Systems that initially attract my attention, are sufficiently ordered so that I can form expectations about them, but sufficiently unpredictable such that my expectations are violated in comprehensible-yet-unexpected ways. If they don’t appeal enough for me to generate expectations in the first place, there’s no potential for interest. If they’re so conventional and banal that the expectations I do generate are always met, there’s no potential for interest either. If they’re so random or nonsensical that I can’t anticipate at all, there’s no interest.
For general examples of such phenomena, I recommend studying why people found Joss Whedon’s Firefly so exceptional. Pay particular attention to Wash playing with the dinosaurs, and Mal violating the warranty on the engine intake.
Systems that initially attract my attention, are sufficiently ordered so that I can form expectations about them, but sufficiently unpredictable such that my expectations are violated in comprehensible-yet-unexpected ways. If they don’t appeal enough for me to generate expectations in the first place, there’s no potential for interest. If they’re so conventional and banal that the expectations I do generate are always met, there’s no potential for interest either. If they’re so random or nonsensical that I can’t anticipate at all, there’s no interest.
For general examples of such phenomena, I recommend studying why people found Joss Whedon’s Firefly so exceptional. Pay particular attention to Wash playing with the dinosaurs, and Mal violating the warranty on the engine intake.