Games designer Ian Bogost: ‘Play is in everything’
Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an Atlantic contributing editor, Ian Bogost is one of the foremost writers on gaming culture - though he's probably best known for the Facebook game Cow Clicker, which, despite being a satire, became a viral hit. In his new book, Play Anything, Bogost takes his expertise away from the screen and into the real world, arguing that in the 21st century we've lost track of what it really means to "play".
You've become known - as you put it - as the "Cow Clicker guy". But now you've written a book warning against the dangers of indulging in such aimless fun"
In some ways the Cow Clicker thing is an example of the kind of crisis that I hope the book offers a little bit of a help in addressing: that feeling of being stuck inside an ironic orientation to the world. It made me stop and say: OK, what is it about games that might actually be useful and good?