Game Fun

Source

This week we were reading about Gamification and how to put the 'fun factor' into your game.

The first article I read was about Gamification design and what fun has got to do with it and if there is such thing as designing for fun. In this article they talk about how fun is only a by-product of good design and how bringing an aspect of fun into a game isn't essential. I agree that fun shouldn't be the sole purpose of a game when trying to design it, but I disagree that bringing fun into a game is not essential. I think when designing a game you want to design something that people will enjoy playing and something that people will feel the need to come back to play over and over again because of the aspect of fun in it. I think that while you want the game to be greatly designed and have a good purpose, the need for pleasurable engagement should be there too, or else you would essentially be making a game that is destined to not do great. Fun is such a broad word in the game world, because different people find different things fun in games, some people might find the competitiveness fun or other people might find the the easy nature of the game fun, it doesn't always have to be an enjoyable type of fun either, some people might enjoy a very serious game and not enjoy something light-hearted.

The second article I read was about how to put the 'fun factor' in to your game. In this article they talk about the 'flow theory' which is essentially about fun experiences that people get while playing games that are largely motivated by fun. They also talk about how people have researched a lot in to the negative aspects gaming can have on a person but there has been less examinations on the psychological experiences within gaming. I think that the social aspect of gaming is a big positive because even though these people are possibly by themselves in their rooms while playing their games, they're still having social interactions with other people with the same interests doing the same things, which creates a fun atmosphere for people.

Lastly I watched a video about a theory of fun for game design. In this video, they talk about how "Raph Koster argues that the fun of a game comes from it's ability to provide us a rich possibility space for learning, a space that grabs our attention, challenges us and reveals infinite depth, for example tic-tac-toe as a simple game with a dominant solution is less fun than goal a game with as many permutations as there are stars in the universe, it's denser possibility space means we have much more to learn." (The Game Overanalyser [Producer]. (2020). A Theory of Fun for Game Design | Raph Koster and The Art of Designing Fun Games.)

I think in simpler terms they try to say that a game is only fun when there is room to learn, that a game with no learning experience would be less fun than a game that ca teach you something. In some terms I agree with this, you're not really going to keep playing a game over and over if you're not learning new skills while playing it, some games that make you think keep you engaged for longer because of the psychological want to be able to complete it and learn that skill. 

Bibliography :

Gamification Design: What’s fun got to do with it? - Annie Velev

Putting the 'Fun Factor' into Gaming: The Influence of Social Contexts on Experiences of Playing Video Games- Linda K Kaye and Jo Bryce.

A Theory of Fun for Game Design | Raph Koster and The Art of Designing Fun Games-  The Game Overanalyser (Youtube)