Changing the way the brain reads and thinks

So I'm reading GAM3R 7H30RY (and let me tell you, it freaks me out that even though a part of my brain processes that it's not all standard alphabet, most of my brain reads it like perfectly normal text), and was struck by the passage on card 10: "Work becomes a gamespace, but no games are freely chosen any more. Not least for children, who if they are to be the winsome offspring of win-all parents, find themselves drafted into endless evening shifts of team sport...Play becomes everything to which it was once opposed. It is work, it is serious, it is morality, it is necessity."

I grew up in a family that never really encouraged joining sports teams. My father had been on a lot of teams as a kid and enjoyed it, and we were never told we *couldn't* be on teams, but it was never really pushed. My parents felt it was more important to run around the backyard and play amongst ourselves than get caught up in the cut-throat competitiveness of suburban rec leagues.

But we played cards and board games for blood. I mean, we never *actually* drew blood, but... My parents never let us win. And they always got really angry at my grandmother when she would (though the thrill of that soon wore off, because what was the fun of playing if there was no real contest, nothing at stake?) I got Mr Gumpy all the time when I played Candyland. 500 Rummy is called "You Beat Me" (my father and his $#&@*&% card counting & photographic memory). They always came down very hard on us for cheating, but there was always a huge competitive element. And I'm kind of wondering how that kind of game play works into this thesis Wark is putting forth.

The format of GAM3R 7H30RY is interesting. The comments on every single paragraph give more of a sense of reading a disjointed, or serialized, or... It just doesn't quite feel like a complete work. For all I know, the questions I'm asking are going to be answered on the next card. But there's this sense, formatwise, that the reader is meant to puzzle it all out at once, on each paragraph. I read the first few slides without reading the comments immediately, figuring I'd go back once I had a sense of the greater work, but to a certain extent it doesn't work, at least not for me. I'm not exactly sure what I think of it, but it's definitely making me think, and making me realize I'm thinking.