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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

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Ian Bogost
Age: 47
Born: 1976
Born: December 30
Entrepreneur
Philosopher
University Teacher
Video Game Designer
Video Game Developer
Writer
Anything
Quite
Much
Imagine
Think
Small
Thinking
Interesting
World
Whatever
Actually
Bent
Dream
Trained
Power
Enormous

More quotes by Ian Bogost

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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
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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
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Forcing your spouse to stop doing that bad habit that drives you crazy, or making your kid be better at math or at art or at swimming, or making your parents or your in-laws not be annoying in the way that they're annoying, these are sometimes doomed goals.
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For me, what fun means is finding novelty in the suffocating familiarity of ordinary life.
Ian Bogost
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The actual effort that you can exert upon the universe is fairly limited.
Ian Bogost
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We're used to thinking of fun as a sort of synonym for light pleasure.
Ian Bogost
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Any phrase that suggests play is this domain that's the opposite of work, or the thing that you do when you're done working, should trouble us. Because it means that play is always relegated to the exhaust of life. It's the thing that you do after you do the important stuff, it's what you do on your own time.
Ian Bogost
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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
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The modern world is very wealthy, it's full of options. It's not like This is the land I was born on and I have to make the most of it, and these are the people who are near me, and so they will become my family.
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God will not speak to me and tell me to mow my lawn today.
Ian Bogost
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We think we want enjoyment, and that enjoyment is incompatible with work, and somehow we have to import the pleasure into these miserable experiences. That takes for granted that there's not fun or play to be found in the work itself.
Ian Bogost
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The playful perspective is not meant to turn your life into a game or a jungle gym. It's rather that the activity is looking outside of yourself.
Ian Bogost
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You allow yourself to discover the things that are already there when you play.
Ian Bogost
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I think this dichotomy or opposition between work and play, between leisure and serious stuff, is definitely a bad way of thinking about the useful insights that play provides.
Ian Bogost
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If you start the day not really expecting substantial change, but anticipating some small new revelation or some small alteration, then over time you're able to find them in more places.
Ian Bogost
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To me, being able to find gratification in more venues, rather than greater gratification in a few, seems like a much more sane way of living.
Ian Bogost
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The problem with fun is we really don't know what fun means at all.
Ian Bogost
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Even when we tell kids to go play, what do the kids do? They come up with a set of constraints and structures. Oh, we're gonna build a fort out of clothes, and now that we're in the fort we're going to pretend that we're prisoners, or whatever.
Ian Bogost
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Every now and then if you try, you can discover something new.
Ian Bogost
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My wife, there's certain kinds of housework that she just doesn't see as necessary to do in the way that I do. Things like the state of our closet or where things are in the kitchen. I have this almost unhealthily obsessive desire to have things in their place and she just totally doesn't. And this is a potential point of conflict, of course.
Ian Bogost