Before I begin, just saying that this account, kingburgerking, is Henry Paul.
One thing that stuck out to me in this piece was a brief section on pushing back against commercialized notions of play, as an “activity for consumption” instead of one of creation. It then brings up the worlds of music, art, politics, literature, etc as counter examples; these are ways to express oneself, and play should be viewed as one as well. I think this is a fascinating notion, because I think we can see this sort of commercial creep in all of these fields. Music, which is of course a great way to self-express, has been commercialized into a whole industry with a whole class of people that only consume, never create, music. The same can be said about art, and literature, and most creative endeavors. I think this relates to his class very much because the notion of the “Triple A” game is the video game equivalent of this sort of commercial push: to reduce the concept of play from one in which we create and self-express to one where we only consume. When people complain about music being commercialized, or literature being commercialized, I feel like people usually leave out the concept of play, and specifically video games. But, as the book really explains of course, play matters. It is incredibly important to reclaim the notion of “play”, and I think the exploration we will be doing in this class will help a lot to do so.