Response

Better to lose with flair than to win?

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One interesting aspect of Moskowitz’s Go Nation is his examination of the game’s rise among older working class men who usually play in parks. Honestly, it was refreshing to see players admitting that they played the game simply because it’s an interesting, challenging game (p. 135). It’s good and well to examine complex cultural characteristics…

Go Nation

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At first I was really excited to read this book as I said last week that Go is one of my favorite games but that excitement diminished page by page as I read more into the sexist ideals in China from the game of weiqi. The part that struck me the most was when the…

More than “a game”

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Go Nation is fun and it reminds me that more books should have audiobook versions narrated by the author, especially in a work so clearly written in an author’s own voice.

Response and Image

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I adored this week’s reading on weiqi, liubo, and Chinese playing cards. They were all unique in their own way but what stuck out to me was weiqi. Now I know that we are going more in-depth with weiqi next week but I have been fascinated with weiqi, I knew it as go and thought…

Weiqi, Metaphor, and Abstraction

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I especially enjoyed the Chen reading this week. Chen’s tracing of the ways in which weiqi served as a metaphor for war, society, and the cosmos seems reminiscent of last week’s readings, which told us that chess was treated in much the same manner. What’s interesting to me is that the metaphors built around chess…

Pachisi response

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The Pachisi article from The Art of Contest was not the most robust article from our readings this week but it was the one that intrigued me the most. I have never played Pachisi and have only heard of it in passing before so it was interesting to read about the history and some of the…

Pokemon, The Digital Artifact

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Pokemon drawn in Woodblock style

“I finally filled my pokedex!” I remember telling my grandfather sometime in 1998. “What the hell is a pokedex?” he responded to my abject horror.