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

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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.

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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

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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

2 people found this helpful

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.

This is not fun.

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

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.