Fun, Taste, & Games by John Sharp, Hardcover, 9780262039352 | Buy online at The Nile
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Fun, Taste, & Games

An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful

Author: John Sharp and David Thomas   Series: Playful Thinking

Hardcover

Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play.

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Summary

Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play.

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Description

Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play."Fun" is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant? Entertaining? Silly? A way to trick students into learning? Fun also has baggage-it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games, John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games-the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against.Sharp and Thomas use this fun-centered aesthetic framework to explore a range of games and game issues-from workplace bingo to Meow Wolf, from basketball to Myst, from the consumer marketplace to Marcel Duchamp. They begin by outlining three elements for understanding the drive, creation, and experience of fun- set-outsideness, ludic forms, and ambiguity. Moving from theory to practice and back again, they explore the complicated relationships among the titular fun, taste, and games. They consider, among other things, the dismissal of fun by game journalists and designers; the seminal but underinfluential game Myst, and how tastes change over time; the shattering of the gamer community in Gamergate; and an aesthetics of play that goes beyond games.

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Critic Reviews

“[A] revelatory account of an essential element of our lives.-- TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION --”

[A] revelatory account of an essential element of our lives.

TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION

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About the Author

John Sharp is Associate Professor in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons School of Design at the New School. He is the author of Works of Game- On the Aesthetics of Games and Art (MIT Press) and coauthor (with Colleen Macklin) of Games, Design, and Play- A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design and (with David Thomas) Fun, Taste, & Games- An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful (MIT Press). Sharp and Macklin are Codirectors of the PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab) at Parsons.David Thomas is Assistant Professor in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver. A former game journalist, he runs the website Buzzcut.com.

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Product Details

Publisher
MIT Press Ltd | MIT Press
Published
12th March 2019
Pages
256
ISBN
9780262039352

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