This man’s name is Jarrod L’Estrange. We met each other on Facebook a few months ago. He wanted to know more about New Games – you know, the games you read about in the New Games Book – especially about those really physical, active games like Snake in the Grass, Dho-Dho-Dho and Slaughter.

Jarrod, by virtue of his passions and his very being, reminded me about another kind of fun – the kind that comes from using your body, from exercising, training, developing your strengths. A kind of fun that almost every child celebrates, also by virtue of their passions, their very beings.

I looked at his picture. I looked at his message. I looked at his picture again. And I was, well, to say the very least, delighted. A man like this, a strong man who obviously valued his strength, wanting to know about those silly, playful, generally pointless games that meant so much to me and the world I sometimes inhabit. I’ve met many athletes, or those who think themselves to be, in my many remarkable New Games melees. I’ve encountered only a few who were able to embrace the “loving competition” ethic that was the foundation of New Games.

A while ago, Jarrod, who lives in Australia, sent me a link to a video of highlights from his first “FunCamp.” It was only after I watched the video – a long while after – that I was able to put words to my appreciation for Jarrod and what he was bringing to the world. Not New Games, but something that was a unique expression of his unique person. Something newer, and fundamental, that builds on New Games to help build the body. Something playful, healing, healthy, restoring. Something engaging heart, mind and muscle, connecting strength to playfulness. A primal connection. A gift, waiting only to be received. Whole community, whole body, whole hearted fun.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jarrod comments:

My passion is not just in fitness but in exercising the inner child in others also.

Kids, as you know, can be stressful; and balancing the many facets of life can be overwhelming. I see active fun and play as a healthy outlet for me as much as it can be for the overworked office workers who have been trapped behind their desks all week.

Though it is important to note that, given the opportunity, high-tech playground devices do not a playground make. Kids do. As proven over and over again by the Adventure Playground movement, still very much alive in much of Europe and even a few places in the U.S. On the other hand, playground equipment is big business, found in just about every city or county park. Absent the alternatives and despite the lack of innovation and imagination, these things get a lot of use: children swinging and sliding and climbing in genuinely childlike abandon whilst parents look fondly on.

On the other hand, these are the very places, these commercially constructed playgrounds, where innovation and imagination can play such a profound role in freeing children to discover new ways to engage with each other and the world. A case in point: Kompan’s Miriam playstructure.

Miriam playstructure from Kompan

A playground roller coaster. Clearly a wonderfully functional invitation to child-sized thrill rides. So many opportunities to learn about balance and challenge and gravity and socialization and the capacity for sheer abandon.

Paige Johnson, our favorite Playscapes blogger, observes: “One of Miram’s most thoughtful features is the provision of a standing space on either end of the structure for friends or onlookers; allowing the play to include elements of community and performance.”

via Playscapes

There’s been a great discussion going on in the comments to Making a Game Out of It.  In one comment, Andrew Perkis writes:

Bernie: in “The Well Played Game” you talk about the ‘dynamic tension’ restoring the balance between the playing mind (‘innovative, magical, boundless) and the gaming mind (‘concentrated, determined, intelligent’). I think James Carse’s ‘Finite Games’ are ‘games’ where the latter is totally divorced from the former. [And I guess for didactic purposes he exaggerates; play always tends to seep back in and only in very corrupt societies can a privileged few be so grimly serious and still succeed. Even in sports some of that balance is always maintained and, as you imply a “master player” can’t be truly successful in ANY way (let alone as a human being) if the gaming mind takes over completely.].

Here’s the actual quote from The Well-Played Game:

On the one hand we have the playing mind—innovative, magical, boundless. On the other is the gaming mind—concentrated, determined, intelligent. And on the hand that holds them both together we have the notion of playing well.

The balance between the playing mind and the gaming mind is never at an equilibrium. There is a dynamic tension between these two — a dialogue. Playing well means playing within that dialogue.

I have long admired Carse’s work. Here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is a paper with a longer excerpt from his book. And here, from that excerpt, some  relevant pith:

1. There are at least two kinds of games.

One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

2. There is no game, finite or infinite, unless the players freely agree to play it. No one can play who is forced to play. This is an invariable principle of all play. Whoever must play, cannot play.

Andrew’s connection between Carse and myself is quite a compliment. And it is also an opportunity to add to the truths both books are describing, especially in the light of gamification.

