This is a fantastic book. It touches on an area I'm specifically fond of - gaming - but actually its appeal is far broader than that. Suits sums it up in his opening, when he says:"It is the attempt to discover and formulate a definition, and to follow the implications of that discovery even when they lead in surprising, and sometimes disconcerting, directions."-p21
This was the aspect that really fuelled my interest unexpectedly, the definitional side of the argument, dressed often as a refutation of Wittgenstein. I might now have to follow up on this, but I wonder if I'll find other books on the subject that are even half as entertaining a read as this one.
That's the great strength of the book. It's as enjoyable as the best fiction, really, laugh-out-loud funny in places, and even dramatic and characterful at times. Suits chooses to address his points in the form of a socratic dialogue between anthropomorphic insects drawn from Aesop's fable. The inherent humour of the idea is obviously just one joke, and would fast become tired, but Suits infuses the ongoing discourse with so many amusing twists and turns and flourishes, and his mouthpieces become characters in their own right. The triumphant return of the Grasshopper in the final chapters is, absurdly, genuinely thrilling.
And as if that wasn't enough, the conclusion reached in those chapters is really jaw droppingly intriguing. It's stated right at the beginning, but in a deliberately riddled form which gives the meat of the book its pretext for unpicking the meaning of 'games'. When things finally come full circle, the moment of comprehension makes the price of entry worthwhile alone.
If only there were more philosophical texts like this. Fantastic, 10/10 stuff.
(I found an abridged exceprt of one of the best chapters online. Check it out, then buy the book!
http://www.senia.com/2006/11/21/ivan-and-abdul-by-bernard-suits-part-i/
http://www.senia.com/2006/11/22/ivan-and-abdul-by-bernard-suits-part-ii/ )
Now reading The Book of Unholy Mischief. Only a scant few pages in, but I don't expect much from it. Seems to suffer badly by being an almost identical tale to Locke Lamora, but without the gift for plot, characters or prose possessed by Lynch.
And on that note, sometime soon I really want to get dug into The Republic of Thieves. The Lamora series has been pretty fun so far, and it quietly promises to become something rather notable.
Similarly, I find myself more eager to pick up A Clash of Kings than I expected to be. Though I found a few elements offputting when I read Game, the strengths of the good characters have lingered in my mind beyond the flaws of the weak ones. So I'll probably get on with that at some point.
And in digital news, I got snared again in Desktop Dungeons tonight. What an amazing game. It's got the most finely tuned balance of depth, elegance, ease of learning, challenge and everything else that I've found in a game. It also succeeds admirably in conjuring up the feel of the best parts of roguelikes without any of the barriers to entry. The new update has tarted things up a bit too, and I'm liking the change to dieties. No sooner had I mentioned it to a friend than I had to dive back in and I didn't stop until I'd ran a monk and a paladin through Normal mode. Now I've got designs on a Gnome Warlord for the next. I only hope the guy behind this doesn't leave it a one off.
What else? I'm sure there was something. Oh yes, a project has finally got legs. I may have a new boardgame prototyped by the weekend.
Fun times.
Bonus Credit Question:
If you could replace your body with a synthetic body which would look and feel indistinguishable from a real body, and would never fall prey to illness, would you do it?
That's the great strength of the book. It's as enjoyable as the best fiction, really, laugh-out-loud funny in places, and even dramatic and characterful at times. Suits chooses to address his points in the form of a socratic dialogue between anthropomorphic insects drawn from Aesop's fable. The inherent humour of the idea is obviously just one joke, and would fast become tired, but Suits infuses the ongoing discourse with so many amusing twists and turns and flourishes, and his mouthpieces become characters in their own right. The triumphant return of the Grasshopper in the final chapters is, absurdly, genuinely thrilling.
And as if that wasn't enough, the conclusion reached in those chapters is really jaw droppingly intriguing. It's stated right at the beginning, but in a deliberately riddled form which gives the meat of the book its pretext for unpicking the meaning of 'games'. When things finally come full circle, the moment of comprehension makes the price of entry worthwhile alone.
If only there were more philosophical texts like this. Fantastic, 10/10 stuff.
(I found an abridged exceprt of one of the best chapters online. Check it out, then buy the book!
http://www.senia.com/2006/11/21/ivan-and-abdul-by-bernard-suits-part-i/
http://www.senia.com/2006/11/22/ivan-and-abdul-by-bernard-suits-part-ii/ )
Now reading The Book of Unholy Mischief. Only a scant few pages in, but I don't expect much from it. Seems to suffer badly by being an almost identical tale to Locke Lamora, but without the gift for plot, characters or prose possessed by Lynch.
And on that note, sometime soon I really want to get dug into The Republic of Thieves. The Lamora series has been pretty fun so far, and it quietly promises to become something rather notable.
Similarly, I find myself more eager to pick up A Clash of Kings than I expected to be. Though I found a few elements offputting when I read Game, the strengths of the good characters have lingered in my mind beyond the flaws of the weak ones. So I'll probably get on with that at some point.
And in digital news, I got snared again in Desktop Dungeons tonight. What an amazing game. It's got the most finely tuned balance of depth, elegance, ease of learning, challenge and everything else that I've found in a game. It also succeeds admirably in conjuring up the feel of the best parts of roguelikes without any of the barriers to entry. The new update has tarted things up a bit too, and I'm liking the change to dieties. No sooner had I mentioned it to a friend than I had to dive back in and I didn't stop until I'd ran a monk and a paladin through Normal mode. Now I've got designs on a Gnome Warlord for the next. I only hope the guy behind this doesn't leave it a one off.What else? I'm sure there was something. Oh yes, a project has finally got legs. I may have a new boardgame prototyped by the weekend.
Fun times.
Bonus Credit Question:
If you could replace your body with a synthetic body which would look and feel indistinguishable from a real body, and would never fall prey to illness, would you do it?
4 comments:
you speak dangerous heresy. The divinity of the human form is beyond reproach.
What kind of bonus question is that?
OF COURSE!
Dont listen to Gundrea - he'll be on the human reservations after the Robot Revolution.
The book looks very intriguing! The game, not so much. You always did go for those puzzly types.
It's more like an RPG than a puzzler. you have to work out whether you want to take the breastplate of Indubitable Accounting +1 or whether you're better off gaining the set bonus from the wasitcoat of unbearable stiffness.
I think it's actually an intoxicating hybrid of the two. It hits all my roguelike buttons AND all my logic puzzle buttons. It's not pure puzzle - Not every dungeon is inherently 'solvable', nor is there any simply formula for working out the best move, but it's not pure rpg either - You have to sit down and analyse possible sequences of moves, and there is very little randomness.
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