Freeplay

We are the kids who grew up playing Space Invaders, Frogger, Q-bert, and Super Mario Brothers. Now, as adults, we're respectable contributors to a civilized society: professionals, parents, leaders, and policy makers. Still, the imagery of the games we played as children remains permanently seared into our personal and collective unconscious. The game world now shapes the way we think. It forms the way we perceive and interact with the world around us. The common view is that video games are an escape from the real world. But in FREEPLAY, author Jordan Shapiro shows us how the video games of our past (and present) function as interactive mythology. They are non-linear stories that help us derive meaning from the complicated paradoxes of everyday life. FREEPLAY is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for a new generation: part philosophy, part psychology, part spirituality, but ALL video games. Shapiro deftly blends Jungian and archetypal psychology in a way that is accessible and applicable to everyone. FREEPLAY is philosophy for the life world accessed through the user interface of the game world. Game on.