When we play well together, we have made an embellishment, a useless, spontaneous, joyous human decoration on the shape of necessity – a piece of junk art, a beautiful graffito.

- Bernie DeKoven, The Well-Played Game

a conversation with Bernie DeKovenEric ZimmermanIndieCade 2012

When we are playing we are only playing. We do not mean anything else by it....

When we are playing well, we are at our best. We are fully engaged, totally present, and yet, at the same time, we are only playing.

The nature of a play community is such that it embraces the players more than it directs us towards any particular game. Thus it matters less to us what game we are playing, and more to us that we are willing to play together.

No matter what game we create, no matter how well we are able to play it, it is our game, and we can change it when we need to.

We can make up any kind of rule that we want to. We could make the court three feet wide. We could play volleyball with balloons. We could give everybody a ball. We could play with two nets. With four nets. With a moving net. Without a net. We could play silently, in the dark, with a luminescent ball. We could play on the ice. There could be three teams. Four. One.

There is a very fine balance between play and game.... On the one hand we have the playing mind—innovative, magical, boundless. On the other is the gaming mind—concentrated, determined, intelligent. And on the hand that holds them both together we have the notion of playing well.

The game offers us a purpose. It says: Win.

Play offers us purposelessness. It says: Play!

Odd, isn't it? Paradoxical. Apparently without solution. Is play the completion of game, or is the game completion of play?

I think of games as social fictions, performances, like works of art, which exist only as long as they are continuously created.

They are not intended to replace reality but to suspend consequences. They are not life. If anything, they are bigger than life.

At the same time, they are works of art, they do reflect reality.

If I’m playing well, I am, in fact, complete. I am without purpose because all my purposes are being fulfilled. This is the purpose of this game for me... so I could experience this excellence, this shared excellence of the well-played game. This is a veritable end unto itself. When we have this clarity, when it is always obvious to us what we are playing for, we can play for growth, wisdom, knowledge, truth, but always for the sake of playing.

There's a difference between playing to win and having to win...

When you have to win, you're willing to break whatever rules you can if that would help you get closer to the goal. When you have to win you can't leave the game until you have finally, ultimately, won.

What's amazing to me about all this is that the game itself doesn't change. The rules and the conventions are the same. But the manner of playing the game is completely different.

If we can’t let go of our games, we can’t hold on to each other.