Bernie DeKoven's Occasional Newsletters

#35 - Rethinking Work

2008-08-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

I've been preparing for a keynote I'll be giving at the Rethinking Education conference. My topic: "Rethinking Work" - something I've been thinking and rethinking about for most of my career.

My research brought me to this wonderful article by Mark Harris, called "The Benefits of Play." In it, he retells one of my favorite Csiksentmihalyi stories. And so I share it with you:

In Flow: Living at the Peak of Your Abilities (Mihaly) Csikszentmihalyi tells an interesting story about a sixty-year-old factory worker named Joe who lived on Chicago’s South Side. This man’s job entailed building railroad cars in a huge hangar. The conditions in the hangar were harsh, unprotected as it was from Chicago’s extremes of weather. Joe, who had only a fourth grade education, was also on the low rung of the factory.

Yet, as Csikszentmihalyi describes, Joe was one of the happiest people he had ever met. At work Joe was exactly where he wanted to be. He had no desire to be a foreman because he only wanted to fix the machinery. And fix the machinery he did. All of it. Better than anyone. In fact, the word around the plant was that if Joe retired, they might as well close up shop because he kept everything going.

But Joe’s passion for fixing things didn’t end at work. At home he had built a rock garden with an underground watering system. The garden also included a lighting system designed to produce rainbows. Thus, Joe and his wife could sit on their porch in the evenings surrounded by rainbows. Joe had made of his life one seamless expression of a particular passion; in this case, a passion for building and fixing things. He possessed the gift of being able to completely absorb himself in his interests. In his living and in his working, Csikszentmihalyi concludes, Joe was a man who knew how to play.

#34 - Bernie interviewed

2008-04-24T11:13:00.001-07:00

Again with the Honor

Simages is a publication of NASAGA - the North American Simulation and Gaming Association, the very same North American Simulation and Gaming Association that honored me with the Ifill-Raynolds award for "outstanding achievements in the field of fun" that you see me holding so unbelievingly.

I am honored to tell you that I have been honored again. I was interviewed by Brian Remer, and the result closely approximates something one might call "cogent," if one were prone to using words of that ilk.

The interview, which is one among many fine articles, appears on page 12.

See also the excellent article by Dave Blum "Healthy Competition, an Oxymoron?"

Simages
(click to download pdf file)

Enjoy.

Classes in Fun and Games

2008-03-28T09:21:00.000-07:00

There's a lot to learn by playing games.

Once you begin to see the connections between theater and children's games, you begin to appreciate the wisdom contained in their playful dramas.

Gather a group of fellow grown-ups, especially playful grown-ups, play a little, talk a little, play a lot, talk a little more, like this:

Play a kids' game together. Talk a little about the theater of the game - the play and interplay of roles. And then about the "drama" of the game, as if the game were really some kind of theater piece - especially about the drama you and your friends experienced, personally. Not so much about your own, personal drama, but about about the drama of the game itself, about relationships, about the way of things in gameland.

As you play and talk, play and talk - some kind of healing, playful, loving wisdom starts manifesting itself. Because you are grown-ups playing these games. Because of the growing honesty and openness and depth of sharing grown-ups are capable of, just the act of playing each game reveals a depth, a drama more profound, more personal, a truth more mutual, more freeing.

"I have learned to see children's games as scripts," I write, "for a kind of children's cultural theater. I see them as collective dreams in which certain themes are being toyed with - investigated and manipulated for the sake of sheer catharsis or some future reintegration into a world view. They are reconstructions of relationships - simulations - (myths) - which are guided by individual players, instituted by the groups in which they are played or abstracted by the traditions of generations of children."

Play pointless games, for the fun of it. Talk about the games as if they were works of art. Talk about the fun of it, about the dance of it, about the theater of it, about the truth of it.

Let me know if you want help getting started.

#33 - Tabletop Skatesailing

2008-02-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

As inventor of the Junkyard Sports TableTop Olympics and in my capacity as Bernie DeKoven, Junkmaster, I hereby award the creators of Tabletop Sailboarding permanent position in the Junkyard Sports Hall of Games .

It was at the CPRS 2008, Long Beach conference . And I was facilitating a bit of Tabletop Olympics amongst 5 tables of people who run parks and games all throughout California.

Many most remarkable Tabletop Olympics moments were shared. Many, many events of noteworthy notability and truly silly competitiveness. But there was this one table (I really like to learn your names if you were a tablemate) that happened to have, amongst its various shared personal treasures, some significant conference swag. Namely: a couple battery-operated hand-held fans, and some Lego pieces, and a fingerboard. And they put their stuff together to create a well, Tabletop Sailboard, I guess is what you'd call something made out of the fingerboard, a couple Lego pieces, a toothpick and a scrap of paper. And their Olympic Event was a hand-held-fan-powered Tabletop Sailboard event that proved to be at least as funny as it was demanding of Olympic-like concentration and skill.

Behold, therefore you beholder, the Tabletop Sailboard, as fuzzily photographed on the right. Whilst beholding below the slightly less fuzzy image of a Tabletop Sailor in action.

Now and forevermore embedded in the virtual bedrock of Tabletop Olympics History.

#32 - The Sound and the Fury continue

2008-01-29T08:26:00.001-08:00

The Sound and the Fury continues

I learned about The Sound and the Fury more than 30 years ago, when I first joined the New Games Foundation. Since then, I've been teaching it almost every chance I get. I have my reasons, in deed I do. It's a great way to get people involved, engaged, open, willing to play, exploring their own capacities for public silliness, and a perfect introduction to the idea of Coliberation.

