The Well-Played Game: A Player’s Philosophy

The return of a classic book about games and play that illuminates the relationship between the well-played game and the well-lived life.

In The Well-Played Game, games guru Bernard De Koven explores the interaction of play and games, offering players--as well as game designers, educators, and scholars--a guide to how games work. De Koven’s classic treatise on how human beings play together, first published in 1978, investigates many issues newly resonant in the era of video and computer games, including social gameplay and player modification. The digital game industry, now moving beyond its emphasis on graphic techniques to focus on player interaction, has much to learn from The Well-Played Game.

Bernard De Koven was a leading game designer and theorist of fun. He was a codirector of the New Games Foundation, a founder of the Games Preserve, the author of the game studies classic The Well-Played Game: A Player’s Philosophy (MIT Press), Junkyard Sports, and A Playful Path, and creator of the website deepfun.com.