Book Reviews

childhood intruding on adulthood. Discussions include instances of blurring age
boundaries, provide examples of growing
sideways as an alternative way of growing
and being, and disassociates the idea fromrigid age categories—all suggesting thatgrowing sideways is as valid as growing up.
The monograph explores whether power
structures around gender affect possibilities of both upwards and sideways growth.
Focusing on children’s literature, televisionseries, films, and participatory events, theauthor provides new models for understanding and navigating growth, exploring
how strategies for sideways growth might
operate. Sideways growth, she suggests,
is a broad cultural phenomenon, traced
through alternative cultural practices, altering affective and other meanings of bodies,clothes, behaviors, attitudes, and spaces.
Sideways growth is a broad cultural
phenomenon, and this research contributes to linking other research on age andchildren, while endeavoring to expand
age studies to concerns other than gerontology. By deconstructing the idea of a
grand narrative of the dichotomy between
childhood and adulthood, growing sideways, then, evokes improvised, rather
than rule-governed growth. Through an
exploration of power structures aroundage and gender, the alternative of growing sideways as a distinct alternative discourse about human growth provides a
fresh perspective for supporting young
people mostly unfamiliar with the idea.
This monograph effectively destabilizes
the boundaries between childhood andadulthood by examining a range of socialand political phenomena and a varietyof cultural forms. The author maintains
that this monograph could be considered“a toolkit for identifying, contextualizing and investigating alternative ideas ofgrowth” (p. 196). With a strong theoretical
approach and a thoroughness of investigation, the book clearly meets, if not exceeds,
its intent. Anyone researching sideways
growth or who supports children andyouth comfortably negotiating the processof growing up will find this monographinformative and useful.
—Betty Liebovich, Goldsmiths University,London, United Kingdom
The Infinite Playground:
A Player’s Guide to theImagination
Bernand De Koven with
Holly Gramazio; Celia Pearce and Eric
Zimmerman, eds.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2020.
Foreword, introduction, what-if-ing,a lack of conclusion, further reading,contributors. 186 pp. $29.95 paperback.
ISBN: 9780262044073
The Infinite Playground proposes that playful thinking and collective imagining canhave a transformative impact on the world.
Bernard De Koven taught, designed, andpreserved play for over fifty years. His
seminal work, The Well-Played Game(1978, 2013) continues to inspire students
and designers with its focus on designing
for the play community. The Infinite Playground continues his interest in play andcommunity by examining how collectiveplay and imagination can transform theworld into a space of possibility.
The volume aims to aid “people in thefields of game design, film, multimedia,

331

332

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF

P L AYscience, art, architecture, and literature, tojoin in the collective effort to create new,and concurrently imaginary, invitations
to playful learning” (p. 5). To address thisdiverse audience, the text draws fromgame studies, educational theory, the arts,
theoretical physics, and the perspectivesof professional sports and TV personalities to complement the author’s personal
experiences and observations of play inaction. Interstitial essays from leading
figures in the play and games community
close each section of the text, providing
invaluable examples of the transformational impact of De Koven’s ideas within
academic, design, and personal contexts.
Perhaps the most successful aspect of thisbook is the exemplification of core ideas
within twenty-six games that position thereader as player and provide space for thereader’s ideas and reflections on the text
to emerge through the act of play. One
example, Prui, demonstrates the power ofbeing within a collective by asking players
to wander around a room together andseek to gather everyone into one big Prui(or group) through simple social interactions all while they keep their eyes closed.
Following the introduction, the “Fundamentals of Play,” section 1, introduces
De Koven’s well-played game (a concept
where players work together to make thegame fun), play community, and views ofsocial politics in play. Play, he argues, is
one of the best ways to access the imagination because play is “presence and responsiveness, lightness and attentiveness,
improvisation and creativity, a willingness
to let go and become part of somethingnew” (p. 22). Play takes on the broadest
possible definition, and often we promote
playfulness rather than more formal playforms (such as games) for engaging withthe imagination.
Section 2, “The Private Imagination,” discusses playing inside one’s own
imagination and how this can reshape perspectives on the world and allow accessto Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s often referenced state of flow. The discussion ofempathy and flow states are particularly
persuasive regarding the social power ofplay. De Koven argues that play allows
access to the experience of being someone else and can evoke empathy. It istherefore a “failure of the imagination”(p. 57) if players do not try to empathizewith others; empathy is always accessible
because play is always accessible. Flow is
introduced as a social concept, throughan applied game of Blather (p. 59). In thegame, players must speak a flow of consciousness without fear, alone or together.
De Koven argues that playing this game,and its multiple variations, promotes asocial state of flow and empathy.
Section 3, “The Shared Imagination,” extends the social reading of flow
theory by introducing “coliberation” (p.
82), the relationship between “we andme” in group play to reach a state of positive social play and collective imagining.
The social politics of playing together are
expertly considered throughout the text
thanks to the inclusion of game variations
and techniques to engage players—forexample, by designing for a “well-timedcheat” or permission to stop. Too often
game design focuses on rules and constraints rather than the (social) experienceof play. The text provides an alternativeand invaluable set of design approaches forplayer-centered social collaborative play.
Section 4, “The Working Imagination,”

Book Reviews

showcases the manifestation of playfulness under different guises within scientific, business, and education workplacesettings. This leads to the final and mostambitious section, “Being in the World,”
which focuses on transformational potential by arguing that basing the world on collectively imagined constructs and systems
provides us all with the power to reimagine
such systems if we so wish. The section provides examples of how ecological and moral
issues may be addressed through collectivereimagining. As a result, a transferable playful framework for collective reimagining
can be formed by the reader with a littleimagination. The book closes with “a lackof conclusion,” a poignant reflection on alife dedicated to play.
The Infinite Playground is fundamentally about playing in the world together
and how playfulness can shed light on oursocial selves and communities, the systems
we collectively coproduce to govern andshape our society, and how these can bereimagined through play. The core ideas
complement James P. Carse’s Finite andInfinite Games (2013) and Miguel Sicart’s
Play Matters (2014) and make a valuable
contribution by promoting ambition in theuse of play and imagination within a rangeof contexts while providing guidelines forenlivening this ambition. The text willinterest students, academics, and practitioners in play, games studies and gamedesign, performing arts, business, andsocial sciences, and it is an ideal introduction to the work of De Koven and otherleading practitioners in play and gamedesign.
The book is part game studies text,
part game design manual, part “somethingto play,” and part love letter to the work ofits author. It reaches out its hand, whispers Prui, and invites you to join the playcommunity.
—Lynn Love, Abertay University, Dundee,
United Kingdom
Making Games: The Politics andPoetics of Game Creation Tools
Stefan Werning
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021.
Introduction, notes, references, andindex. 158 pp. $25 hardcover.
ISBN: 9780262044837
The assumption behind The MIT Press
Playful Thinking series is “video games
are such a flourishing medium that any
new perspective on them is likely to show
us something unseen or forgotten” (p. vii).
As a part of the series, Making Games: ThePolitics and Poetics of Game Creation Tools
by Stefan Werning provides such a newperspective.
The goal of the book is to “make senseof the increasing abundance of game-making tools and to conceptualize their influence on both the politics and aesthetics ofdigital games” (p. 6). Werning goes on toexplain that game creation is a dialogue
among the game designer, the development tools she uses, and the broader social
context in which she designs. This “sociotechnical system” (p. 5) view of game creation provides much of the fodder for thenew perspective found in the book. From
this view, tool use is not just a creativepractice but also “a cultural and communicative practice” (p. ix).
The first chapter, “Making Sense ofTools,” highlights a major theme: making333