Beginning on July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau spent two years and two months in semi-isolation at a small cabin on the edge of Walden Pond.  This experiment in self reliance led to the publication of Walden in 1854.

One of the better known claims within Walden is this one:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Lesser known, perhaps, is what follows that famous phrase:

A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work.

After spending much longer than two years and two months playing video games, I have come to believe there is similar despair concealed within the games and amusements of contemporary society.  Institutions of work and institutions of society are equally self-sustaining and, in that self-sustenance, increasingly debilitating to free and individual play.

Nevertheless, that play breaks free.

I call this play that breaks free — both base and basic, creative and crude — the play of the “anti-” or anti-play.

***

This month marks the simultaneous print and online publication of Play Redux.  I am very gratified that this book is being released through the University of Michigan Press digitalculturebooks series:  a venture enabling free online reading through Creative Commons licenses (and which is, in the context of the book, a sort of “anti-publishing.”)

Play Redux represents the culmination of a number of studies of video games and video game play that I have undertaken since the 2003 publication of The Nature of Computer Games.

In brief, the book champions free and individual play – even so-called “bad” play – against the distortions and impositions of work, society, and culture.  Play Redux describes the capacity of games to evoke and protect the dynamic play of cognition – the manipulation of signs and symbols — that is vital to the human aesthetic experience.

In elevating free and individual play, Play Redux reduces the importance and emphasis placed on group and social play within contemporary game studies.

Here is some of the flavor of the book….

From Chapter 1 (re game studies):

Computer game studies have quickly become, like all other forms of academic scholarship, very much like all other forms of academic scholarship: serious. And, imbedded in this seriousness of method (not so bad in and of itself) is a set of seriously debilitating values.

From Chapter 6 (re narrative):

In the late 1800s, railroads were “iron horses”; in the early 1900s, automobiles were “horseless carriages.” And, in the late 1900s, computer games were “interactive fictions.”  … The importance of the horse and the importance of narrative fiction… are on similar and diminishing trajectories.

From Chapter 8 (re MMOs):

…currently popular MMO game designs, particularly those promoting cooperative play, operate most fundamentally as a means of social control – and this function  must be weighed heavily against their more productive outcomes.

From Chapter 12 (conclusions):

A virtual world that traps, regulates, and purposefully distorts the overtly selfish behavior of individuals—including, prominently, play—appears to be a well-built bottle for one of our most destructive and most useful genies. I would hesitate to trap that genie permanently inside.