The Infinite Playground

The Infinite Playground
Author: Bernard De Koven
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2022-06-21
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 0262543869

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 Tekinbaş, Jesper Juul, Frank Lantz, and members of Bernie's own family, contribute short interstitial essays.

Joker's Playground

Joker's Playground
Author: Lynn Hale Shauingér
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 57
Release: 2015-02-20
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 149697056X

This book begins with the childhood sweetheart husband who was having strange behavior and nightmare flashbacks of Vietnam leaving his home. His wife and four young children are now stranded and alone. The wife is filled with two overwhelming emotions: (1) freedom, as no longer would she have to deal with this unfathomable behavior, and (2) extreme fear, fear of how she and the children would pay for food and rent in this most expensive city. As the endless calls come in from doctors, lawyers, police, and random women, the wife decides to test the citys infinite possibilities of love and hope. This puts her on the brink of insanity.

Heaven is a Playground

Heaven is a Playground
Author: Rick Telander
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780803294271

In 1974, Rick Telander intended to spend a few days doing a magazine piece on the court wizards of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant. He ended up staying the entire summer, becoming part of the players' lives and eventually the coach of a loose aggregation known as the Subway Stars. Telander tells of everything he saw: the on-court flash, the off-court jargon, the late-night graffiti raids, the tireless efforts of one promoter-hustler-benefactor to get these kids a chance at a college education. He lets the kids speak for themselves, revealing their grand dreams and ambitions. But he never flinches from showing us how far their dreams are from reality. The roots of today's inner-city basketball can be traced to the world Telander presents in "Heaven is a Playground," the first book of its kind. Rick Telander is a senior writer for "Sports Illustrated" and the winner of the 1987 Notre Dame Club Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism.

Vyrkarion

Vyrkarion
Author: J. A. Cullum
Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013-11-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1770530290

Now, in this third and final book of the trilogy, will Jerevan Rayne, who was cursed at a young age to be a wizard, meet his match in Alanna Cairn, who, with almost no training, bears the crystal Vyrkarion? Jerevan knows he must train her, but she wants nothing to do with him. The living crystals, karionin, have been searching for young wizards capable of attuning themselves to the magic of the stones. Will the prophecy that says “the king will die, a god-king take his place, and a child will need to be saved,” come true? Will Aavik, the ruler of the lizard folk, who wants Vyrkarion for himself, find that corruption in the capitol benefits his goal? And will Rhys Cinnac, the halfbreed who was cursed by a god to madness, take the throne? Read Vyrkarion: The Talisman of Anor to find out who kills the king, who’s imprisoned in the Black Tower, who’s kidnapped, and who escapes.

City A-Z

City A-Z
Author: Steve Pile
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2000
Genre: Cities and towns
ISBN: 0415207274

A unique compendium by an international team of contributers which opens up the reader to surprise twists of the imagination, new forms of criticism and to new ways of finding ourselves in fragments of the urban.

Bruno & Lulu's Playground Adventures

Bruno & Lulu's Playground Adventures
Author: Patricia Lakin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2014-04-10
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0698150465

For newly independent reader fans of ELEPHANT & PIGGIE, here’s a book featuring two best friends who love to have fun at the playground. Bruno likes straight-forward adventure while Lulu uses her over-the-top imagination to play. In two short, funny episodes, readers discover why Bruno and Lulu's different personalities help them become even better friends. With simple vocabulary and sentence structure, and told solely through speech bubbles, these adventures are just right for new readers.

American Playgrounds

American Playgrounds
Author: Susan G. Solomon
Publisher: UPNE
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2005
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781584655176

A compelling history, a manifesto, and a manual for change.