrageous it would sound." How outrageous, indeed! To see him, the upper-middle class parent, group himself with a young college student and a family in the Great Depression is simply astonishing. McLaughlin is worried that she's becoming a Marie Antoinette, and Bogost criticizes her. Surely, he claims, an impoverished family would rather she "live it up," embrace the constraints of the playground she finds herself in. Play the hand you've been dealt, and stop wishing you had different cards! That's well and good if he's only talking to other upper middle class parents, but it's somewhat sinister advice to struggling families and young college students.

All that aside, Play Anything reads like most of Bogost's other books: a strange compromise between academic and mass-market writing. One is initially impressed that Bogost has been able to crank out so many books so quickly; upon reading them, however, it's clear how he's been able to pull it off. How to Talk about Videogames, How to Do Things with Videogames, Play Anything--these read like they were written in a couple weeks, but are presented with so much pomp and pretense that it's hard to get through. The Recipe: meandering anecdotes about watering his lawn, claims to have upset entire fields of study or practice--add anecdotes and repeat claims until you have 200 pages or so. Voilà.

[Conor Ahern · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not sure I learned anything from this book. I was looking forward to a primer on how to make life more playful—I am perpetually pingponging between being way too stimulated and way too bored—but it did not reveal too much about how to reify playfulness in everyday life. There are a lot of extended meditations on irony, insincerity, consumption, etc. but, as I began to suspect halfway in, it’s one of those “change your way of thinking” books, not an “implement a way of thinking” books, making it distinctly less practical. I appreciate the insight that we need to stop dismissing things because we think that they are passé or that they cannot offer us anything, but all that stuff about irony and constraints fomenting creativity are pretty available to any remotely self-reflecting person.

Shrug. I should know myself better, but it got a good write-up in Slate and I have made a pledge to increase my ratio of non-fiction to fiction, and this fit the bill.

[K · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a thought-provoking book that I really wanted to like more than I did. Bogost is an important figure at the interface of game studies and philosophy that I desperately wish people in (ludo-)musicology would heed. (Scholars of ludomusicology – loosely, game music studies – focus exclusively on large-scale console video games, thereby excluding all of the other ways that games/play and music intersect. But I digress...) Despite this book's many merits, I found the tone and the examples that he uses to be really limiting in their own way to the extent that I'm not sure that I can wholeheartedly recommend this book without some serious caveats.

So let me start with the positive. This book is a wonderful rejoinder to Sherry Turkle's warnings about the decline of conversation in Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. In fact, I'd say that it has some of the best arguments about the value of cultivating boredom and re-thinking joy that I've read. I appreciate that Bogost encourages his readers to conceptualize the playground more broadly (including even his trip to a local Walmart) and to question the ways that people have embraced various trends in so-called minimal living such as decluttering one's life and micro-housing. The examples help him to prove his main point, and that makes the book well worth the read.

There are, however, some nagging problems with this book, and I suppose many of them have to do with Bogost's subject position as a philosopher and video game designer. Throughout this book, I kept thinking about the inherent bias and unchecked privilege in his analysis. I almost gave up on it after the first chapter due to this. He continually writes from a perspective of upper middle-class straight white cis-man without disabilities, so his claims about the lack of play or the complaints of frequent air travelers, for example, come from the perspective of people whose only difficulty with the process has to do with delays or moving around cramped spaces, not, say, with being profiled by the TSA for being too brown, too queer, or otherwise suspicious or "difficult." How can someone who is discriminated against in those settings look at the experience from the detached wonderment of play when they are busy resisting or fighting for their rights?

Similarly, I was frustrated that he relied so heavily on perspectives on play limited to Western Europe and the United States. The linguistic analysis of the words for play, joke, and fun only work for some cultural settings. In some places around the world, play is serious business about survival. Think, for example about the importance of "o jeito brasileiro" or Clifford Geertz's famous dissection of the social meanings of the Balinese cock fight. Or, take the example of sex and gender presentation. Bogost talks about the potential of sex as play as if it's a big revelation, but then ignores or doesn't take into account the very communities where that conception has been thriving for a really long time. Various elements of the LGBTQIA community have been exploring these ideas for a very long time, especially through the idea of "gender play" in butch-femme dynamics and drag shows. Or how about the ways that people in the BDSM/kink communities almost exclusively talk about what they do as "play" whether or not it involves genital sex? And what's frustrating to me is that it's pretty clear that Bogost wasn't curious about any of these alternative or minority perspectives. He clearly has some blind spots, and I worry that his position will never challenge him to think outside of his own experience. And what makes me sad is that there is no room in his framework to think through these perspectives. How do I take these ideas to heart when I am excluded from them?

I know this is a lot to ask of a book written for a general audience, but I'm tired of excusing it, especially when the people who write these books claim to be doing something revolutionary. This book shows such compassion for "things" and even the subjectivity of children – something that exceeds many other books aimed for a general audience – is it such a stretch that philosophers of play think beyond their own immediate perspective? I believe it would be better for all of us.

[Austin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This isn't a book about how to improve your life by dealing with boredom in constructive ways, it's a book about unhappiness and how powerless we (usually) are to change it. If I had known that going in, I might have liked this book better, but it's poorly packaged and VERY poorly organized. All the best parts of this book are cribbed from more interesting and established writers—the book feels like a very long blog post.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's what I took from this:

Ian Bogost offers guidance for navigating the banality of life, without veering into irony. He suggests drawing a "magic circle" around particular situations or things, then treating these things as a playground. You can play at lawn care, or play an errand at the mall, just as one would play soccer or Tetris.

This is distinct from "gamification." You should deal with the situation or object as it is -- leaning into it rather than disguising it to make the experience seem less boring. What results is a kind of craftsmanship, as you confront limitations to produce worthwhile results.

For Bogost, "play" is not associated with freedom or non-work. Rather, it derives from constraints. Play does not necessarily lead to pleasure. But it enables a particular kind of "fun," a communion with the broader world, as you interact with things and discover their operations.

The implicit point of all this seems to be that through play you can perhaps avoid being crushed by the relentless mundanity of everyday existence. There are many references to David Foster Wallace, who looms in the background as a cautionary tale.

This is not a critique of consumer culture or capitalism, which some readers might want. It's much more basic, a suggestion for how one might psychically bear the grind of daily life.


A few quotes:

"Confronted with the arbitrariness of the world and all its contents, we are faced with a challenge: how to make do, how to find meaning, how to thrive and flourish even though the universe is ultimately indifferent. One answer is to resist, to abdicate, to reject our surroundings, possessions, and relationships as potentially insufficient and therefore untrustworthy. But another answer is to embrace the stupidity of mall floors and guitars and everything else -- to allow the things we encounter to set the terms for our scrutiny rather than insisting that our own ideas and expectations should rule our experience." (4)

"Irony is like that plastic cover on your grandmother's sofa: in protecting the furniture from hypothetical accident, it also removes its upholstery from possible experience." (36)

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't keep going after only 1-1/2 chapters. Just a long ramble, and not very interesting. I just can't figure out what his point was going to be. He talks about irony in play, and about "fun", but the irony of this book is that it's just no fun to read! I'm moving on to something else...

[Pål Fiva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring, shallow and repetitive. Spends too much time using DFW as a sort of straw-man cod-philosopher, and returns to the same examples over, and over again.

[Lia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't often find books that I can't finish, but this was one of them. I got into around the 2nd chapter before I completely gave up. I even tried promising myself to read a book I had been waiting for but only after I finished this - didn't work, I just didn't want to pick this book up again. The writing felt disorganized to me, jumping from one place to another and not connecting the dots between them. Maybe the content is good, but I just can't find the main ideas of the chapters. It's all too muddled for me to keep wanting to read it.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whenever I was reading this book, the time always went faster than I expected, and I read further than intended, which is a nod to how well Bogost keeps his writing interesting, unexpected, and worthwhile. Moments in the book become a bit too self-involved, in that a reader is hammered over and over with an invented term, or a simplistic example overused. Bogost can be excused for this as his broader evaluation of our world, and his motivations in sharing a perspective of play, is ultimately rewarding and well conceived. I simply would've appreciated about a dozen fewer references to the tile square mall game his daughter played (I understood the example the first ten times) or to cheeseburger Pringles. Oh well, we all have our reference points. Overall, I felt exhilarated by this book, and appreciate the breadth of references and research.

[Kars · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There is something profoundly humble about things in the wild."

This is basically Bogost's version of play theory from a OOO perspective. It's laden with an eclectic selection of essayistic meditations on specific consumer products, media, art, and more, all of which to argue that play really is about the work of working a thing, and that fun emerges from a rejection of irony and mindfulness and an acceptance of things as they are.

This is at times brilliant, but I am also somewhat uneasy about how all of this could be used to justify a deeply conservative world view. I know Bogost rejects romanticism and radicalism as basically dishonest. And I think he intends his philosophy of worldfulness as something actually radical—in stead of the hipster posturing often found in art and design circles—but he doesn't entirely convince on that front.

