A review by tbrnichols
Games: Agency as Art by C. Thi Nguyen

hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

4.5

Despite not having much of a philosophy background, I found this book to be very approachable, though I did find it to be written for someone with a more argumentative mind than me. I found it to really help in clarifying the different reasons people play games and hope that I can move towards being an aesthetic striving player, when in the past I have often found myself as an achievement player. I also found the ideas about submitting to the prescribed agency of the designer to be really interesting and I hope to see those fleshed out elsewhere in the future. I was struck by how much the description of aesthetic striving play and of learning new agentic modes each corresponded with some of the most impactful games I played in recent memory.