This willingness to be frank and plain about the way that the world is, is a good first step. But that doesn't mean that you get what you want. Ian Bogost More Quotes by Ian Bogost More Quotes From Ian Bogost I think a lot of the misery that people experience comes from that sensation of boundlessness, of infinite possibility. Ian Bogost misery people thinking It's helpful to be prepared to celebrate the tiny things that you can do, where you meet the world and you negotiate an outcome that's quite tiny. But you can still make it feel remarkable. Ian Bogost tiny-things outcomes world Fun doesn't have anything to do with pleasure, necessarily. I think this will be terrifically unintuitive for people. Ian Bogost fun people thinking When we think about play and games and the situations in which having fun is seen as an outcome, they often have to do with repetition. You're returning to something again, and even despite that similarity, you squeeze something new out of it. Ian Bogost games fun thinking I think the most important way to understand play is that it's this property that's in things. Like there's play in a mechanism. For example, there's some play in the steering column before it engages as you're turning the wheel. Ian Bogost important play thinking Our ideas of happiness, gratification, contentment, satisfaction, all demand that those feelings come from within us. If you flip that on its head and say "What if I took the world at face value?" and then ask "What can I do with what is given?" it's an interesting trick to turn around the whole problem of how you feel. Ian Bogost feelings ideas interesting We have so many choices that it's only always our fault if we're malcontent. Ian Bogost malcontent faults choices If you think of play as being in things, there are things that are playable, then it becomes the work of figuring out what a thing can do. Ian Bogost can-do play thinking For me, what fun means is finding novelty in the suffocating familiarity of ordinary life. Ian Bogost ordinary fun mean Play becomes a distraction, something you don't really need to do. It's not for serious people. They work hard, they don't play hard. Yes, you can say play hard, but that really means, keep working hard, right? Ian Bogost play-hard hard-work mean If you stop someone who's talking about something being fun, and say "Well what do you mean?" it's almost impossible to answer. Ian Bogost fun talking mean Generally speaking, when people use the word fun, it's like a placeholder. You know, "How was your evening?" "Oh it was fun." Ian Bogost use fun people Every now and then if you try, you can discover something new. Ian Bogost now-and-then something-new trying When we use this word fun, it sort of bangs up the ordinary and the extraordinary altogether. Ian Bogost bangs ordinary fun Fun has to do with habitual activities but then also terrifically novel or unusual ones. It works as a sort of strange milkshake of those concepts. Ian Bogost unusual strange fun Normally we think of play as the opposite of work. Work is the thing you have to do, and then there's play, the thing you choose to do. Ian Bogost opposites play thinking We have been trained to think we have enormous power over the world. Whatever you dream, you can do. Anything can be bent to your will. But actually isn't it much more interesting to imagine that you're quite small? Ian Bogost dream interesting thinking The universe is not particularly concerned with you. Ian Bogost concerned universe We don't like to think of ourselves as subject to the forces of the world, we like to think of ourselves as exerting that force. Ian Bogost force world thinking There's just an enormous vast universe of possible intrigue out there and why not pay attention to it? Because then you're not burdened with trying to find that meaning in yourself all the time. Ian Bogost why-not trying attention
