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.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith