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Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber, "The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully" (MIT Press, 2025)
Description: How players evoke personal and subjective meanings through a new theory of player response.
In The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully (MIT Press, 2025), 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’s intent. These experiences are called “readings” because they involve so many of the aspects of engaging with lite...