Play Anything

The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games

By: Ian Bogost

Narrated by: Jonathan Yen

Life is boring: 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 11 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.

©2016 Ian Bogost (P)2016 Recorded Books

Great book, bad title

I did not find in this book what I was expecting from the title.
It's well written and interesting. I touches briefly on boredom and limits. Much of the time is passed criticizing irony. I would say that irony, instead of play, is the main focus of this book.

Entertaining Word Choice and Enlightening

I liked how he used different examples - stories and really gave the essence of how he thought about play. Liked The Metaphors and Popular Diction.

or become a monk

Being satisfied with everything for what it is and what we are may that the joy out of the things that matter and send it out in the darkness only to return to us as something else.

Don't bother

This author is pompous, pedantic, and verbose. This book could be about a fourth as long with no substance lost from his repetitive and pretentious writing. The narrator does the author NO FAVORS with his professoresque drone. It's ironic that a book on play could be so boring...

Useless

This book has nothing that pertains to practical application. Talks about hipsters obsessions hints that the ideas discussed might have useful applications but does nothing to explore implementation or utilization.

Just a collection of ponderings about pretentious interests

Digital Torture

Ten hours of my life...gone forever. Monotonous, pompous, and convoluted. His endless lists while trying to make the same points over and over. Additionally, the narrator's tonality matched the smugness of the author. He would be better cast as the narrator in an old Looney Tunes cartoon. His applied accents when quoting someone bordered on insulting.

Convoluted

Would you try another book from Ian Bogost and/or Jonathan Yen?

Not Bogost but Yen was a good narrator

What could Ian Bogost have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

This was very hard to follow in my opinion. I understood the premise that it is the restrictions of things that make it a game, but I felt the examples jumped all over the place.

Have you listened to any of Jonathan Yen’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No I have not.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

frustration

Repetitive Philosophy

I had picked up this book thinking I was going to get some new insights into game design, or maybe get some new insights into traversing day to day life in a more optimized way by leveraging that sort of concept. It started off strong where the author describes his daughter sort of making a game out of trip to the mall in a way I think most of us did when we were that age, but never gave much thought to again.

Unfortunately, while he references back to that event several times as an example, the book is mostly just going on and on about his perceptions and philosophical take on things.

This book is actually a philosophical work about the concepts of play and fun, in which the author goes on and on about concepts like irony for hours.

I haven't gone through the whole thing and will be returning it if I can. If the author does get to material along the lines the title suggests, it takes him longer to get there than I am willing to invest time in. I wouldn't really mind if the author had covered this sort of ground, but it just goes on and on. The chapter on irony in particular was an incredibly repetitive slog.

repetitive philosophy. stop after chap. 1

he repeats himself and says the same thing and makes the same point and tells you again. when he is on an errand, his daughter makes a game out of stepping on the cracks in the floor. for him it is an errand; for her it is a game. repeat this a hundred times said in slightly different ways and you have this book

This is not fun.

This book is an exaggeration of definition and observations, it does not provide effective solutions.