I had the chance to teach the game again with some rather remarkable people in a rather remarkable place. The remarkable thing about these people was that they came from all over Israel because they value play and games and toys as tools for restoring health. The remarkable place was called "The Educational Centre for Games in Israel." And the remarkable woman who invited me to speak was its director, Helena Kling.

I first encountered Helena through her work with the International Toy Research Foundation. I found the following description of Helena and her center in an old issue of the ITRA newsletter

"Helena is by profession a psychologist specializing on Children’s Play in Hospita, and has for many years been working on projects about play. At present running the Educational Centre for Games in Israel, a non-profit association which she describes as follows:'We have a small building full of stuff, a veritable 'heritage centre' of play; there is 'hands on play' available; a work room where people can make games and toys; an exhibition room with miniature rooms and two model railways; a library that has become a centre of information on play; a large collection of Israeli board games and collection of collections and dolls and so much more that if I go on writing about it I am afraid of disbelief!'"

Such wonderful energy. Such a deep commitment to play. Such an honor. Such a fun person to play with.

Major Fun’s 2007 LIST OF FIVE: - the topmost majorfunnest makeyoulaughmost party games of the year, according the Major Fun Board of Impartial Game Ta

2007-11-23T10:54:00.000-08:00

Major Fun’s 2007 List of Five: - the topmost majorfunnest makeyoulaughmost party games of the year, according the Major Fun Board of Impartial Game Tasters and Major Fun, of MajorFun.com, him-actual-self.

What's Yours Like?

Today's conceptual gift is a remarkably simple, and deeply fun party game from Patch Products called "What's Yours Like?".

Pick a card. The card has a word on it. Show the card to everyone except the person guessing, who asks: "what's yours like." Take turns answering the question, being sure to be accurate, and subtle. Too clear a clue, and it will be guessed immediately. Too subtle, and, well, it's just not fair.

For example, suppose the card reads "washing machine." Legitimate answers to such an innocuous "what's yours like" question might be: "mine is white," "mine has a lot of knobs," "mine is noisy," etc. However, given the age and nature of the people playing, the answers could just as easily become rife with double meaning, and I mean rife, like, for example: "mine makes my underwear wet."

For us, that was really the charm of the game - how much of it was really up to us - to our collective cleverness and naughty nuanciness. Which means that the game will be different, depending on who's playing with whom. Different when playing with family than when playing with friends, different with teen-agers than with seniors. Which makes the game even that much more successful, and fascinating, and Major FUN-worthy.

There are 188 two-sided cards "guess word" cards. One side is recommended for older players because they might include things that kids don't have (in-laws, ulcers, jobs). There are two wipe-off clue boards with markers. The player in the "Hot Seat" uses one, writing down each clue as it is given (the fewer clues, the better the score). There are 95 Challenge cards. These cards allow the Hot Seated player to share the Hot Seat, as it were. That's when the other clue-writing board comes into play. Now the two players with the Hot Seats compete with each other, the first to guess the word correctly gets to take two points (points are bad) off her score.

What's Yours Like is a game for 4 or more players. With 4 players, it takes maybe 15 minutes for a round. Figure 3 rounds per game. The art of giving just the right response, of being clever, yet accurate, actually outweighs the accomplishment of guessing what was on the card. It's a game that will make you laugh, a lot, even without keeping score. Like I said, it's Major FUN.

Twisted Pairs

Twisted Pairs is a party game, indeed it is. You need at least 4 players. But it is clearly of the more-the-merrier type.

No, it's not charades. I can see why you'd think it's like charades - you're trying to get people to guess something that you know (hopefully). And you're performing, more or less. Except it's not acting. It's spelling. I mean, what you're doing is spelling out a word or several words. Not with words, naturally. But with your bodies. Did I say "bodies"? As in more than one body? Indeed I did. As in two bodies. So, to make, for example, the letter "H," you and your partner might be standing facing each other, holding your arms down at your sides, but bending your elbows and holding hands, like the cross-bar of the "H" - know what I mean?

Which, of course, is the big question for everyone else - that is, do they know what letter you mean. Because as soon as someone does know that letter, or thinks she knows that letter, or thinks she wants everyone else to think she knows that letter, she simply says something like "got it." And then the two letter-makers go on to make the next letter. Got it? And on and on until someone guesses correctly, getting, so to speak, the point. As for those who didn't "get it," well, they're still very much in the game, guessing away at the next and the next letters, hoping to fill in the blanks, in retrospect. And when someone correctly yells out the entire phrase, then there's the race to be first to shout out the bonus answer and get a richly deserved for bonus point. And so can the spellers.

No, of course not, it's definitely not Twister, though you and your partner are twisting around each other's bodies in some bizarre, Twister-like ways. And it clearly has nothing to do with Trivial Pursuit either, unless the spinner happens to land on the Trivia Question. We'll talk about that later. But there's no Pursuit going on. Unless you count the pursuit of laughterness, which is just about what this game is all about.

The stuff of the game includes a box of cards. There are two sets of cards - one for questions relating to Pre-1990, the other, Post- (a thoughtful distinction for the younger player, as well as for those with short attention spans). Each card contains one of 5 different categories, 4 of which result in a word or phrase that the Spellers attempt to convey, bodily, letter-by-letter. The categories ("famous character," "famous quote," "song title," "song lyric") help the rest of the party figure out what the spellers are spelling. The fifth category is the Trivia Question. Here, the spellers are given only the question, and must rely on their collective wit to spell out the correct answer (written on the back of the card). And, should their wit be not well informed, well, at least it was fun watching them try.