[Lyndi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked about the first half of the book, but then felt like I had learned the lesson/consumed the message, and didn't need to keep reading. I hung on, hoping for something more insightful to hit, but really it boils down to, "Don't limit yourself to what you think play is - create play in every playground, every scenario, etc." Rules make games, restrictions create arenas in which to play, Mary Poppins' approach to finding fun is misleading but that doesn't mean you can't play while cleaning up the house. (Ask me about unloading the dishwasher sometime. Specifically the silverware.)

[DRugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Encourages people to engage with the world without irony or distancing judgement. Rather than living for selfish happiness, instead aim for fun, which is deliberateness plus novelty.

[Sarah Lugthart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed spending time with this book, listening to it on walks outside. At first I felt the basic argument could be made just as well in a solid commencement speech (like the one Bogost mentions from Foster Wallace). Play (and creativity) benefits from limitations. Don’t take things for granted and don’t succumb to ironoia but really engage with the things around you (like your coffee maker or lawn). Try to see them anew, not taking what you want but letting the thing be in its own right. I still feel he’s making the same argument in every chapter. And it seems to be a luxury of the privileged to busy yourself with all of it.
But I also like the examples (Global Game Jams, Oulipo, studying an Atari computer) theories (Harman, Heidegger, McLuhan, Huizinga) and situations (skipping on tiles at the mall!) that help to really let this argument sink in.

[Ctrain79 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew going in that this book was going to be philosophical, since I watched the author speak at Google. Turned out to be basically only philosophical and not much more. The ideas were thought provoking, but the tone has a kind of negativity to it that turned me off a bit.

Whenever I'm reading non-fiction, I kind of groan inside whenever the author launches into the "examples" they provide for their concepts. Bogost tends to drag on with the examples as filler, and cites them again, and again, and again. The second last chapter goes on far too long to make its point.

I have a very different view of mindfulness from the one presented in the book as self-centred, because mindfulness practiced in the ways I'm familiar with allow one to be more observant of their surroundings, in addition to inner thoughts.

Although, I am glad I read this book. I have quite a few things I took out as notes that I can ponder on for the rest of my life, and they seem immediately useful. I agree that the underbelly of humanity on the Internet and their smugness are scrutinized and picked apart, and it's good to see parts of oneself in that mess---to critique it---to offer suggestions for dealing with it.

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This books contains words, sometimes those words will be arranged in sentence form, do not be fooled; those sentences will not contain information.

Okay, so maybe it's not that bad, but this should have been something I liked, but it was awful instead with just a few redeeming spots.

Just read the last chapter The Opposite of Happiness.

Hidden in here are some good points: not using irony to detach ourselves from the world, accepting things for what they are rather than for what we wish them to be, and how play is about always being humble enough to accept the limits of what we are given and re-imagine the world within them. Oh, and positive thinking is bullshit, but us rationalists knew that already.

There you go I saved you a day of reading.

Edit: Also #firstworldproblems much? And why doesn't the author bother to actually say or explain anything in depth with an entire book? Maybe it should only get 1 star, but I save that for things I truly despise.

[Emma Frey · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know, not my favorite.

This is another pitch for mindfulness, a philosophy toward which I am unshakably grouchy. "Do the laundry WITHOUT listening to a podcast - you'll find more enjoyment!" *Grumble grumble.*

I'm not being fair: Ian Bogost offers some interesting points on the topic of "ironoia" - the mistrust of things. He suggests we move beyond the comfortable practice of distancing ourselves from the world toward acceptance and curiosity. Kind of like, "Ask not what your lawnmower can do for you, but what you can do with your lawnmower." (He talks at length about mowing his lawn.)

"Play Anything" smells of privilege, of someone with a fair amount of time on his hands and a stable income. Someone who says, "Let's go to Wal-Mart and look at all the things!" and never once talks about Wal-Mart as a greater entity.

This is all not to mention the fact that the actual argument is meandering, repetitive and much in need of a red pen.

All in all, not my favorite.

[Rachel]

Concept was interesting, but the writing...

[Ivonne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Para un libro que habla de juego y maneras de aprender a través de él, este libro se quedó corto en estrategias. Y no me refiero a que fuera o no divertido (no lo fue), pero como el libro mismo lo dice, una cosa es juego, otra cosa es diversión y muy pocos pueden diferenciar entre uno y otro.
No me tomen a mal, el libro tiene una buena intención y es demostrar que jugando se aprende mejor, puede que no mucho más que con otras técnicas, pero ayuda a muchas personas a cruzar esa barrera de aprendizaje. Ayuda a enfocar y también a socializar. El problema con el libro es que se queda en mchos apuntes autobiográficos, historias medio inconclusas y muy largas.
Veo esta obra como algo útil para personas que se dedican a enseñar o que quieren comunicar sus ideas de una manera más efectiva... eso sí, no sin antes pegarse la aburrida del siglo con un libro largo como este.

