5min chapter

Life Examined cover image

The beauty of games and the dark side of gamification

Life Examined

CHAPTER

The Grasshopper and the Philosophy of Games

Alex Honnell: I've been working for about eight years in the field with the philosophy of games, which barely exists as a field. In every game, he says, you're trying to get to this end state and there's always an easy way to do it. The book that changed his life is kind of a cult classic in philosophy,. It's by Bernard Seuss and it's called The Grasshopper. Alex Honnell: To play a game is to voluntarily take on unnecessary obstacles to make possible the experience of struggling against them.

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