The Infinite Playground: A Player's Guide to Imagination

by Bernard De Koven, Holly Gramazio (Editor), Celia Pearce (Editor)

A play-centered invitation to experience the power and delight unlocked by imagination. Bernard De Koven (1941–2018) was a pioneering designer of games and theorist of fun. He studied games long before the field of game studies existed. For De Koven, games could not be reduced to artifacts and rules; they were about a sense of transcendent fun. This book, his last, is about the the imagination as a playground, a possibility space, and a gateway to wonder. The Infinite Playground extends a play-centered invitation to experience the power and delight unlocked by imagination. It offers a curriculum for playful learning. De Koven guides the readers through a series of observations and techniques, interspersed with games. He begins with the fundamentals of play, and proceeds through the private imagination, the shared imagination, and imagining the world—observing, “the things we imagine can become the world.” Along the way, he reminisces about playing ping-pong with basketball great Bill Russell; begins the instructions for a game called Reception Line with “Mill around”; and introduces blathering games— Blather , Group Blather , Singing Blather , and The Blather Chorale —that allow the player's consciousness to meander freely. Delivered during the last months of his life, The Infinite Playground has been painstakingly cowritten with Holly Gramazio, who worked together with coeditors Celia Pearce and Eric Zimmerman to complete the project as Bernie De Koven's illness made it impossible for him to continue writing. Other prominent game scholars and designers influenced by De Koven, including Katie Salen Tekinbaş, Jesper Juul, Frank Lantz, and members of Bernie's own family, contribute short interstitial essays. Contributors Ian Bogost, Stephen Conway, Adriaan de Jongh, Elyon De Koven, Rocky De Koven, Mary Flanagan, Gonzalo Frasca, Tracy Fullerton, Holly Gramazio, Catherine Herdlick, Jesper Juul, Frank Lantz, Colleen Macklin, Celia Pearce, Sebastian Quack, Lee Rush, Katie Salen Tekinbaş, John Sharp, Tassos Stevens, Akira Thompson, Greg Trefry, Douglas Wilson, Zach Wood, Eric Zimmerman

Genres: Game Design, Nonfiction, Plays, Games, Gaming, Unfinished, Video Games

208 pages, Hardcover

Published July 28, 2020

Reviews

[Michael Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who’s never read anything about this topic before or never even heard of the author, this book was rather a challenge at first. It took me a long while to start to understand the spirit of Bernie.

Like one of the contributors in the book, I didn’t quite get the value of Bernie’s child like silliness and his Treatment of the topics in a very spontaneous, unstructured and often haphazard way. But as I kept on reading getting momentum and just going with the prose, I found myself starting to understand the deep and liberating message that Bernie was trying to convey in these extracts.

I come away from the book with the feeling that the ability to play and the necessity to drop our rigid identities that play requires is so important for actually being able to actually enjoy and have fun with anything. Whether that thing with which we are occupied be a work of art, a task at work, a conversation, or even a relationship, Bernie shows us have an attitude of playfulness is key to satisfying living. I come away very motivated to build more playfulness into my life.

This book will undoubtedly not be for everyone, but I urge you to give it a chance even if you have early hesitations, and open up to a new more liberated a way of being in the world.

[Cookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book if you want to reflect on how to make your life more playful. The book introduces little games every few pages and it makes it even more fun! I imagine it would please all its readers... 😉

[James Hennessy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books that leigtmatley made me relook at life through the prisim of play , not ground breaking , but worth the read nonetheless

[Carissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting way to look at imagination with many easy, little games inside. A lot of the games could be compared to the team building ice breakers many of us have done before while others are to do on your own. While there is potential for fun, it does get too wordy at times, more memoir than guide.

[Justin Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The friendliest and most wonder-inducing guide to both the private imagination and the shared experience: how to do it, why to do it, and how to manifest sensitivity to its participants without controlling them.

[Mut · Rating 5 out of 5]

é um belo livro, uma exploração aprofundada do poder da imaginação como lugar de brincadeira. Bernie escreve lindamente e de forma emocionante e ao mesmo tempo brincante e divertido. recomendo the well played game primeiro (pra qualquer pessoa do mundo).

que vontade que da de brincar