It's About Fun - Deep Fun!

Welcome to Deep Fun: the virtual library of fun-provoking articles by Blue DeKoven

featuring his vast collection of:

Dedicated to the memory of Bernard Louis "Blue" De Koven
1941-2018

Thoughts of the Deeply Fun Kind

Shalom and Au Revoir

By Blue | Nov 7, 2017

  Shalom and Au Revoir By | November 7, 2017 | 0 Well, my friend, it’s time. I’m not going to be posting on https://deepfun.com or on https://aplayfulpath.com for the foreseeable future. There’s enough already here for a lifetime of play, and the rest of my life needs attention. It’s a good time, considering. There’s…

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New Games and the Table Top

By Blue | Nov 6, 2017

My good friend Stephen Conway of The Spiel and I were invited to present at the Champagne-Urbana campus of Illinois University. Stephen presented one evening, I the next. Stephen brought a great bag or several full of games, and began by placing a few games, one on each table. He’d teach each game and leave…

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The Kiss of the Frog: a Performance Game

By Blue | Nov 3, 2017

The sacred ritual known as the Kiss of the Frog is performed as follows: Players (those with sufficient mastery of the Way of the Frog) first create their own frog and then let it nest on top of their heads (a goodly place for your average hand frog). Thus beginneth the performance of the Kiss…

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Days of Play & Flavors of Fun

By Blue | Nov 2, 2017

If it took you a few hours just to enumerate the vast implications of arriving at a viable prescription for 100 Days of Play, imagine how long it would take you to eviscerate the innuendos of a so-called list of the 54 Flavors of Fun that consists of 146 items.

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Deep Fun and the Feast of Fools

By Blue | Nov 1, 2017

Therein lies the heart of the fools’ art, as far as I’m concerned, and you should be to. Retain the basics, yes. But focus on celebrating fun, as pure and simple as you can make it.

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Fearful and Fearless

By Blue | Oct 31, 2017

Fearful and Fearless can be such intimate friends. Each all about fear.

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Imagine a Person

By Blue | Oct 30, 2017

Imagine a Person By | October 30, 2017 | 0 Imagine a person imagining a person Homage to Ken Feit Imagine a person: could be young, could be old, could be very of either, or both. Imagine someone -male and/or fe- , both and/or either. That’s the one. Let’s call this person Fred. Old Fred. Wise…

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Making Belief

By Blue | Oct 27, 2017

Making Belief By | October 27, 2017 | 6 Maybe it’s not about proof or truth after all, this wisdom thing, this knowing of things that we sometimes ascribe to the old and weathered. Maybe it’s about pretending, acting, maybe about assuming that things are already the way we want them to be, the way…

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Bernie DeKoven

...author of The Well-Played Game and A Playful Path, illustrates the power of adult playfulness, demonstrating how joyfully adults welcome the opportunity to celebrate their playful selves.

Bernie (Blue) teaches and designs funny games. Over the course of his 45 year career he has explored how fun and playfulness can positively affect every aspect of personal and interpersonal, community and institutional health. Many of the most important trends in games today, from large scale community games to casual game apps have roots in Bernie’s influential ideas. He is the author of The Well-Played Game (originally published by Doubleday in 1978 and reissued in 2013 by MIT Press) as well as Junkyard SportsA Playful Path (over 654,000 downloads), and a CD Recess for the Soul, demonstrating how to have more fun in your inner playground. He continues to make his work publicly available through his seminars and websites.

Fun Is Easy

It’s wherever you are, in whatever you are doing or sensing or thinking. It’s between you and the person you’re with or the machine you’re using or the table you’re sitting at or the path you’re walking down. It’s not something to strive for. But something to melt into, to sink into, to open up to.

Fun isn’t the hard thing. The hard thing is letting yourself have it ...

The first Bernie DeKoven Big Fun Award at IndieCade 2017