Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-5-2008

[substitute]

• Steven Poole: Working for the Man
  This is why I don't like most "gaming": It's work.
  (tags: via:britta videogames psychology gaming work theory)
   
• Annals of Democracy: Rock, Paper, Scissors: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, eighty-nine Americans were killed at the polls during Election Day riots.
  (tags: via:positivejeff usa election history)

Comments

[fimmtiu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I can't stand books. When you advance linearly through the narrative, you're doing exactly what the Man (in this case, the author) wants of you. Recent innovations in so-called "sandbox" books (the celebrated "Choose Your Own Adventure" series, for one) are a step in the right direction, but even they labour under constraints. Why shouldn't players -- I mean, readers -- be allowed to randomly choose the order in which they read pages? Or even words, perhaps?

Constraints make good art.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Matter of taste, clearly. I don't like games or books like that!