Bernie DeKoven, funsmith: The Major Fun Awards

The Major Fun Award identifies games that are:

easy to learn (5-15 minutes),
played in under an hour,
fun enough to play over and over again,
easy to store,
made to last,
uniquely fun,
tend to make people laugh
deep enough to withstand a lot of changes.

Major Fun Award-winning games prove to be easy to:

adapt to younger and older players,
tune to different play preferences and abilities,
make more or less complex, longer or shorter, sillier or more serious.

In my Deep Fun programs, I use games to help people share and build energizing, supportive relationships - friends, couples, family members, neighbors, communities, coworkers, teams, teachers and students, patients and healers. Games give people a way to do serious things without taking them seriously. Major Fun games are key components of my toolkit. Which helps explain why I developed the Major Fun program.

There are three kinds of awards that I offer. The Major Fun award you already know about. The award-winning games that I've found to be especially successful in helping people practice principles of playfulness receive the Keeper award. These games have already shown themselves to be Major Fun, but also prove to be exceptionally flexible, easy to learn, and easy to adapt to a wide range of audiences and play styles.

Finally there's the Defender of the Playful Award. With this award, I add my recognition to other people who have created something valuable, and meaningfully fun, have demonstrated a passion for playfulness, and have somehow been able to make it available to a wide range of audiences.