Bernie DeKoven

Second Grade

One day, when I was in second grade, I remember thinking to myself: "this could be a lot more fun, Bernard." I mean, really. I remember thinking how even workbooks used to be more fun than having to sit here, at my desk, still, silent, with all these kids around me, listening, when we could be mucking about with some marvelously educational materials, inventing physics. And I'm pretty sure it was then that I began to devote myself to the pursuit of what I have decided to call "the Playful Path." Because the very next thing I remember was me, Bernard, joking. toying. playing, talking a lot. Even sitting in the hall, waiting to see the principal, I was always on the alert, always looking to make it fun, for me, for anyone I could get to play with.

Teaching and Playing

By the time I finally graduated college, and graduate school, I was pursuing the Playful Path, professionally, even though I never called it that. I taught fifth and sixth grade everything. Reading, math, science, physical education, whatever. It was me and them. So I began making games out of everything. No, I began with the fun of whatever it was that we were supposed to be doing, with the fun of it. We didn't just read, we played reading games. And we played with reading. With the sheer fun of reading, o, I don't know, braille, perhaps. Or morse code. Or chemical symbols perhaps.

And fun was had. And learning was had. And we definitely weren't had. Except for once. In one class I taught. Sixth grade. And all of a sudden I learned that the kids were going to be subjected to a test that would determine whether they would make the academic track in high school. It was what they call "the little death." No, wait. That's something else. But it did feel like something died because of that test. Like, because of that test, we had to stop working on inventing our own hieroglyphics. And suddenly the whole thing, even teaching, didn't seem like very much fun.

The Theater of Children's Games

So we, me and my degree, found our way to an experimental, remodeled-factory, magnet elementary school called "The Intensive Learning Center," and the title of Curriculum Development Specialist, with our own parquet-floored, carpeted-risers, theater-in-the-round light and audio booth, within which to develop curriculum for the entire school district, in deed. Me, I had to do something fun. So I had these 45 minute sessions with kids from all over the 5th and 6th floor of a factory building in not-so-upscale Northeast Philadelphia. First grade kids. Fifth grade kids. The lot. And I decided that me and the kids, we'd reinvent theater right then and there. True to my understanding of the playful path, I wanted us to start from scratch, from what we know, from the collective scraps of the lives we can share with each other.

And the kids taught me their theater. And I played with them. And we called it "games."

A curriculum is what everyone else called it, fortunately. Finally, the "Interplay Games Catalog." Five volumes. One thousand games. Coded according to an elaborate system, so that if the kids liked a particular game, the teacher could find another they'd probably like as much.

And that was it. That was my theater curriculum. And they didn't fire me. In fact, they funded research. And I taught it to teachers. Games. I did these classes with teachers, and all we did was play kids games, and talk about it all, and it became, well, deep fun. Sometimes profoundly moving fun.

The Games Preserve and the Playful Path

And then we, me, my wife and kids, moved to the country and built "The Games Preserve," a retreat center for the study of play, where I, and anyone else willing to brave the rural realities of my 25 acres in Northeastern Pennsylvania, could play with an actual barn full of games - board games, table games, puzzles, flying rings, a sliding board... And there I began to learn and teach, not so much games, even though there were thousands, but what I came to call the Playful Path. And I had my wife and kids and 25 acres as teachers. And guinea fowl, and sometimes millions of these bugs.

This is where I explored everything I could about the path I was on, this Playful one. And where I discovered that I not only "channel" the Playful Path, but also that I knew how to teach it. It was easy. It was what I've been doing all this time. What tool could be better tuned to the Playful Path than games? Especially the games I liked to teach, and make up. The Pointless Games.

This is where Dr. Brian Sutton-Smith used to bring his University of Pennsylvania classes. The Games Preserve. Where we built a peaceful, profound place for play. In the middle of the country. 90 minutes from Philadelphia. 2.5 hours from New York. Where year after year I thought about, played with, explored, studied, discussed, game after game after game. Kids' games. Family games. Games for one player. Games for the masses.

New Games

Masses. Like the approximately 250,000 people who attended the last day of the Bicentennial celebrations in Philadelphia. Like the millions of people I reached as co-director of the New Games Foundation, designer of the New Games Training, an alternative to competitive sports that now is taught at almost every elementary school in the world.

Computer Games

And our family flourished. And just when we ran out of money, I found a job in California, as a professional game designer, for a computer games company called "Automated Simulations." This gave me the chance to try out my understanding of the Playful Path in a virtually virgin computer jungle.

I created designs for what we wound up calling "Mind Toys." Jim Connely programmed my first game, Ricochet, and Jaron, Mr.Virtual, Lanier programmed one of my more bizarre games, Alien Garden.

Later, I got to work with Children 's Television Workshop. In fact, Dave Winer, of outlining and RSS fame, helped me develop the prototype for a game I modeled after the children's game of Streets and Alleys. I designed it so that it could be played with one key, hoping to establish some sort of precedent for games that kids with limited mobility could play.

Junk, Thing-a-ma-bots, and New Games, cont'd

The 2004 publication of my book, Junkyard Sports proved to be just the opportunity I had hoped it would be - an invitation to the sports and physical education establishments to come out and play. Based on the tradition of backyard, street, and sandlot sports, Junkyard Sports are traditional sports, reinvented. Sports redesigned, where the players make their own equipment out of whatever they can find, and adapted so they can be played wherever the players happen to be, with whomever happens to be there. In other words, sports, like new games, get played for fun, for everyone. Played playfully.

And all the while I was involved in designing more games for some more companies. Did I mention Ideal Toys, Children's Computer Workshop, CBS Software, Time-Warner. And I worked with Mattel Media. And just this year my very first commercially produced competitively silly card game, "Thing-a-ma-bots."

Recently, more than 25 years after the first New Games Tournament, I found myself on the adjunct faculty of the Multimedia Division of the USC School of Cinema-Television, teaching the principles of New Games, watching my students create what had to be the world's first Giant Human Card game/event., my book, The Well-Played Game, now required reading amongst the computer gamerati thanks to excerpts published in Salen and Zimmerman's Game Design Reader.

Today, through my programs and publications on this DeepFUN.com website, Majorfun.com and Junkyard Sports, I do what I can to help people from all over the world reclaim their playfulness.

Bernie is a lifetime member of The Association for the Study of Play and the 2006 winner of the Ifill-Raynolds award from the North American Simulation and Gaming Society.

Bernie DeKoven

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