Catch. Hide and seek. Rock-paper-scissors... Kids, adults, families, all over the world, from time to time, play together. And during some of those times they play what I am calling "Pointless Games" for two reasons: 1) nobody really keeps score, and 2) there's no reason for playing them other than that they're fun.
When people play Pointless Games, they play hard and they don't cheat (unless it's more fun), and yet it never occurs to them that this activity, this particularly and emphatically pointless activity, should be taken seriously.
What originally attracted me to the word "pointless" was, naturally, the play on words. "Pointlessness" not only describes the reason for playing the games (no point, no reason, actually, other than the sheer fun of it all), but also something about the nature of the games themselves. Pointless games are not played for points, or, if they are, the score doesn't matter.
There's no way to predict what will make a pointless game fun. It's too open-ended. Without score, without even a goal, pretty much anything goes. It's the players who make the game fun. The absolute pointlessness of the game does something to people. It gives them a chance to take responsibility for making the game fun. Sooner or later, somebody does something so unpredictably funny, that you just have to laugh.
Pointless Games tend to put people into silly situations. For no reason. In the Sound and Fury game, people can really do anything they feel like doing - make any kind of sound, any kind of motion - and everyone else not only accepts whatever is done, but they do it, too. And so people make the game funny. Because they can. Because it's more fun. They do things that are funny. They make funny noises. Everyone does them too. And everyone laughs. In Ha Ha Numbers (the game in the photo) you lie on someone's stomach while calling out someone else's number while trying not to forget to respond when someone calls your number. In Hand Land people find themselves lying in a strange position (on their backs, ear-to-ear), looking at a funny world of disembodied hands. And they start playing around. Acting out. Wiggling fingers, touching thumbs, making their hands talk to each other, making it fun. The very pointlessness of the games shifts the responsibility from the leaders to the players, from following the rules to the play itself.
For this reason it tends to escape our collective attention to consider Pointless Games a legitimate games genre. The consequence: we deny it's very legitimacy. There's a minor myriad of in-depth studies of the nature of competition, and a significantly more minor myriad of similarly deep studies about cooperation. And scarcely a glance at universality and social and psychological significance of what might be the most fun we can have together.
Below you will find more than enough reasons to substantiate the reality of this kind of game: the pointless kind.
I started this Knol because I think it will be more fun, and hence more valuable, if I'm not the only one writing it. I invite your edits, refinements, and a sharing of Knoledge, so that together we might develop this into a resource that readers, seeking to celebrate pointlessly, will find Knolworthy.
When people play Pointless Games, they play hard and they don't cheat (unless it's more fun), and yet it never occurs to them that this activity, this particularly and emphatically pointless activity, should be taken seriously.
What originally attracted me to the word "pointless" was, naturally, the play on words. "Pointlessness" not only describes the reason for playing the games (no point, no reason, actually, other than the sheer fun of it all), but also something about the nature of the games themselves. Pointless games are not played for points, or, if they are, the score doesn't matter.
There's no way to predict what will make a pointless game fun. It's too open-ended. Without score, without even a goal, pretty much anything goes. It's the players who make the game fun. The absolute pointlessness of the game does something to people. It gives them a chance to take responsibility for making the game fun. Sooner or later, somebody does something so unpredictably funny, that you just have to laugh.
Pointless Games tend to put people into silly situations. For no reason. In the Sound and Fury game, people can really do anything they feel like doing - make any kind of sound, any kind of motion - and everyone else not only accepts whatever is done, but they do it, too. And so people make the game funny. Because they can. Because it's more fun. They do things that are funny. They make funny noises. Everyone does them too. And everyone laughs. In Ha Ha Numbers (the game in the photo) you lie on someone's stomach while calling out someone else's number while trying not to forget to respond when someone calls your number. In Hand Land people find themselves lying in a strange position (on their backs, ear-to-ear), looking at a funny world of disembodied hands. And they start playing around. Acting out. Wiggling fingers, touching thumbs, making their hands talk to each other, making it fun. The very pointlessness of the games shifts the responsibility from the leaders to the players, from following the rules to the play itself.For this reason it tends to escape our collective attention to consider Pointless Games a legitimate games genre. The consequence: we deny it's very legitimacy. There's a minor myriad of in-depth studies of the nature of competition, and a significantly more minor myriad of similarly deep studies about cooperation. And scarcely a glance at universality and social and psychological significance of what might be the most fun we can have together.
Below you will find more than enough reasons to substantiate the reality of this kind of game: the pointless kind.
I started this Knol because I think it will be more fun, and hence more valuable, if I'm not the only one writing it. I invite your edits, refinements, and a sharing of Knoledge, so that together we might develop this into a resource that readers, seeking to celebrate pointlessly, will find Knolworthy.
- Boxes - a game for hundreds
- Giant Pick-Up Sticks - and I mean, GIANT
- Human Card Games - silly mixers for large groups
- A New Games Album from Lee Rush: a reminiscence of a spirit that is sadly out-of-date.
