Cooperative Games for Adults

Adults playing silly games? That can’t be right. Oh, but it is! Not only can adults play cooperative New Games, they do so joyfully. How can this be so? Aren’t games for kids? As we grow up, games become increasingly organized and competitive. Fewer and fewer kids can keep up with the level of competition and drop out of organized sport and games. This percentage keeps dropping until by the time kids get to their late teens, less than 10% are participating in the games.

In a recent article in “i” newspaper in the UK, “A survey of over 1,500 school pupils revealed that only 12% of girls are reaching the standard level of fitness by the age of 14 – half the rate for boys, which is itself alarmingly low at 24%.” The study goes on to say that most admit that “(students) are not as physically active as they would like to be – but want a wider range of activities…to be put on the timetable to encourage them to participate.”

So, a majority of people mostly miss out on the pure joy of playing that they only are able to experience at a very young age pre-school age, if at all. I have met people who say they NEVER played, even as children. I find this hard to believe, but they insist that it’s true. It just emphasizes the point that if it happened, it was so long ago that they can’t even remember it. Still, almost all people do love playing just for fun at any age. The trick is to create conditions where they have permission to do so. That’s what I do for a living, in part. I create an environment where it’s safe to play and act a bit silly.

Playing cooperative New Games as an adult is as much fun as playing was when the players were children. For many people who didn’t play much, it is more so since they didn’t get much opportunity to play as children. When I introduce the games, very often people will come up to me afterwards and say things like, “I haven’t done this in 30 years! I’ve forgotten how much fun it is!” One time when I was introducing the games in a park in Stockholm, Sweden, I saw an older gentleman watching us intently from across the street. I shouted out to him that he could join us if he liked. He shook his head “No.” A bit later, he was on the same side of the street, still looking interested. “I again welcomed him to join and this time he said, “No.” The next time I noticed him, he was enthusiastically playing a game with us.

For me, I can’t imagine not playing and being playful in many, maybe most, situations. It just makes life more fun. For me, New Games are just a starting point for making my life more playful. I like taking that playfulness into everyday situations. Rather than answer `”yes” to someone who asks me if I’m Dale Le Fevre, I might say, “Last time I checked the mirror.” Though now that I’ve written it, I’ll be coming up with something else to say. It just makes life more fun, to be alive and not just sleep walking through.

So, to conclude, of course cooperative New Games for adults. It’s a good place to start being playful, and it need not end there.