All of which to say there are many levels of mental and physical calisthenics, combined with ongoingly merry mayhem resulting in an experience that is clearly Major FUN. Everyone involved, everyone thinking hard, everyone challenged at almost every level, and, surprisingly often, everyone laughing. Do you still need to know why we recommend this game with such enthusiasm? As the designers so pithily inquire: "do we have to spell it out for you?"

Cineplexity

What's the name of that movie? The one with a Native American, or maybe a Hawaiian. By a river, I think, or a lake or a stream of some sort? Oh, you know what I mean. Yeah, that's it, Blue Crush. Wait, there's another movie, also with a river or lake or stream, and there was a wheelchair, I think, or was it a crutch, no, a cane. Wait, could that be Cane River?

Is part or all of this conversation at all familiar? Have you now or ever engaged someone in a similar movie-related dialogue? Well, then, Cineplexity is, without doubt, the very game you should be playing at this very moment, verily.

We were actually amazed at how fun this game turned out to be. Sure, it reminded us of the oft-touted, trend-setting, Major FUN-award-winning, Out of the Box Publishing Apples to Apples. As well it might, considering that it is published by the aforementioned themselves. But, you see, it looks so Apples-to-Apples-like with its many cards and simple rules and calling out for 4 to 10 players and stuff, that you'd assume it's pretty much another of those many Apples to Apples variants, only about movies. But you'd be wrong. It's a different game. Completely. Sure, there's a judge (cleverly called the "director"). And the Director doesn't actually play, because s/he has to do the, um, judging. But that's it, Apples-to-Apples-similarity-wise.

In Apples to Apples everything is relative, the actual degree of relativity determined by the judge. In Cineplexity, you have to come up with a "real" answer - a verifiable, actual movie including, beyond doubt, the actual scene or props, or belonging to the specified genre, whose characters have the certifiable characteristics depicted by two, or perhaps three, of 504 the randomly drawn Cineplexity cards. And, amazingly, there seems always to be at least one movie that usually at least one person knows that matches precisely.

Oh, the intensity. And oh, oh, the brain-wracking. And, ah hah hah, the laughter.

Cineplexity. Surprisingly different. Not so surprisingly fun.

PDQ - a game for all reasons

PDQ is a sweet little word game - easy to learn, quick (Pretty Darn Quick) as a matter of fact - a game you can play by yourself or with maybe one, or several or even many other people?

You get a deck of 78 letter cards - nice looking, good stock, big, easy-to-read letter cards. You deal out three at a time, face-up. And then you see who can make a word first, or, in case of a tie, who can come up with a longer word. TLP, for example. Tulip. Sure. Or perhaps Platitude. Platitude. Of course. Longer than Tulip. (Did I mention that you can use the letters backwards or forwards?) (Did I also mention that you can use any number of letters before, between or after the three letters that you draw?) (And, of course, the letters have to be in the same order?)

Designed by Jay Thompson to be played by kids as well as adults (kids use just two cards at a time, word game experts can try playing with four), PDQ is pretty darn close to everything you would want in a word game - 5-30 minutes of engaging, challenging, and frequently laugh-producing fun.

ShakeDown

Shakedown is a dexterity game of clearly Major FUN proportions. Basically, you're balancing playing-like cards on top of a narrow platform, adding new cards with every turn. But that's only basically.

Let's start at the bottom. The bottom of the "tower" upon which the cards are balanced. The same bottom where all the cards are stored, and from which all the cards are drawn during play. Let's also take a moment to look at the tower itself, how it twists, as if to make it even more challenging to figure out exactly where the actual center of gravity might be. A lovely thing, actually. Colorful. Self-storing enough that you could throw the box away and take the game with you to every party and family gathering within which you find yourself and others. Note, further, that the cards, which are drawn one at a time from the base of the tower, are drawn from the base of the tower. The base. Whereupon the tower stands. Imagine therefore the increasingly precarious conundrum thereby imposed every time you attempt to extricate a card from the aforementioned - having to perhaps lift the tower upon whose top all those other cards are so cunningly balanced so that you can get your card and take your turn.

Let's continue to the deck itself. Some cards have different values. Other cards ask you to perform acts of evermore significant challenge, like "play cards with non-dominant hand" or "hold tower and spin around" or perhaps "previous player - blow once from 5 feet." And now, at last, to the top, considerably smaller than the base, and yet whereupon the cards are to be placed (two corners of each card not touching any other card).

All in all, an elegant, almost self-explanatory, somewhat Jenga-like game, requiring steady-hands, a willingness to fail, and just enough luck to keep you from taking it seriously.

#31 - NASAGA, Junkfest, and Big Balls

2007-08-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

Fun One,

In case you were wondering - yes, it's true, I'll be in Atlanta October 10-11, keynoting and teaching again at the NASAGA conference.

Here's a question: what would you call a game book that shows people how to play games that use those big exercise balls and cage balls? Todd Strong and I have just signed with Human Kinetics to write that very book. The editor suggested: "The Big Activity Ball Games Book."

On November 3, Redondo Beach will be celebrating its First Annual Junkyard Sports® JunkFest.

I've found some really amazing artists who want to be part of this event, for example: The amazing junk car artist Classic Jasic, Junkyard Jonny and Landfill Lil from the Junkyard Symphony, and Bryan Au, author of Raw in Ten Minutes. Bryan and I are planning to introduce the world to the joys of Green Golf (or maybe Garbage Golf) - miniature golf courses made out of raw foods. Peas for golf balls, perhaps a carrot stick golf club....