- Rock-Scissors-Paper Tag - which way to run and why
- Group Juggling - border on impossibility
- Dum Dum Da Da - a singing silliness
- Lemonade - a game of great drama and taggage
- Estray Bonajour - a singing ritual of shoe passage
- Machines - a theater-like game
- Chairless - like the Lap Game, only not
- Psychic Handshake - mystical group gathering
- Prui: the game
- The Sound and the Fury - a warm-up game of almost mystical silliness
- Bernie Played a Game - a game that's played until it's impossible
- Panther, Person, Porcupine: three-team Rock, Scissors, Paper
- Thumper: A game that is as much fun when you're sober
- Three Team Soccer: beyond competition, and perhaps beyond sanity
- Bomb and Shield - a mad milling game
- People Pass - and variants
- People to People - twisted twister
- A What - and why
- Elephant, Giraffe, Toaster - a game of quick and silly response
- Machines - a theater-like game
- J'Accuse: a game of murder by palm tickle
- Scream: group silliness from Emperor Matt
- The Knee Games: a welcome addition to our collection of collective silliness
- Oaqui Ball: e.g.: VolleyFootBasketball
- Planets: a game of universal silliness
- The Evolution of Volleyball according to the Oaqui: introducing Jollyball, Follyball and Polyball
- Of Schmerltzes, Sockballs and Pantyhose: safe, soft, ball-like games
- HaHa Numbers: beyond sanity
- see also: Roll Over
- The Prince of Wales: beyond Numbers
- Big Booty: beyond The Prince of Wales
- Wrapping Paper: An hilarious game for all ages
- Playing with the Grandkids - a smattering of games for loving fun
- Human Spring - a game for two
- Not-so-Crazy Eights - playing for family unity
- Thumb Wars - beyond thumb wrestling
- It Could be Worse - or better
- Handland - puppet theater of the air
- Polaroid - build an image and see what develops
- Everlasting Games - pointless fun forever
- The Frog - make a friend for life
- The Blessings Game - bless each other in and with fun
- Verbal Ping Pong - and beyond
- Redondo - group doodling
- Food Fun for Festivating* Families
- Elephant, Elephant, Elephant: a card game of significant hilarity
- It Could Be Worse: And it could be even worse than that
- Oaqui Pong: An infinity of Ping Pong variations...
- Found Object Scrabble: what to do at a restaurant while you're waiting to get served
- Minip is a kind of UnTennis for people who like playing more than winning.
- Twenty Questions begins with a discussion of the nature of human/computer interface as. revealed by the game of Twenty Questions, and concludes with a description of a new variation called "Plenty Questions."
- Checkers and beyond
- What, you ask, is a Oaqui Game answers the age-old conundrum.
- Long Knives and the Big Plate Special: a delicious and playful way to teach a remarkably spiritual message
- Subversive Golf - as more or less developed by the DeepFUN group
- BaaBaaTwinkleEFG - a game of mental exacerbation
- Higher Five and Clap You - a couple of hand games for silly times
- Mutual Self-Congratulations - another hand game
- A Million Ways to Play Marbles, At Least, from the Well-Played Game
- Further thoughts on Pointlessness - from the Deep Fun weblog
Collections of pointless Pointless Games for different groups
- Playful things for couples
- Elder games for groups
- Pointless play for executives
- Seven Ways to Make Almost Anything More Fun
- Junkyard Sports - very unofficial sports
- More Pointless Games of Dubious Purpose - as requested by various workshop participant
- More Pointless Games - from the web
- Theater Game Warm-Ups from the Improv Encyclopedia
- Student Drinking Games - even more pointless without alcohol - see, for example, Bunny
- Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is one of his earliest published accounts of his experiments in search of flow. Though the accounts of the research itself are scientifically joyless, the insights and conclusions are positively inspiring. His more recent book, Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience is a more accessible recapitulation of his earlier findings.
- The New Game Plan for Recovery: Rediscovering the Positive Power of Play, by friend and contributor Tobin Quereau
- The Art of Play, by Dr. Adam Blatner - one of the best, and most playful resources on sociodramatic play
- Amazon.com might be able to find you a copy of the original, 1978 edition of my The Well-Played Game. Click here for the third edition.
- Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary - "...Torvalds' real genius lies not so much in his programming abilities, though those are extraordinary, but in his capacity for that thing so many of us never learn to do: have fun. Fun, Torvalds believes, is at heart very far from the frivolous thing capitalism and religion have made it out to be. Fun is, rather, the highest form of human behavior, the thing that comes after survival and community, the thing, in other words, that not only makes life worth living, but is - or ought to be - a lifestyle in itself.
- Fun Works: Leslie Yerkes makes a major contribution to those of us who believe that it is actually possible for work to be fun: case studies, stories, eleven "principles" for making work fun, and vice versa
- Managing to Have Fun is Matt Weinstein's artful collection of actually fun things managers have managed to do in the name of work. His stories of the silly, good-hearted things they've done are entertaining, empowering and inspiring. Not profound. Not transforming. But definitely funniferous.*
- Bob Gregson's Incredible Indoor Games Book: One Hundred and Sixty Group Projects, Games and Activities is a loving and lovely collection of creative, collaborative, family-building fun. His Outrageous Outdoor Games Book carries theme of collaborative creative play to, well, the outdoors. His most most recent contribution, Take Part Art, proves a valuable addition to this treasury of creativity.
- The New Games Book is a recipe for throwing a party for an entire community. It conveys a spirit of play and openness that reflects the best of the early 70's. More New Games is a valuable extension to theme, as long as you already own The New Games Book
- Games for Actors and Non-Actors "A genuinely inspiring handbook packed with games, exercises, methods and techniques from the world-famous author of Theatre of the Oppressed."
- Improvisation for theatre by Viola Spolin is an excellent introduction to the use of theater games with children, and for me the foundation of my exploration of children's games and play. Her "Seven Aspects of Spontaneity" in theoritical part of the book is a most insightful introduction to play and creativity, and worth the price of the book alone
- Nothing About Us Without Us: building instructions for a community playground for all abilities
- The Romance of Sound and Senses: Ken Feit's poetic word play (PDF download)
hajush
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Pointless, or endless?
Anyway, there are so many games, it's hard to work through this document without some kind of ordering? Or am I missing the point? (This is Harold by the way, it only is letting me comment anonymously).
There is a kind of ordering, actually, in the list of games - from games that you'd play with a whole crowd to games that you'd play with just a few folk.
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