My interest here is in uncovering the unique potential and the special value of games. There have been, in recent years, many arguments for the value and importance of games. In many cases, however, these arguments tend to avoid looking at …A more significant worry is that Suitsian play is necessarily immature and unworthy of serious attention. Suitsian games always involve practical struggles. We become absorbed in the instrumental activity of overcoming obstacles and achievi…
Ian Bogost
theorist · 2 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Ian Bogost is a game designer and theorist whose work on play and procedurality—how systems encode meaning through their rules rather than narrative—becomes central to understanding how algorithmic systems and AI operate as cultural agents rather than neutral tools. The readings draw on Bogost's defense of "Suitsian play" (arbitrary goal-setting within constraint systems) to argue that games and game-like algorithmic structures are serious sites of meaning-making, not frivolous pastimes, which reframes how we should think about AI systems as they increasingly structure social and economic behavior. His emphasis on the aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of rule-based systems provides a vocabulary for analyzing both digital play and the embedded logics of machine learning models as systems that shape perception and agency.
Mentioned in 1 reading
Appears alongside
People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.