#30 The Junkyard Sports Community

2007-05-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

If you happened to travel to a month or two into the future, and, for some reason known only to you, found yourself at a newsstand, perusing the then current copy of Family Fun magazine, you would probably remark to yourself, saying: "why, isn't that Bernie's picture? and aren't those Junkyard Sports they're talking about? and isn't this a lovely, informative, nay, even stimulating article?"

"Ah," you might further say to yourself in future retrospect, "that explains why Bernie and webmistress Julie Wolpers were working so feverishly on the Junkyard Sports website. Why, of course," you continue surmisingly, "that's precisely why what was once known only as the Junkyard Sports site has become the 'Junkyard Sports Community' - so accessible, so filled with information and invitations to online community participation. Because, don't you see, all those Family Funsters, becoming so profoundly enthused by that very lovely, very well-illustrated article, will be veritably driven to satisfy their deservedly desperate need for resources and opportunities to bring Junkyard Sports to the day-to-day lives of their fun-seeking families, to their neighborhoods, schools, and places of work and play."

And, lo, once again, you would prove to have been uncannily insightful. And even lo-er, there's no reason for you to have to wait for the future to come to pass, because the Junkyard Sports Community is both here and now, in the truly gifted, virtual present of it all.

Go ye, therefore to the Junkyard Sports Community website. Peruse. Participate. The future is but a click away.

#29 - A Celebration of Junk

2007-03-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

A Celebration of Junk - a proposal

Last November, Philip Ella Juico wrote published an article called "Sports for All" in the Philippine Star. The article was the result of several exchanges we had over the previous months, about bringing sports to the far reaches of the Philippines. Dr. Juico was very active with the major sports organizations in the Philippines, and, because he had access to some of the major players, he thought about organizing a tour in which they would run demonstration games in the nation's villages. This led to many fascinating conversations, a wonderful meeting, and, ultimately, my crafting the following proposal:

A Celebration of Junk is a festival of play - an event that affirms the human capacity to play.

A Festival of Play - a public gathering that combines spectacle with empowerment, that provides a platform for the display of both athletic and artistic achievement, while providing an invitation to equal participation by all members of the community - all genders, ages, abilities - to everyone who wants to play.

A Festival of Play - celebrating genius in body, mind and spirit; genius in sports, in individual and team performance, in individual and collective art and invention, in music and dance.

More

#28 - Master Class in Fun

2007-01-25T06:01:00.000-08:00

A Master Class in Fun

Following the success of my presentations and class at USC, and the increasing recognition of the relevance of community-centered games (New Games, Funny Games, and the concept of The Fun Community) I am everso vastly delighted to announce my new offering - a three-day program designed to give New Media designers an opportunity to develop clear, and firmly-rooted understanding of the social and psychological dynamics of fun. It takes place on campus, during a weekend, hopefully not too close to exams, where students and faculty can devote about 6 hours a day to the pursuit of fun.

I call it a "Master Class in Fun." I elaborate as follows:

Ultimately, each participant must arrive at his or her own personal definition of fun. In navigating the New Media waters, they will be called upon to redefine fun, many times. But there are basic notions of fun, derived from anthropological, psychological, and historical sources, that are fundamental, if you forgive the expression

For the New Media designer, perhaps the most useful of all resources stems from the experiential and historical perspective that embodies the New Games Movement. I get to embody some of that history myself, given my past involvement with the Foundation and the work I did to develop the New Games Training program. The experience of New Games, of playing together in a play community where the focus is not on whether or not the players are good enough to play, but whether the game is good enough for the players, is a powerful framework for understanding the dynamics of the virtual play community, like those that form in chat rooms and email chess games, Second Life and EverQuest. The goal of the proposed Master Class in Fun is to do just that - first, to reexamine the New Games movement and methods, explore it's political and historical context relative to the Viet Nam protests, and then to apply these methods to the creation of meaningful play in virtual and real-world spaces given today's political climate.

# 27 - I don't mean to brag

2007-01-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

I don't mean to brag

I don't mean to brag. I didn't mean to brag last Wednesday when I put this on my weblog. I didn't mean to brag a couple months ago when I first told you that I was given the Ifill-Raynolds Award for "outstanding achievement in the field of fun." But, see, I was only told I received the award, I mean, I received the award, but I didn't get it, I mean I didn't get something tangible, except for the plastic stencil I told you about. I guess I mean I didn't get something tangibly award-looking until now. And I'm embarrassed to say that now, now that I have this shiny, engraved, ready-to-hang award, I find myself allowing myself to believe that I really received this award. Really.

Which makes me muse on the whole trophies and awards thing, and how I've worked so hard to create games that are played just for the sheer fun of it all, trophy-less, awardless, scoreless games.

Because I believe that people need to play more than they need to win.

And, frankly, the older I get, the less fun it is to win, and the more fun just to be able to play, just to be able.

Maybe I've forgotten to mention how deeply, satisfyingly, meaningly, majorly kinds of fun I'm having with this award thing, with having it in my hands like this. This elaborately rendered, shiny plaque, this engraved affirmation, from many of my own peers, of my very own, life-long work.

And because I have already found the place to hang this award, I get a kind of fun just looking at it. A meaningful kind of fun. Already more meaningful. Already more fun.

