In his final work a visionary game designer reveals how a surprising range of play-based
experiences can unlock our imagination and help us capture the power of fun and delight.
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.
