Infinite playground : a player's guide to imagination / Bernard de Koven; with Holly Gramazio.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

DeKoven, Bernie, 1941-2018.

Contributor:

Gramazio, Holly.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Games.

Games--Social aspects.

Play.

Imagination.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (207 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : MIT Press, 2020.

Summary:

A play-centered invitation to experience the power and delight unlocked by imagination.Bernard De Koven (1941-2018) was a pioneering designer of games and theorist of fun. He studied games long before the field of game studies existed. For De Koven, games could not be reduced to artifacts and rules; they were about a sense of transcendent fun. This book, his last, is about the imagination: the imagination as a playground, a possibility space, and a gateway to wonder. The Infinite Playground extends a play-centered invitation to experience the power and delight unlocked by imagination. It offers a curriculum for playful learning.De Koven guides the readers through a series of observations and techniques, interspersed with games. He begins with the fundamentals of play, and proceeds through the private imagination, the shared imagination, and imagining the world--observing, the things we imagine can become the world. Along the way, he reminisces about playing ping-pong with basketball great Bill Russell; begins the instructions for a game called Reception Line with Mill around; and introduces blathering games--Blather, Group Blather, Singing Blather, and The Blather Chorale--that allow the player's consciousness to meander freely.Delivered during the last months of his life, The Infinite Playground has been painstakingly cowritten with Holly Gramazio, who worked together with coeditors Celia Pearce and Eric Zimmerman to complete the project as Bernie De Koven's illness made it impossible for him to continue writing. Other prominent game scholars and designers influenced by De Koven, including Katie Salen Tekinbas, Jesper Juul, Frank Lantz, and members of Bernie's own family, contribute short interstitial essays. ContributorsIan Bogost, Stephen Conway, Adriaan de Jongh, Elyon De Koven, Rocky De Koven, Mary Flanagan, Gonzalo Frasca, Tracy Fullerton, Holly Gramazio, Catherine Herdlick, Jesper Juul, Frank Lantz, Colleen Macklin, Celia Pearce, Sebastian Quack, Lee Rush, Katie Salen Tekinbas, John Sharp, Tassos Stevens, Akira Thompson, Greg Trefry, Douglas Wilson, Zach Wood, Eric Zimmerman

Contents:

Foreword: Press play / Celia Pearce

Introduction / Holly Gramazio

What-if-ing / Rocky De Koven

Introductory

The fundamentals of play

The private imagination

The shared imagination

The working imagination

Being in the world

A lack of conclusion.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9780262358811

0262358816

9780262358804

0262358808

OCLC:

1183724056

Publisher Number:

EB00811222 Recorded Books