#26 - Five Most Major Fun Party Games for 2006

2006-12-14T07:46:00.000-08:00

This, just in: The Five Most Major Fun party games for 2006 are:

Wits and Wagers
Knowbody Knows
Quelf
Luck of the Draw
GiftTrap

Wits & Wagers combines trivia with betting to create a unique party game - one that can involve anywhere from 3 to 21 players in an evening or half-hour worth of relatively painless trivia questions and sometimes near-painful strategizing.

Knowbody Knows, for example, exactly how many hours Tom Hanks sleeps in a week. Probably not even Mr. Hanks knows that. So, OK, so you don't know. You can still guess. Because, see, it's only a guess, and, as the designers of the game are so ready to remind us, Knowbody, actually, Knows.

Quelf is a silly game. For those of us who are mature enough to appreciate silliness as an art form, it is both a bench- and a watermark of wackiness. If you find yourself unwilling to, for example, "suck your thumb in silence and start rolling the dice. When you roll a '3,' shout, 'Get off my land!' in your best chipmunk voice," mayhap Quelf is not exactly your kind of game.

GiftTRAP is a party game about giving each other gifts. The better you are at giving people the things they really want, the better you do at the game. How do you like that for a party game premise? giving each other presents. Well, we loved it!

Luck of the Draw is described as "a game for the artistically challenged." And I am happy to tell you that this turns out to be a remarkably accurate description of the very people who will have the most fun playing it: the people who don't like games that make them draw.

The Major FUN Award goes to games and people that bring people fun, and to any organization managing to make the world more fun, through its own person contributions, and through the products it has managed to bring to the market.

Major FUN especially likes games that:

make people laugh
are original, flexible, easy to adapt
are easy to understand and teach

#25 - Technography Revisited

2006-11-28T05:53:00.000-08:00

Executive Playgrounds

In this clip, Rob Fulup, Michael Schrage and I describe the kind of collaboration I was able to facilitate when I developed my Technography method.

What Technography is to meetings, Junkyard Sports is to professional sports. It's the same central vision, informed by the ideal of mutual empowerment, of what I call "Coliberation." Just like Junkyard Sports, Technography approaches meetings as open systems, designed to serve the community that uses them: where the players are more important than the game, where success is measured in terms of participation, involvement, mutual accomplishment.

You can read more about the Technography method in a collection of my articles called "Meetings and Fun." Of those articles, the last, Executive Playgrounds, is the subject of today's FunCast, (which you can listen to here) and perhaps the most relevant to this historical perspective - making the connection between meeting rooms and playgrounds - explaining why, despite the success of Technography, I found myself looking for more fundamental and universal solutions.

The video clip is from a video called "The Not So-Obvious Art of Collaboration" (which failed to be published due to the no so obvious art of marketing). The tape was made in the 90s, shortly after the publication of Connected Executives.

from Bernie DeKoven's FunLog

#24 - NASAGA Award

2006-10-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

The IFILL/RAYNOLDS Award

There's an organization called the North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA)

Their slogan: "Playful Methods. Serious Results." should make my interest in this group vividly clear. And even more vividly clear when you take into account that I was one of the keynote speakers for this year's conference. (You can download my speech here.) Which was how I learned about an award they give, called the:

IFILL/RAYNOLDS
Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions to Simulation Gaming

Here's their description:

The Award:

At its annual conference, NASAGA recognizes one of its members who develops and/or uses simulation games with joy and serious purpose, in the spirit which our dear and longtime friends and colleagues Don Ifill and Gennie Raynolds brought to all their work, and specifically to their work with simulation gaming. Gennie and Don, who died within two months of each other in 1995, were our first active members to die.

Criteria:

The recipients work should respect and make use of the power and spiritual richness within practical settings. In an exemplary way, the work should:

Foster a sense of community among those who interact with it.

Deepen understanding of a cultural, organizational, and/or global common good as it provides for interaction with the situation(s) and/or system(s) being modeled.

Enable active, positive listening by participants to themselves and/or those different from themselves, enhancing their understanding of themselves and others.

Contribute to strengthening and/or changing an organization's or group's climate and spirit while building a deeper understanding of it's purpose.

What a profound honor it must be to get an award like that - an award for fostering community, deepening understanding of a common good, enhancing people's understanding of themselves and others, building a deeper sense of purpose. What wonderful things to say about someone's work. I know, because this year they said it about mine.

Tee hee.

#23 - Deeply Played Games

2006-09-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Deeply Played Games

Tomorrow's Funcast is about what I wound up calling "Deeply Played Games," and, for some reason, it made me think of you. I don't know why. I guess we have that kind of relationship. Which explains why I thought you'd enjoy listening to it, thinking about it. Here's a taste:

"...there’s chess, on the one culture, and the Japanese game Go on the other – a game of piece-capture vs a game of territory-capture, hierarchy vs. the horde, army vs. terrorist. While chess is the game of kingdoms and military might, the game of Go, according to the author of The Protracted Game, is a remarkably useful paradigm for understanding Maoist Revolutionary Strategy. For example.

"Deeply played games are a kind of cultural theater with massive audience participation, capable of expressing as well as developing identity, communicating as well as transforming the acknowledged values of a culture."

You can read more about Deeply Played Games and all that is implied thereby in the keynote address for the North American Simulation and Games Association (NASAGA) I'll be giving October 12.

