Play Anything

Ian Bogost, Ph.D., is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. He is author or co-author of ten books, including his newest book Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games.  Games are the center of our social lives. We play games because they are fun, but what does fun really mean? According to Ian Bogost games are fun because they have limitations. Not only are games filled with rules and boundaries, but all areas of our lives are filled with limitations as well. If limitations help us to have fun while playing games, shouldn’t we then be able to have fun with the most tedious parts of life? Bogost shares about how we can find pleasure in limitations.