[Esa Pavloff-Pelkonen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bogost presents an insight to approach life with; its a game where we should seek and enjoy the structures and limits of things, and playfully search for new angles on them.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard the author on CBC and thought the book sounded interesting. It was a bit of a let down. The book is very repetitive and mostly theory. I had hoped to be able to translate the info into a new approach for myself to diet and exercise. But the info was too abstract and academic to be a good read or of much practical use.

[Josh Kanownik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not what it is sold as or exactly as it is described. I'm not surprised to see the low average review as a result of that. This book is essentially the result of an existential crisis from the author. What happens when you create an ironic game (Cow Clicker) and people actually like it? Do you give into cynicism and go down a path that leads to a place where nothing matters? Popular alternatives today for middle-aged men are to start a blog or a podcast. In this case the author wrote a book.

Is there value in reading these existential musings of a middle-aged man on the topic of play? It depends on what you are looking for. If you want answers on exactly what play is I don't think they're here. If you want a full exploration of play it isn't here either. If you want to discover how to reconcile premium PC RPGs vs a world where millions of people un-ironically love Farmville, this book has a lot of value. It still won't give you all of the answers you are looking for, but it will give you framing to think about play and games in the 21st century.

[Gursu Altunkaya · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author repeats the same idea (that we should find meaning in mundane things instead of trying to escape them) over and over. He doesn’t add anything to this idea throughout the entire book. He doesn’t have any useful suggestions about how to find the said meaning, nor about how to apply this idea to our lives. Thus, the book is entirely useless. He fills the spaces between the endless repetitions of his idea with anecdotes and texts from other people, but these neither strengthen, nor further, nor explain, and definitely didn’t convince me of, his idea. I must admit that I skipped over most of the book after reading a quarter of it, because I was so bored by this infertile repetition. Once in a while I stopped and read a passage or two, always realizing with frustration that he was still repeating the same thing over and over again, his mediocrely poetic, useless pseudo-philosophy and his anecdotes and quotes from other people adding absolutely nothing to it.

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

An emergent philosophy of games is an important topic and increasingly relevant to our lives. So much of our day is interacting with design that has game elements, and that will only increase. A clear understanding of the purpose and potential of games has real meaning and value.

I wish this book had that.

This is pleasantly written, but amounts to little more than "I read a series of articles and books that spurred some thoughts I'd like to share. I'd like to mention those articles and books in a loose order." The conclusions and themes it tries to argue are thinly drawn.

Structured as a collection of essays it might have more effectiveness, but all it really does it make the reader want to read those more interesting articles directly, instead of these musings.

[Joshua Novalis]

4 stars for the thesis, 3 stars for the execution. I’m deeply inspired by Bogost’s argument that play arises from the willingness to put off ironoia, to accept material things as they are (and not make them something they’re not), and to see constraint as the catalyst for creativity. These are ideas I’ll be coming back to often, both in my study of game design and in my pursuit to live contentedly in a turbulent world.

That said, I agree with other reviewers that the book would be benefitted by a more severe editor’s hand, and Bogost does seem to, consciously or not, overlook the political angle of his thesis—and the ways our socioeconomic systems pressure us into fear and irony. Taking that extra step would have increased its prescience.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

How to play this book:
By the end of first 10 pages, overwhelmed by tedium and triviality take a shot every time author repeats an anecdote he already told without anything new to add, take a shot.
Every time the author goes on an angry rant that leads nowhere, finish the bottle.
Oh, and by the way, explaining "rage-quit" doesn't make you look "hip" and "aware", it just makes you look desperately striving to look like you know. Next time the author goes on to write an abomination like this, I hope he rage-quits before it hits the presses.

[Jevgenij · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, I even wanted to give it 2 starts, because it got me thinking about some things in life. But then, it's a very bad book. Funny how the author mentions one book and says something along the lines "but the book does not offer any solutions". The same author who wrote the most non-practical, wordy and boring book. It basically has 2 real-life examples, which contradict each other. However, it has a whole chapter with an in-depth review of Marie Kondos' book about organizing - play with that!

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't prepared for how philosophic & metaphysical this book would turn out to be. Just on the the title and with no previous experience with the author, I thought it would be a few clever tips on how to game myself into doing boring work, but it was much deeper than that. I found myself reevaluating my life through the lens he provides and it was a fresh and welcomed perspective. A little disjointed but well worth the read.