Bernie DeKoven

If fun changes the way that we do things… how can we add more fun to what we do? • What more could I do if I looked for ways to add more fun to the everyday? • How can I learn to have fun? • How can having fun help me to learn? There were many valuable responses to her query. I added mine. But it became obvious to me that her questions were deeply felt, and deserved a much more considered response. Or maybe several. My first suggestion: start with the fun that is already there. Before trying to add more fun, slow down enough to see the fun you are actually already having. When you were a kid, you didn't need to have anyone make a set of steps into a piano. Stairs were just as much an invitation to fun as escalators and elevators and sidewalks and subways. You could have fun going down stairs on your bottom or rolling a ball down the stairs or trying to bounce a ball up the stairs or trying to go up the stairs backwards or walk down the stairs two-at-a-time. Same with reading and running and counting and painting and dancing and hugging. That fun never goes away. What goes away is our willingness to choose to have the fun that is offered us. We have too many other things to do. We're not in the subway because we want to play. We don't take the escalator because it's more fun. We are there because we want to get somewhere else. So we aren't, in fact, totally there. And because we aren't, we don't see the fun.

ABSTRACT This article is written as a tribute to R. Garry Shirts who through his exemplary authorship and publication of gamed simulations was designated Defender of the Playful. Garry Shirts was the master of creating the Aha! Moment in learning through deep play. Among the many gamed simulations he designed, the authors chronicle two tour de force games, STARPOWER and BAFA’ BAFA’.

Maintaining the dynamic balance between abilities and challenge is key to the fun experience in work. That is, keeping it dynamic. Making it possible for anyone to find exactly the right amount of challenge needed to engage exactly those abilities needed to access flow.Which means that when something is fun we have created complex, but negotiable challenges, challenges that allow the individual to engage or disengage, to play harder or play safer.

This article originally appeared on deepfun.com - http://www.deepfun.com/playing-for-the-fun-of-it/

Playing for the fun of it is not about getting the highest score, even though points might be awarded and score might be kept. Getting the highest score is not the point. Winning isn’t the point. The point is getting to share that special state of spirit, mind and body that we call “fun.”

And if the game doesn’t quite work out the way we want it to, we change a rule or two, or a goal, or where we’re playing. It’s like cheating, only we do it so we can make the whole game more fun.

The very same techniques that one learns in using an outline processor to facilitate personal productivity can be generalized to facilitate group productivity. And, vice versa. Using the outline processor to facilitate group productivity, each participant in a computer-enhanced meeting learns techniques that can be directly applied to increasing personal productivity.
In the hands of one who is trained in technography, the outline processor is a potent tool, useful in almost any kind of meeting.

New Tic Tac Toe is an exploration of the principles of game design, using of course, Tic Tac Toe, but applicable to the design process of any game, online, wood, paper and pencil, imaginary....Good fun: Good for kids. Good for parents. Good for teachers. Good for game designers.

A collection of "pointless games"

"Bernie DeKoven, one of the originators of the New Games movement, has devoted his life to developing games for people of all ages that bring them together emotionally in the context of playing for fun.

In order to experience deep fun in play with a wide range of people, Bernie suggests that we learn a variety of games and game formats. That way, we discover new games for our own enjoyment and increase the likelihood of finding ways to have fun with a great many people.

Here are some of Bernie’s favorite lifelong games. They are truly games for all ages because they are especially fun when played between kids and parents and grandparents, all together at the same time — which is precisely the point!"

There are many characteristic experiences that are associated with fun: the sense of timelessness, of being at one (with mind and mountain), of exhilaration, focus, immediacy. And all of these are characteristic of what we, regardless of activity, call "fun."

Street games are changed by the people who play them. That is what distinguishes them from sports, and from the majority of games played in classrooms and gyms and physical education classes and recreation centers and clubs for children. They are constantly being invented and reinvented. That is also what makes them all but impossible to codify. And, according to what I have learned, what makes them so important to understand.