As I might have heretofore mentioned, I have spent what others might deem an inordinate amount of time playing, talking about, teaching, thinking about, inventing, exploring, researching, writing about games: games of just about every possible description for every possible audience for every conceivable purpose. I’ve spent so much of my life doing this that I can’t name anyone else alive, or not institutionalized, who has devoted him- or herself so thoroughly and for such a long time to games.
During my earlier years, I devoted much of my time to looking for permission, corroboration, sanity checks, opportunities, paid opportunities, offers of support, like minds – and now, at the age of 71 and-a-half, having achieved by virtue of nothing more than the years I’ve spent, an almost tangible aura of venerability. I have arrived at a certain elder perspective on this game thing. And, just recently, I have achieved the significantly institutional validation that comes from having a book that I wrote and published 35 years ago on the very verge on being republished by M.I. T. (yes, that M.I.T.) Press.
All the aforementioned, lumped together, has inspired me to share with you the singlemost profound insight that I have been apparently placed on this planet to achieve:
A) Games are for fun.
2) The more fun, the better.
One could easily extrapolate that observation to apply to phenomena far beyond the purview of mere games. The more fun, the better. One could say that about education. One could say that about love. And one, such as this one, could say that about life.
Those varied ramifications, however, go beyond the scope of this particular and personal exposition, insofar as my field of recognized expertise needs must remain within the clearly defined confines of the things we actually call games.
Games, I say, are for fun. And the more fun a game is, the better the game.
True, verily, many and varied are the reasons for games and playing them. More varied now, I dare say, than at any other time in recorded, and perhaps even unrecorded history. There are games for learning, games for building community, games for building the body, games for healing, games for growth, games for solving complex problems, games for communicating; there are board games and computer games and serious games and role playing games and pervasive games.
But of all the purported purposes, what I am here to teach is this: the most substantial and consequential benefit of a game is the fun that you create and share playing it. The more fun, the more deeply you learn, the stronger you become, the more complete the solution, the communication, the community, the greater the growth, the more totally you heal. And yes, you could also say that about life.
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