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This season of make-believe and dressing up is a good time to think about pretending—one of the cornerstones of play. For kids, make-believe is partly aspirational. If you’re little and you dress as a crime fighter or superhero you take in the fantasy, feeling power surge in your imagination. You have nothing to fear, even fear itself. Bad guys beware. And so too the ghostly hosts that will roam our neighborhoods this Halloween, scary in themselves, scaring off fear. They’ll […]

Continue Reading about What Are You Going to Be? (For Halloween….) Published on:
October 29, 2014

Seinfeld is not, as people often claim, a “show about nothing.” It is a television show about four narcissists whose seemingly petty dialogue and ripple-effect exploits produced a significant impact on the modern pop culture landscape.

I confess―I’m a Seinfeld devotee. In fact, I recently completed my own personal “Summer of George,” where I re-watched every episode from the pilot through the finale. While I frequently caught myself reciting the lines along with the characters, I realized the brilliance of the […]

Continue Reading about “I’m Sorry, the Card Says ‘Moops’”: Play in Seinfeld Published on:
October 27, 2014

As a child who preferred playing outside with sticks and leaves, only a handful of dolls ever really captured my attention. In fact, I only recall true fondness for four dolls: Baby Tenderlove, Raggedy Ann, Darci cover girl, and my Cabbage Patch Kid—Kendall Walter Winner.
In 1983, at the age of 13, I wasn’t interested in Kendall as “just a doll,” I was more fascinated by the fact that he was “one-of-a-kind.” At the time I didn’t understand the mathematical algorithms […]

Continue Reading about Cabbage Patch Kids: A 1983 Phenomenon Published on:
October 20, 2014

Biologists who study the fossil record note that dramatic blooms in the number and diversity of species interrupt long periods of stasis or gradual change in animal forms. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould termed this phenomenon “punctuated equilibrium” and wrote a book, Wonderful Life, about the sudden efflorescence of fossils during the Cambrian period about 550 million years ago. Interestingly, despite the drastic difference in timescales, this phenomenon has a parallel in the history of games, for at certain times the […]

Continue Reading about A Second Revolution in Game Distribution Published on:
October 9, 2014

My friends and I embrace game nights: snacks, beverages, stuffed mascots, inspirational posters. Some people don’t, probably because not everyone can handle it when (not if) their true colors emerge in the throes of battle. Similarly, television series use games as plot devices to place characters in opposition to each other, draw out the best (and worst) in their personalities, and reinforce the show’s central themes. Here are some clear winners.
Seinfeld: “The Label Maker”
Quirky Kramer and slimy Newman play Risk, […]

Continue Reading about Screen-Play: Television Characters Ruin Game Night, Too Published on:
September 29, 2014

Homer and Cicero wrote about incidents involving sea robbers that threatened the trading routes of Ancient Greece and Rome more than 2,000 years ago. Since then, each era has encountered new brands of pirates. Popular culture today glorifies the picture of a band of outlaws who are guided by the wind and their own set of rules—consider swashbuckler Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. In recent years, many video game designers adapt tales of the sea to […]

Continue Reading about Pirates Sail on the Video Game Screen Published on:
September 25, 2014

What comes to mind when you hear the term “paper toys”? Whatever you envision, chances are the idea of paper toys in our digital era doesn’t evoke quite the same level of enthusiasm as some other playthings do. Paper toys seem quiet and simple, perhaps even old-fashioned. But paper toys such as paper dolls, which first appeared in France and England in the 18th century, have proven themselves enduring playthings for centuries. And a recent visit with a young cousin […]

Continue Reading about Of Monsters and Airplanes: The Enduring Joy of Paper Toys Published on:
September 23, 2014

What is your game? There seem to be an infinite number of games to play with one simple deck of playing cards. What game did you learn, perched on your parents’ or grandparents’ knees? What game brings you feelings of home and belonging?
My family’s game was Rummy. After we had mastered Go Fish, we were armed with egg carton card holders (30 years before the collective creativity of Pinterest) and introduced to the game, “according to Hoyle.” My sister and […]

Continue Reading about Let Me Teach You the Game of My People: Card Games, Identity, and Finding Home Again Published on:
September 16, 2014

Frequently my two-year-old daughter Sidney greets me with two words: “chase, Daddy.” It’s a request that usually leads to lots of laughter and me circling around tables and chairs as I chase her throughout our house. In psychologist Peter Gray’s book Free to Learn, he notes that young mammals of nearly all species play chase games.

Continue Reading about The Lasting Appeal of Chase Games Published on:
September 11, 2014