Recently finished this book, and even if it strictly speaking is not about LSP, I wanted to briefly mention it to the community. Dave Gray is a big fan of LSP and has co-written a nice book outlining a whole range of games that can be used in ideation and decision-making. In short, they argue that games and playing are more needed than ever (guess it will be hard to find disagreement with that in this group). We are faced with a word which is no longer linear, rather we are moving towards an increasingly uncertain future with fuzzy goals.
Gamestorming Book
The authors develop a definition that makes a game different from play, personally, I like the definition, but am not certain if what it distinguishes between is ”games” and ”play”, or whether what they are looking at is a world defined by finite games vs infinite games on the one side, and frivolous play and serious play on the other side.
They define games as having boundaries, rules for interaction, artefacts and goals. They also describe how a game has five stages: 1) Imagine the world, 2) Create the world; 3) Open the World; 4) Explore the world and 5) Close the world.
Before moving to describing a lot of different short games they also outline essentials and skills for ”gamestorming”, all of them very consistent with the approach in LSP, for example the design of the questions, the use of artefacts and creating a meaningful space.
I liked the book. It is an easy read, it is (mostly) concise, it makes a great argument for games and for playing, and lists a lot of different game activities that one can turn to, should one find him or herself without bricks (obviously, not a nice scenario)
Check out their website: http://www.gogamestorm.com/
