The Well-Played Game: A Player's Philosophy

In order to be silly, I have to do whatever is needed to make it obvious to you that I am being silly, and to make it obvious to myself that I am not being too silly—that I am aware of you, of your needs, of your willingness to be silly with me.

Then we can all be silly. Then being silly restores us, completes us, enlarges us.

But, at the same time, we begin to wonder, if our purpose was to find a game we could play well together, what are so many of us doing on the sidelines, waiting for the game to end so that we can get back in?

Think of the accomplishment, the real victory experienced by our community when winning and losing become unifying rather than divisive forces

Once again we return to the heart-warming realization that games are not life. Games are throwaway items. We play them only because we feel like playing them. They don’t mean anything for real, and neither does quitting them.

At all times there is an acceptance of a shared responsibility for the safety of those with whom you play.

It is not measured by the score, it is not measured by the game, it is measured by those of us who are playing it.

I consider a game to be something that provides us with a common goal, the achievement of which has no bearing on anything that is outside the game

with which we shared the brief but beautiful belief that all we really needed was love.

Bernie so often reminds us that there is no higher purpose than play. Like making music, creating images, or telling stories, engaging in play is what it means to be human. Games do not have to justify themselves by appealing to something outside themselves.

He encourages players to change the given rules of a game as they see fit. And he seems to advocate the idea that any one particular game is merely an occasion for players to meet up and play well together