Fun, Taste, & Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful

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John Sharp (Associate Professor of Games and Learning, Parsons The New School for Design) David Thomas (University of Colorado, Denver)

Fun, Taste, & Games

An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful

John Sharp (Associate Professor of Games and Learning, Parsons The New School for Design), David Thomas (University of Colorado, Denver), Jesper Juul (Associate Professor, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) , Geoffrey Long (Visiting Assistant Professor, Whittier College)

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English

MIT Press
12 March 2019

Philosophy: aesthetics; Indoor games

Series: Playful Thinking

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.

By: John Sharp (Associate Professor of Games and Learning Parsons The New School for Design), David Thomas (University of Colorado, Denver)
Series edited by: Jesper Juul (Associate Professor The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts), Geoffrey Long (Visiting Assistant Professor, Whittier College), William Uricchio (professor & director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 137mm, Spine: 22mm
ISBN: 9780262039352
ISBN 10: 0262039354
Series: Playful Thinking
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 12 March 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

Reviews for Fun, Taste, & Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful

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

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Fun, Taste, & Games

An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful

John Sharp (Associate Professor of Games and Learning, Parsons The New School for Design), David Thomas (University of Colorado, Denver), Jesper Juul (Associate Professor, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) , Geoffrey Long (Visiting Assistant Professor, Whittier College)

$55

Hardback

Reviews for Fun, Taste, & Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful

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