See Google's Testing Blog on Productivity Games
For those of you that came from there…
see Circular Reference - A circular reference, sometimes referred to as a run-around, is a series of references where the last object references the first...
Also, see Time Magazine's great article on Games in preparation for the Olympics this summer.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1815747_1815707_1815705,00.html
Play is elemental to being human. All of us, when tiny children, tossed colored balls around, or watched lights dance before our eyes, or marveled at the patterns on our mothers' skirts. All of us once threw a pebble, a stick or a ball; all of us, sooner or later, enjoyed playing with a sibling or a friend, hopscotching down a pavement, running along a dirt track.
All of us sooner or later formed teams — though usually something far less formal and serious than that implies — to compete (without knowing the word or its meaning) in games of skill or chance. We have all played games; play is part of what and who we are. "Play cannot be denied," wrote the great Dutch sociologist and historian Johan Huizinga in 1938, in his magisterial book Homo Ludens. "You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play."
