Italian version
. bookKatie Salen, Eric Zimmerman Rules of Play
<book> Mit Press
ISBN 0-262-24045-9
'To know the rules of play' becomes a recursive phrase if it's applied to the act of designing games. On the other hand, games, in their electronic versions, have become more and more simulations of reality. Understanding their structure and the ways to make them makes possible to own the means of cultural production and also to produce independent contents and to guarantee a fundamental freedom of expression. 'Rules of Play' is a long and well-researched study of the social, anthropological and philosophical aspects of games, through a set of excursions in their the structural and relational bases. The principles of design break out from the laboratories of the software houses to enter the public domain and feed the hunger for informations on one of the most popular and pervasive media. This text clarifies thousands of enlightening mechanisms of one of the most fascinating human activities, which often represents reality with its many paradoxes. At the end of this big tome, there are some chapters ('Games as Cultural Rhetoric', 'Games as Open Culture' and 'Games as Cultural Resistance') which critically list (unfortunately with some holes, especially regarding the european productions) the videogame titles which have issues of equality and social justice at their core. These are a very important form of cultural resistance which can express at the same time dreams and possible alternative roles of the subjects involved, transfigurating reality in a new and fascinating narrative representation.