I used to be a professional games programmer and designer and I’m very interested in fun. There are a couple of good books on the subject: A theory of fun and Rules of play. As a designer I spent many months analyzing sales figures for both computer games and other conventional toys. The patterns within them are quite interesting: for example child’s toys pass from amorphous learning tools (bright objects and blobby humanoids), through mimicking parents (accurate baby dolls), to mimicking older children (sexualised dolls and makeup). My ultimate conclusions were that fun takes many forms whose source can be ultimately reduced to what motivates us. In effect, fun things are mental hacks of our intrinsic motivations. I gave a couple of talks on my take on what these motivations are. I’d be happy to repeat this material here (or upload and link to the videos if people prefer).
I found Rules of Play to be little more than a collection of unnecessary (if clearly-defined) jargon and glittering generalities about how wonderful and legitimate games are. Possibly an alien or non-neurotypical who had no idea what a game was might gather some idea of games from reading the book, but it certainly didn’t do anything for me to help me understand games better than I already do from playing them. Did I miss something?
Yes I take your point. There isn’t a lot of material on fun, and game design analysis is often very genre specific. I like rules of play, not so much because it provides great insight into why games are fun but more as a first step towards being a bit more rigorous about what game mechanics actually are. There is definitely a lot further to go and there is a tendency to ignore the cultural and psychological motivations (e.g. why being a gangster and free roaming mechanics work well together) in favour of analysing abstract games. However it is fascinating to imagine a minimal game, in fact some of the most successful game titles have stripped the interactions down to their most basic motivating mechanics (Farmville or Diablo for example)
To provide a concrete example, I worked on a game (Medievil Resurrection) where the player controlled a crossbow in a minigame, by adjusting the speed and acceleration of the mapping between joystick and bow the sensation of controlling it passed through distinct stages. As the parameters approach the sweet spot, my mind (and that of other testers) experienced a transition from feeling I was controlling the bow indirectly to feeling like I was holding the bow. Deviating slightly around this value adjusted its perceived weight, but there was a concrete point at which this sensation was lost. Although Rules of Play does not cover this kind of material it did feel for me like an attempt to examine games in a more general way so that these kinds of element could be extracted from their genre specific contexts and be understood in isolation.
I used to be a professional games programmer and designer and I’m very interested in fun. There are a couple of good books on the subject: A theory of fun and Rules of play. As a designer I spent many months analyzing sales figures for both computer games and other conventional toys. The patterns within them are quite interesting: for example child’s toys pass from amorphous learning tools (bright objects and blobby humanoids), through mimicking parents (accurate baby dolls), to mimicking older children (sexualised dolls and makeup). My ultimate conclusions were that fun takes many forms whose source can be ultimately reduced to what motivates us. In effect, fun things are mental hacks of our intrinsic motivations. I gave a couple of talks on my take on what these motivations are. I’d be happy to repeat this material here (or upload and link to the videos if people prefer).
I found Rules of Play to be little more than a collection of unnecessary (if clearly-defined) jargon and glittering generalities about how wonderful and legitimate games are. Possibly an alien or non-neurotypical who had no idea what a game was might gather some idea of games from reading the book, but it certainly didn’t do anything for me to help me understand games better than I already do from playing them. Did I miss something?
Yes I take your point. There isn’t a lot of material on fun, and game design analysis is often very genre specific. I like rules of play, not so much because it provides great insight into why games are fun but more as a first step towards being a bit more rigorous about what game mechanics actually are. There is definitely a lot further to go and there is a tendency to ignore the cultural and psychological motivations (e.g. why being a gangster and free roaming mechanics work well together) in favour of analysing abstract games. However it is fascinating to imagine a minimal game, in fact some of the most successful game titles have stripped the interactions down to their most basic motivating mechanics (Farmville or Diablo for example) To provide a concrete example, I worked on a game (Medievil Resurrection) where the player controlled a crossbow in a minigame, by adjusting the speed and acceleration of the mapping between joystick and bow the sensation of controlling it passed through distinct stages. As the parameters approach the sweet spot, my mind (and that of other testers) experienced a transition from feeling I was controlling the bow indirectly to feeling like I was holding the bow. Deviating slightly around this value adjusted its perceived weight, but there was a concrete point at which this sensation was lost. Although Rules of Play does not cover this kind of material it did feel for me like an attempt to examine games in a more general way so that these kinds of element could be extracted from their genre specific contexts and be understood in isolation.
Will upvote