Play on, play deeply!

from Bernie DeKoven's FunLog

#22 - Ian Coe's Fun Quest

2006-09-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

Ian Coe's Fun Quest

It will take a while to download. But it's worth waiting for. Especially if you're interested in fun, and in following this young man, Ian Coe, a Master's student in Radio Production at Bournemouth University, as he learns from anyone who claims any expertise in any connection with fun - a positive psychologist, a psycho-physiologist, a clairvoyant, a pianist, a social theoretician, a leisure historian, the manager of a student union, even me. And in between, as he documents his theoretical journey, he records his actual one - biking, running, playing soccer, paint ball, music, Phantasy Photoshop.

Ian's conclusion: "We've made a lot of progress in pinning down what fun's all about. We've learned how fun's vital for good health and how it helps you learn. We've seen that theorizing about fun can stifle it, as can powerful institutions like Capitalism. We've noticed how fun's often seen like a negative thing that can only be enjoyed at certain times and places and by people of a certain age. We've also shown that you can have fun by changing what you think instead of what you do. I've also had fun trying to meet my psychological and spiritual needs through different activities and I hope I've inspired you to do the same. So, although I think enjoying the fun we are already having is a good starting point, I still reckon we can all benefit from having more fun in our lives, and I'm now more convinced than ever that fun is an essential part of life."

Ian Coe's Fun Quest.

Enjoy.

#21 - Human Cards

2006-08-27T17:01:00.000-07:00

Human Cards

Want to do something funny this Labor Day weekend? Last year I co-led a course at the USC, School of Cinema-Television, Interactive Media Department called "Experiments in Interactivity I." For the final project, the students were to create a "mass multi-player game" that included the campus. They decided to create Giant Cards, The cards were so giant that you'd get maybe one person per card. So that'd be fun, wouldn't it? Playing Giant Cards on Labor Day? All you'd need is a giant deck of cards.

Human Cards, the subject of this week's occasional newsletter and FunCast, is another game for the masses, also played with cards, and also played with one person per card. Human Cards, a Funny Game, is in fact significantly reminiscent of the massive multiplayfulness of Giant Cards, also a Funny Game, in terms of the actual experience of actual funnyness, yet clearly different, in terms of card-size. Human Cards, you see, uses regular, standard, everyday playing cards. Thus the distinction.

Basically, you get 52 or so people together. You give everyone a card - any card will do. Then you ask everyone to shuffle. Then you cut the deck. And then you play, maybe, War.

So now that it's Labor Day weekend, take a deck of cards with you wherever you go. You just never know when you'll find yourself in a crowd of people who are desperate for a Funny Game to play.

Click on FunCast to hear how to play the game.

Or on Human Cards to read the article.

#20 - The Junkyard Sports Foundation

2006-08-22T09:29:00.001-07:00

The Junkyard Sports Foundation

Apparently, during an extended giglag (giglag - time spent between gigs) (not to be confused with the self-explanatory, and often pathological gigglelag), I decided to form the Junkyard Sports Foundation. How could I, you ask, whose financial assets are stoically humble, possibly create a global, grant-giving organzation, dedicated to the support and development of Junkyard Sports of all ilk? Apparently, quite easily. I created a Foundation that doesn't need to raise or grant money. It's a fun-raising Foundation whose board of directors is pretty much me.

In fact, now that I think of it, the Foundation (a.k.a. me) has been fun-raising for many years, long, actually, before the formalization of the Foundation or even the publication of Junkyard Sports, itself.

One of the one-man-board, fun-raising Foundation's most recent grants led to the worldwide, online distibution of the complete instructions for conducting the Junkyard Golf Course and Community-Building Event with Potluck - an act of unparalleled charitable magnitude, considering the many implications and applications of the Junkyard Golf concept itself, and its potentially inestimable value to the post-apocalyptic putt-putt golf player.

For more Foundation activities, stay tooned to this newsletter, and associated Foundation-supported weblogs (Junkyard Sports, Deep Fun, and Major Fun).

The Junkyard Sports Foundation. Supported by players like you.

#19 - Funny Games

2006-08-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

Today's newsletter is about the kind of games I, in fact, am most interested in. The games, until three days ago, that I called "Pointless."

The people who run an event called Funny Fest asked me if I might be interested in doing a workshop or four at next year's event.

I thought and thought and looked at their website and looked again at their website and then thought about looking some more. Funny Fest. Comedians. Funny. Funny. And finally, I came up with something that seemed it might actually interest people who either are stand-up comedians, want to be stand-up comedians, who like comedy or just like standing up.

"Funny Games," I said to myself. "Funny Games for the Funny Fest. Games as another kind of funny that is also fun. Where everyone, you might say, is the comedian."

And so, I sent off a proposal. And I got myself all excited about the "Funny" word. And, shortly after, found myself writing the following for Wednesday's FunLog:

Funny Games

I used to call them "Pointless Games" because they were the kind of games where the score didn't matter so much, where just playing is winning enough. Now I call them "Funny Games." Yes, I know, there's a horror movie of the same name. But Funny is a good word for these pointless games - funny because, from maybe an even more relevant perspective, it's not about the pointlessness of these games, or the lack of scorekeeping even - not as much as it is about the sheer funniness of it all.

They aren't comedies, these games, and we aren't expected to be comedians in order to play them. There are no punch lines, there is no applause. But there is laughter, all right. Rollicking, eye-tearing, panty-wetting laughter.

It's not so much that the games themselves are funny - as it is that when we play these games, we, ourselves, become funny.

Being funny. Not acting funny or saying funny things or even making people laugh, but being funny, funny in the very fullness and totality of our beings and the beings with whom we be being funny. As funny to ourselves as we are to each other. Naturally funny. Unselfconsciously funny. Almost helplessly funny.

