Playfair: Everybody's Guide to Noncompetitive Play

I've been using the ideas in this book since it first came out. It has brilliant and hysterically funny ideas taken from Matt Weinstein and Joel Goodman's work with groups of people all over the world. Matt Weinstein has a company, also named Playfair, which conducts ice-breaking events for incoming freshmen at colleges (and that measurably reduces dropouts from college!) and for corporate work-teams. They've worked with some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies and get people to shed some of their stand-off-ishness and become more able to relate to/with each other and to communicate more effectively. Frankly, I've never seen anything as joyous as a "Playfair" conducted by Matt Weinstein or a conference conducted by Joel Goodman. And my groups in workshops and my audiences in the many keynote addresses I do have all benefited from the activities in this book which I've used over the years. If you can get your hands on a copy of this book, you'll be amply rewarded!

I like "Playfair," but not for the reasons it was written. I don't need to create touchy-feely, "shiny happy people" bonding activities for white-collar employees. I'm interested in computer game design and this book is great for learning about a concept that most people don't even know exists. I believe that non-competitive computer and console games will breathe new life into the game industry in the future. It may be more important than "Controlled Randomness" which also increases the value and importance of a game. Anyone interested in discovering how to make original games that alleviate instead of aggravate should buy a copy of this book as soon as possible.