Download Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games AudioBook Free
Life is boring: filled up with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But imagine if we've received fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game custom and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how exactly we can overcome our day to day anxiety; transforming the boring, normal world all around us into one of countless, playful possibilities. The main element to the playful mindset is based on discovering the trick truth of fun and game titles. Play Anything unveils that games appeal to us not because they're fun, but because they arranged limitations. Soccer wouldn't be soccer if it wasn't made up of two clubs of 11 players using only their feet, heads, and torsos to get a ball into a goal; Tetris wouldn't be Tetris without dropping pieces in characteristic shapes. Such guidelines seem to be needless, arbitrary, and difficult. Yet it is the limitations that produce games enjoyable, exactly like it's the hard things in life that provide it meaning. Play is what goes on when we accept these limitations, thin our focus, and, consequently, have a great time. Which is also how to live on a good life. Manipulating a soccer ball into a goal is no unique of treating normal circumstances - like grocery shopping, lawn mowing, and making PowerPoints - as sources for meaning and joy. We can "play anything" by filling up our times with attention and willpower, devotion and love for the entire world as it truly is, beyond our needs and fears. Ranging from Internet culture to moral philosophy, historical poetry to modern consumerism, Bogost shows us how today's chaotic world can only be tamed - and appreciated - whenever we first impose boundaries on ourselves.
