The Aesthetic Of Play

Author: Brian Upton

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Price : $42.99 AUD
ISBN : 9780262542630
Publisher : MIT Press
Imprint : MIT Press
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Weight (g) : 45359200.0
Publication date : February 2021
Dimensions : .74 Inches X 6 Inches X 8.9 Inches
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Product Type : books

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Author : Brian Upton
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Dewey classification : 793.01
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Pages : 336
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9780262542630

Description

A game designer considers the experience of play, why games have rules, and the relationship of play and narrative.

The impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since antiquity; 5,000-year-old board games have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. And yet we still lack a critical language for thinking about play. Game designers are better at answering small questions (Why is this battle boring?) than big ones (What does this game mean?). In this book, the game designer Brian Upton analyzes the experience of play--how playful activities unfold from moment to moment and how the rules we adopt constrain that unfolding. Drawing on games that range from Monopoly to Dungeons & Dragons to Guitar Hero, Upton develops a framework for understanding play, introducing a set of critical tools that can help us analyze games and game designs and identify ways in which they succeed or fail.

Acknowledgement of country

The Bundjalung of Byron Bay Arakwal People have lived in the coastal landscape around Byron Bay for at least 22,000 years.We acknowledge and show respect for the original people on the land on which we are based. We respectfully acknowledge the ancient cultural presence in the Australian landscape by First Nation peoples and their ongoing traditional and spiritual custodianship of the marine areas, beaches, bush, rivers, lakes and mountains.