{"id":3176,"date":"2025-04-04T16:02:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T14:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/?p=3176"},"modified":"2025-04-04T16:02:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T14:02:43","slug":"the-well-read-game-on-playing-thoughtfully-by-matthew-farber-and-tracy-fullerton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2025\/04\/04\/the-well-read-game-on-playing-thoughtfully-by-matthew-farber-and-tracy-fullerton\/","title":{"rendered":"The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully by Matthew Farber and Tracy Fullerton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-3177 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/97802625522331.jpg\" alt=\"The Well-read game book cover\" width=\"213\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/97802625522331.jpg 298w, https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/97802625522331-100x150.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 213px) 85vw, 213px\" \/>I am happy to welcome Matthew Farber and Tracy Fullerton&#8217;s wonderful new book <a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/9780262552233\/the-well-read-game\/\">The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully<\/a> to the <a href=\"https:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/series\/playful-thinking\/\">Playful Thinking series<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p class=\"book-summary\"><strong>How players evoke personal and subjective meanings through a new theory of player response.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<em>The Well-Read Game,\u00a0<\/em>Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber explore the experiences we have when we play games: not the outcomes of play or the aesthetics of formal game structures but the ephemeral and emotional experiences of being in play. These are the private stories we tell ourselves as we play, the questions we ask, and our reactions to the game\u2019s intent. These experiences are called \u201creadings\u201d because they involve so many of the aspects of engaging with literary, cinematic, and other expressive texts. A game that is experienced in such a way can be called \u201cwell-read,\u201d rather than, or as well as, \u201cwell-played,\u201d because of the personal, interpretive nature of that experience and the way in which it relates to our reading of texts of all kinds.<\/p>\n<p>The concept of the \u201cwell-read game\u201d exists at the convergence of literary, media, and play theories\u2014specifically, the works of Louise Rosenblatt\u2019s reader-response theory, Brian Upton\u2019s situational game theory, Tracy Fullerton\u2019s playcentric design theory, and Bernie DeKoven\u2019s well-played game philosophy. Each of these theories, from their own perspective, challenges notions of a separate, objective, or authorial meaning in a text and underscores the richness that arises from the varied responses of readers, who coauthor the meaning of each text through their active engagement with it. When taken together, these theories point to a richer understanding of what a game is and how we might better value our experiences with games to become more thoughtful readers of their essential meanings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am happy to welcome Matthew Farber and Tracy Fullerton&#8217;s wonderful new book The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully to the Playful Thinking series! How players evoke personal and subjective meanings through a new theory of player response. In\u00a0The Well-Read Game,\u00a0Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber explore the experiences we have when we play games: not &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2025\/04\/04\/the-well-read-game-on-playing-thoughtfully-by-matthew-farber-and-tracy-fullerton\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully by Matthew Farber and Tracy Fullerton&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-readings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3176"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3179,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3176\/revisions\/3179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}