Play Redux is an ambitious description and critical analysis of the
aesthetic pleasures of video game play, drawing on early
twentieth-century formalist theory and models of literature.
Employing a concept of biological naturalism grounded in cognitive
theory, Myers argues for a clear delineation between the aesthetics
of play and the aesthetics of texts. In the course of this study,
Myers asks a number of interesting questions: What are the
mechanics of human play as exhibited in computer games? Can these
mechanisms be modeled? What is the evolutionary function of
cognitive play, and is it, on the whole, a good thing? Intended as
a provocative corrective to the currently ascendant, if not
dominant, cultural and ethnographic approach to game studies and
play, Play Redux will generate interest among scholars of
communications, new media, and film.