Certain applications of gamification are clearly not a product of a healthy gaming mind. They are what the gaming mind might come up with once it has reached such a profound state of schizophrenia that it becomes disconnected from the “free agreement to play” that Carse so strongly identifies as being essential to both game frames, finite and infinite. They strip the finite aspects (the mechanisms to measure winning) from the infinite (the agreement to play), and overlay them onto structured experiences that are neither games nor founded on anything connected to play (work, education, military service). Other applications manage to acknowledge both voluntariness and play. Rather than trying to make something that is not fun endurable by making it look like a game, they emphasize the fun that is intrinsic to the undertaking

For me, the idea of “playing well” is the corpus callosum that joins the two minds into a healthy whole. It belongs to both spheres of experience. In finite terms, we can evaluate the play experience, give it a kind of score. In infinite terms, we can appreciate a play experience that is something intrinsically immeasurable. The game, any game, when it is well played, is “good.” But the experience of play goes beyond score, beyond the game itself. It is transcendant. Without play, the game loses meaning. Without the game, play loses focus. In the well-played game we are both – finite and infinite. And therein lies the rush.

This:

was made using this for a knitting spool:

The goal was: “to create an installation where all could sit together to enjoy the space, but also take an active role in making that place. Entitled Giant Knitting Nancy, the project is a metaphor for the interwoven cultures, spaces and places that help make the London a distinctive place. There was not a ball empty during lunch break as office workers joined in.

“Play,” comments the author, Sarah, “is how I learn and keep my brain stimulated and engaged.”

Observe:

Click here to view the embedded video.

via Handstitch

and this from Playscapes

After listening to my interview with Katie West, my son notes:

Um, but you don’t have to be playful to enjoy a sunrise or your baby’s first smile. I agree that playfulness is helpful, but so is geniality and optimism…

As far as I understand playfulness (not far enough, yet, not far enough by far), it has something to do with being open, responsive, yielding to the moment, catching hold and letting go. You might not be playing at the moment, but you are willing to play, at the drop of a hat, the bounce of a ball, the wag of a tail. You are open to any opportunity. You are loose. Responsive. Present.

You have to be present to enjoy the sunrise, to delight in the light of your child’s delight, because otherwise you simply aren’t there to catch it. It goes by you as if it and you aren’t even there.

Playfulness means presence, but not just presence. Responsiveness, but not just responsiveness. Presence and responsiveness, lightness and attentiveness, improvisation and creativity, a willingness to let go and become part.

In my article Fun is Easy, I write about how we are surrounded, constantly, by invitations to fun, to play, to joy. There’s nothing hard about finding fun. The hard thing is remembering to look for it, the hard thing is recognizing it, the hard thing is accepting the invitation.

When you are playful, you’re like that. You see fun everywhere. You see the opportunity. And you take it. You see possibility. And you acknowledge it.

You definitely don’t have to be playful to enjoy the sunrise or your baby’s first smile. But if you are, chances are you’ll see it when it happens.

I also have been known to say “the playful path is the shortest road to happiness.” I say that because that particular path, the playful one, takes you to where the fun is. And if you are there, with the fun, the sheer fun of it all, well then, there, too, is happiness.

Here, for your further edification (over an hour’s worth) is a sometimes inspiring video on “The Importance of Being Playful” from the Aspen Institue in which Ray Suarez discusses the importance of play to children and adults with Goldie Hawn, Deepak Chopra, and James Hill. The audience is very intelligent and responsive, so what you will witness is not just an interview, but an event.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you haven’t already read about gamification, then please do so before you read the rest of this post. Thanks.

It’s OK. I’ll wait.

In the meantime, I thought I’d think with you about some of the reasons we play games in the first place.

We sometimes play for not-so-altruistic reasons. We play so that we can get accepted by other people who play, so that we can demonstrate our skills (preferably, our unassailable superiority), so that we can meet people, so that people can meet us. But we also play so that we can create a closer bond with our children or parents, peers or partners.

We play for money, for respect, we play to prove ourselves, we play to win, forever.

We play to exercise our mind or body (preferably both). We play to learn things about ourselves or the world. We play to practice and develop skills. We play so that we can better understand, empathize, commiserate.

Sometimes, we make up games to help us do things we have to do, like learn something. Sometimes to keep us from getting scared when we find ourselves in scary places. Sometimes, just to keep ourselves from getting bored. Because boredom isn’t fun, being afraid is’t fun, doing what we don’t want to do isn’t fun, studying isn’t fun.