Not silly. Not out of control. Funny. Like how we are when we all try everso hard to sit on each other's laps. Or when we find ourselves passionately debating the relative merits of chosing to become panthers, persons, or porcupines. Or wandering around with our eyes closed saying "prui."

Funny Games. Not silly at all, actually. Funny in the way each game manages to make light of and shed light on the human condition.

# 18 - Senior-worthyness

2006-08-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

Question of the day: so what, if anything, makes a game "Senior-worthy"?

Answer of the day: it depends.

Sooner or later, we all outgrow our bodies. It's a long process. We do it bit by bit (though bit-size may vary). We can never tell which bit's next. If we're lucky, we'll hardly notice the last bit that went missing.

When I made my selection of "Senior-worthy Games" for the Major Fun award, I chose board and party games for the Mildly Outgrown - games that didn't have a lot of really little pieces and small print; that didn't require very fast reflexes, or any significant use of short-term memory, or precision dexterity.

Since the games I chose were already Major Fun, regardless of their senior-worthiness, they reflected the most senior-worthy aspects of the award: games that are easy to learn, that can be played in maybe 10 minutes, or maybe all night. Pretty games - well-made, well-presented, feel good, look good, store easily. Games that are interesting - offering some new way of playing, of thinking, some unique challenge. And especially, being Major Fun games, games that make you laugh.

As to why I'm this whole Senior-Worthy Games thing? Because I want to be sure that noone I know has to spend their final days in a place where the only game around is BINGO.

As to what's next? I'm waiting to hear from you.

#17 - The Major Fun Senior Hall of Game Fame

2006-07-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

Last Newsletter I wrote talked about that article in Newsday - Racing to Play. I've been mulling and stewing and then, from Jac Rongen, came these wonderfully affirming photos. And from George Platts, long time friend and renown artist of fun, who coined the term "Everlasting Games:" this: "I've been playing and inventing wacky games for groups of seniors to play for over ten years. 'Seated Hockey' almost got out of hand it was SO physical. The other hospital staff could not believe it (how fun it was). The seniors really enjoyed it. We played hard. We played fair. Nobody was hurt. That's easy, if you have the know how."

Spurred to action, I, your local Defender of the Playful, have created yet another Major Fun award - for games that are good enough to interest the grown-up mind, without making too many demands of a somewhat outgrown body.

I am calling this award the "Major Fun for Grown-ups" awards. It does say "senior" on the award, but we're not the people who call ourselves that. We are the grown-ups, maybe. But seniors? Not as long as we keep playing!

So I started with games that have already been recognized in a Major-funlike manner, and singled out those games that don't require too much speed or dexterity. Each and all a genuine challenge to mind and wit, all and each an invitation to mature, skilled, grown-up play.

#16 - Senior Games - Mah Jong and Tumblin-Dice

2006-07-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

Games Seniors Play

I don't know if you saw this article in Newsday - Racing to Play - ? It's about the kinds of games seniors play. You know what kinds they are? The Mah Jong, Scrabble, Bingo kinds. The reporter actually interviewed me. She had already done a lot of research and was convinced that she had a fundamental grasp of what seniors (that's me, too, you know) play.

Me, I was horrified. Here's the only quote she got out of me:

"Fun is "noble" in the eyes of California-based game-maker and guru Bernie DeKoven, 64. "I think a lot of older people are reclaiming their need to play," he said, "and they're looking for opportunity and finding places that foster a certain amount of playfulness."

You can almost hear the horror.

Anyhow, all this led me to thinking about games and seniors, which reminded me of a game I recently reviewed, a game as senior-worthy as Mah Jong, believe me. Which, in turn, got me thinking about all those other senior-worthy Major Fun games, and my spirits lifted, in deed they did.

Let me tell you about this game, just as an example. It's called Tumblin-Dice.
Think of perhaps shuffleboard with dice. Think, for example, of a shuffleboard that is on five levels, with, where there were once pucks to slide, dice to, well, slide perhaps or flick or shove. A shuffleboard looking pretty much exactly like this.

Think further of the role, or roll, of luck - how the dice, even though you try to slide them everso carefully, tend to change faces when they descend a level. There's an intimation of the possibility that one could control all of this, making the die land 6-up even by the time it reaches the X4 level after having knocked all the opponents' dice to off-table oblivion. On the other hand, there's an unavoidable element of luck which makes a 7-year-old often as successful as a 77-year-old. Think of this, and you'll understand, almost immediately, why Tumblin' Dice has received a Major Fun Family Game award.

If you know shuffleboard, you'll know how to play Tumblin' Dice. When I introduced the game at the Tasting, I asked my fellow Tasters to play the game without looking at the rules. With almost no discussion, they played almost exactly the way the designer had intended them to. Because the game was so easy to figure out, it is exceptionally welcome in a variety of settings, especially recreation centers, classrooms and my house.

Speaking of classrooms, the game requires enough arithmetical calculations to make it actually useful in almost any elementary school setting. When a die lands in special scoring sections of the board, the face value of the die is multiplied by a given factor. So, in figuring out a total score players exercise both additional and multiplication, and, one might argue, even algebraic skills.

But don't let its educational implications fool you. Tumblin-Dice is an invitation to minutes or hours of play, for kids, for adults, for seniors, for the whole darn community. Did I mention adults? The kind of adults who might be interested in playing for, um, beer, or perhaps beer money?

It's made as well as it plays - a big, polished, two-piece all wood, table-worthy game that you might never put away. Ever.

