Play Anything
Ian Bogost
<p><b>How filling life with play</b>-<b>whether soccer or lawn mowing, counting sheep or tossing Angry Birds</b>-<b>forges a new path for creativity and joy in our impatient age</b><p><br>Life is boring: filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call <i>fun</i>. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In <i>Play Anything,</i> 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.<br>The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games. <i>Play Anything,</i> reveals that games appeal to us not because they are fun, but because they set <i>limitations</i>. 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...