People (lots of them), have also been exploring how they can make make us want to play things that aren’t really fun. They are trying to do for us what we do for ourselves when we encounter the unfun.

Most of the games we make to help us get through things that we have to get through aren’t really very good. But that’s not the point. The point is that they help us endure. Most of the games that the gamifyers and educators make to help us get through things are also not very good. Because they are not really invitations to fun. They are, like the games we create for ourselves, at their heart, medicinal. Palliative.

It’s like “educational checkers.” It’s checkers, alright. Except that in order to move, you first have to do a little adding, or long division, or exercise. Not really what I’d call fun. Me, I’d rather make up my own game. Or just make myself exercise.

Despite the apparent nobility of the higher calling, unless I, personally, want to learn what they are teaching me, no amount of fun-likeness makes me actually want to play these games. In fact, it does the opposite. It violates something, a trust. I feel like they are trying to fool me into doing something that they think is good for me. And despite the righteousness of their causes, I feel, at the end, well, fooled.

What I’d really like – if these people were really about helping me do something I don’t seem to want to do, even though I know I need to do it – is for them to do for me what a really good teacher might do: help me find the fun. Show me how exercise really is fun, really feels like fun; help me find the fun in multiplication and long division and chemistry and learning French. Don’t make me think it’s a game when it’s not. Don’t make it look like fun when it isn’t. Show me the fun in it, the fun of it. Invite me to the joyful core of it. Share with me the delight.

Speaking of sharing delight, I had the opportunity to share the draft of this post with my delightful colleagues, Chris and Becky Saeger. They made me aware of a connection between the educational system and gamification with which I had apparently been so familiar that I had failed to see it. The use of grading (both to determine what “class” you belong in and in evaluating the quality of your performance) is in itself gamification. It creates divisions between students and encourages them to compete for extrinsic rewards and recognition that are neither integral nor essential to the learning experience.

Chris and Becky also suggested that I add more emphasis to a fundamental observation about play and purpose, that “regardless of why we play, if we are really playing, we choose to play freely.” Or, as I would put it, we play because it’s fun. What this means for gamification is something I hope they, and you, will comment on further.

Last July, Marc Bekoff published an article called “Let the Children be the Animals They Have the Right to Be.” This month, he tells us about his experiences at the IPA World Conference whose theme was “Playing into the Future – surviving and thriving.” He concludes with a quote from his July article:

There are many reasons why children need to play (see also), just as young animals need to play. We need free-ranging kids. They must be allowed to get dirty and learn to take risks and negotiate social relationships that might be complicated, unexpected, or unpredictable. I love the slogan of Play Wales, Better a broken bone than a broken spirit, attributed to Lady Allen of Hurtwood. We should all embrace it with all our heart.

Listen to his wonderful talk with Marnie Chesterton about “the importance of playing – in humans and animals – and how it helps us in our adult lives” (it is the first in a collection of inspiring talks from Earth Beat – Play).

Much has been written about the value of games and sports in helping children to develop “character.” And much of that has been focused on helping them to learn how to win and lose with grace. How to become “good sports.”

I, on the other hand, believe that games and sports are best used to help children discover how to have more fun together.

I go so far as to say that learning how to become, for example, a good sport, is a waste of time that could be more easily and happily devoted to learning more games – different games, maybe even better games. Or, better still, how to make your own games.

What’s the deal with losing? If everybody hates losing so much, why should they have to play games that make people lose? Does it make it more fun? Aren’t there other ways to make it even more fun? There are cooperative games. There are creative games. There’s just running around, amock. There are thousands of games – field games, playground games, board games, marble games, card games. What does it matter what game they play?

Look, I say, if a kid wants to quit, what’s the deal? Why, when there are so many games, does it matter that the kid learns that one particular game? And why isn’t there something else for that kid to play?

You say, you want the kid to exercise. What kid, given the chance, wouldn’t want to run or swim or jump or climb around? What kid wouldn’t want to explore? Build? Dig?

So, the kid’s cheating. Maybe the kid’s cheating because the game isn’t fun for him, or fair, or isn’t something he’s good at. Maybe because a friend is getting hurt, or feeling bad, or needs to quit, too. Maybe the kid’s cheating because it’s unfair that he has to play it in the first play. Unfair that there are no other games to play. Unfair that he can’t just hang around and watch, or help, or invent something.

