Let’s Play Games!

This Salon with Alex Danco will be all about games. What is a “game”, and what does it mean to “play”? 

What exactly constitutes a “Game”, and what constitutes “Play”, is one of the hardest questions to precisely answer. Puppies and kittens do it; kids do it; and grownups certainly do it too – although by then, we’ve learned too much. There is without a doubt a meta-meaning that is conveyed in play. When two puppies play-fight, it’s clear that the play fighting denotes real fighting, but does not denote what real fighting would denote. Moreover, there are without a doubt some rules to playing. But what are those rules? And in what sense are they rules, and what does it mean to break the rules?

We’ll draw from three texts in this Salon; all are recommended but optional reading:

-Finite & Infinite Games, by James P Carse (This book will make you feel good reading it)

-Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis, by Eric Berne (This book will make you feel bad reading it)

-Steps Towards and Ecology of the Mind, by Gregory Bateson (This is a big hefty text! But some of the sections about games are very approachable. And it’s really deep.)

And, if we’re able to make it work, we’ll try to get the whole Salon to actually play a few games together to put some of these ideas into practice. We might do a Jackbox if we can make that work; or if not we’ll do something simpler. TBD.

I hope you all can make it to this salon!

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