P.S. If you have a game that you think is Major Fun Award-worthy, and that you'd like us to consider before my "Best of" article for Knucklebones, send it to me, pronto-ly.

#15 - Ordinary Fun

2006-07-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

Ordinary Fun

Last week's FunCast was about at least two kinds of fun - extreme fun, and ordinary fun. It turns out that ordinary fun has: a) little or no commercial appeal, and 2) the power to sustain life. Here's an extract from the essay:

Extreme fun is, well, extreme. Fun that is so much fun that we are willing to risk life and limb to taste it, even if only for a second. It's the fun of sky diving, bungee jumping, rock climbing, snow boarding.

Ordinary fun is the chewing gum kind of fun, even the washing dishes kind of fun that comes with the warm water and emerging sparkle and the meditation-like expanse of timelessness that ends when the sink is empty.

The problem is that it's the extreme kinds of fun that get all the press. That's the kind of fun that soft drink commercials are made of. The other, the ordinary kind of fun goes for the most part unnoticed, barely felt.

Which is precisely why so many of us think that we aren't having fun. Which is precisely why so many of us really aren't having fun - because even when we are, we think we're not, if you know what I mean.

So all the commercial dollars that go into making it perfectly clear how this car or these shoes or those sunglasses lead inevitably to the ultimate expression of all-consumingly extreme fun - leave us, for the most part, in the shadows of despair, feeling that everything else we do is dreary, funless.

Which has the effect of raising the fun threshold to the point that hardly anything ever feels fun enough. Which is fine for the commercial powers, but not so good for us, the fun-seeking many, who buy and buy in to the belief that ordinary fun is not fun enough to be considered fun at all.

You can read more here, if more is what you need to read.

#14 - Junkyard Golf re-imagined

2006-07-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

Junkyard Golf, re-imagined

A fellow named Ray Fox wrote me recently about his own version of Junkyard Golf. A friend of his, he explains: "had given me a copy of Junkyard Golf information more than a year ago. I put it away thinking that there might someday be a way for me to use it as an asset-building activity with kids...The time schedule...did not permit me to do junk yard golf the way the article was written. So I decided to use the name and to develop 3 miniature golf holes using junk."

Ray's interpretation of Junkyard Golf is inspiring, and instructive. He uses junk to transform a playground into a miniature golf course. Gets clubs and golf balls. And invites kids to play. Me, I get the kids, and the teachers and anyone else around involved in getting the junk and in making the entire golf game out of the junk they gather - course, tees, holes, fairways, obstacles, clubs, balls.

And as different as our approaches are, both Ray and I seem to be succeeding in bringing a little more fun into the world.

Read on:
" Well, the junk became old aluminum cans from soda, old plastic water bottles, some rolled up newspapers and three practice putting cups I got at a golf store. For about a month, I saved cans and bottles. Then I bought some rolls of duct tape and started taping them together. I had about 190 feet of this "junk" in my garage (separated in 10 foot sections, so that I could transport them). I also had some old rolls of carpet for remodeling jobs in my house. This became more important once I found out that my location was on the paved school playground. The golf balls came from my supply of practice balls and were colored with markers. The golf clubs were borrowed from a local miniature golf course.

"...The first hole was the easiest and was all carpet. There were about 4 hole in ones during the day. The second hole was harder because it started on blacktop and had a dog leg to it. Scores ranged from 2 on up. The third hole was very hard because it had several turns and ended up on carpet. Again the best score was a 2 but many scores were much higher. I was surprised by the large number of students who had never played miniature golf before.

"Based on feedback from the students, staff and principal, I would say it was a big hit. Many of them were very excited about this opportunity to do something new and exciting. Some of their comments included:
" Thanks for making this, it's really fun."
" I play golf with my dad and can't wait to tell him about this."
" I'm really good at this."
" This was real fun. Who made this?"
" When my family goes on vacation, we always play this."

"Almost every student in the school stopped by to play each hole. There were a few who played only one hole and left. On the other hand, there were some who either stayed for a long time or came back after doing other activities. I had 2 boys who were not happy until they got a hole in one on the first hole and just kept playing it over and over again."

#13 - The Keeper Award

2006-06-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

Introducing the Keeper Award

When you think of all the fun that you can have getting to try out (we call it "Tasting") new games, for free... When you think of how much you can learn, and how interesting it can be to decide whether a game is actually and also truly Major Fun... award-worthily-speaking... And how you get to help the people who make good games get the appreciation they deserve.... Well, you can see why people want to be part of one our Games Tastings.

On the other hand, this award-giving thing isn't that easy. And the Tastings aren't that fool-proof, or fool-worthy. Because some of the games that a lot of us thought were actually Major Fun, on first Tasting, turned out to be at least just as fun, in at least just as major a way, just about every time we played, with just about anyone we played with.

So major did these games prove to be that whenever we played them everyone would say something like: "this is the kind of game the Major Fun Award was meant for."

These games were at first a bit hard to classify, in so far as they already had a Major Fun award. And so the question was asked: what could be even majorer?

After long periods of reflection and verbal verisimilitude, we came upon the realization that these very games are exactly the kinds of games.you tend not to lend out, if you know what I mean. To anyone. Even a family member. Some you play maybe a couple times a week. Some maybe a couple times a year. But when the time comes around, the right people, the right moment, it's exactly and only the one game you want to play, These are the games one might call "keepers."

Hence, the Major Fun Keeper Award. Click on the link. Get to know what Major Fun really stands for.