It’s about having fun together. What a thing to learn how to do. What an art. What a life lesson. What a fantastic character to be building – a character that knows how to have fun with other people. How to help other people have fun. What an amazing sensitivity to develop. What a valuable person to have in your family, workplace, community.

From a paper titled: The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bond: Focus on Children in Poverty.

It is a long read. It’s a complex issue. A lot needs to be said. Here are some highlights (italics mine):

It could be argued that active play is so central to child development that it should be included in the very definition of childhood…

Play is essential to developing social and emotional ties. First, play helps to build bonds within the family. Children’s healthy development is mediated by appropriate nurturing relationships with consistent caregivers. Play allows for a different quality of interaction between parent and child, one that allows parents to “listen” in a very different, but productive, way. When parents observe their children playing or join them in child-driven play, they can view the world through their child’s eyes and, therefore, may learn to communicate or offer guidance more effectively. Less-verbal children may be able to express themselves, including their frustrations, through play, allowing their parents an opportunity to better understand their needs. Above all, the intensive engagement and relaxed interactions that occur while playing tell children that their parents are fully paying attention to them and, thereby, contribute to a strong connection. Play also helps forge connections between children. It allows them to learn how to share, to negotiate and resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills when necessary. It teaches them leadership as well as group skills that may be useful in adult life…

The bottom line to school engagement is that schools should be the kind of places that children and adolescents want to be…

Parents from across the economic spectrum need to understand that it is their presence and their attention that enrich their children and that one-on-one play is a time-tested, effective way of being fully present…

Many children reside in families that face stresses related to daily survival, including whether they will have food or safe shelter, leaving less energy to focus on enrichment opportunities, including play. Some live in neighborhoods where violence may be the norm and children playing on neighborhood playgrounds the exception. School systems are focused on overcoming their academic deficiencies in a safe environment often at the expense of time for arts, recess, physical education classes, and after-school activities that include playing, despite evidence that supports that what happens in play contributes substantially to social and emotional learning, even in the classroom…

The paper was authored by Regina M. Milteer, MD, Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, and COUNCIL ON COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA COMMITTEE ON PSYCHOSOCIAL ASPECTS OF CHILD AND FAMILY HEALTH and Deborah Ann Mulligan, MD, and was recently published in Pediatrics, the “Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.”

Something we knew has been proven. It made me happy. I hope it does the same for you, and your children.

Link via Nancy Frishberg

When I think of a “friendly game,” I think about a game where, under the right circumstances, you get things like do-overs and even, if necessary, take-backs. And a card laid isn’t necessarily a card played. And you can have time-out whenever you need one. And you can change the rules if it makes it easier for everyone to play, or  when it looks like it will be more fun for everyone. And if the game isn’t fun, you can all just quit and find something more fun to play. Or not.

I think of Scrabble games with rules like:

• you can spell phonetically
• you can spell backwards
• you can rearrange tiles (as long as all the tiles still spell words)
• you can turn a tile over when you need an extra blank
• you can make up your own word as long as you can define it
• transliterations are acceptable
• the goal is to get the highest collective score
• we can trade racks

Or chess where, on your turn, you can

• pass
• move two pieces on a turn
• change the position of any two of your pieces, or maybe just any two pieces
• change sides
• “revolutionary chess” where you can kill the king and keep playing until you don’t want to play anymore
• play with three players
• how about giveaway chess?

I think of playing solitaire, together. I think of playing poker as if we were playing solitaire together. I think of rules like:

• playing round the corner (you know, J, Q, K, A, 1, 2….)
• allowing sequences of alternating colors; odd, or even, or prime numbers
• with hands face-up (an odd concept, that)
• playing for a specific total (a run is a series of cards whose sum is…)
• swapping hands
• taking two turns at once
• not taking turns at all

Or playing marbles like this.

I think of a friendly game  as a game where the only really important thing, the only rules that are either hard or fast or both being that the game is fun for everyone, that everyone can play or quit, that we don’t have to pay the game until someone wins, or for money, or even for score. A game with friends that we play because of the friendship.

I mean, honestly, what’s a game for? And what’s a friendly game really about? What has winning got to do with friendship? Or keeping score? Or playing for money? Unless, of course, it’s more fun that way. I ask myself, what kind of friends would want to try to make each other lose? Some kinds, apparently. Not my kinds, though. My kinds are about helping each other win.