Do Games Have to be Fun?
I read Warren Spector talking about this (whether games have to be "fun") in The Escapist. Warren is a good guy. Anyway, since it's such an easy question, I thought I'd take a crack at it.
No.
Well, what is meant by the question though? It could have two meanings:
1) Do games have to be "fun" to sell well? (not exactly)
2) Should games be fun? (not necessarily)
Should Games Be Fun?
I'll take the second (easier) question first. Should games be fun? Certainly we have fun playing games and we can mention many games that are fun that we like and many games that aren't fun that we don't like. But fun is only one narrow state of mind and interactive entertainment has far more potential than just that.
There are some other states that exist in games already that we tend to lump into "fun" whether the word fits or not. The word "relaxing" or even "contemplative" might describe some games. Occasionally, there is a glimmer of being emotionally moved in story-based games. That might not be "fun" but it's perhaps even better.
Consider the movie Schindler's List. I would call it moving and important. I wouldn't call it fun. It's hard to imagine our culture if we were to remove all the films that were not "happy" or "funny." Some day in the future we might call the sphere of interactive entertainment something other than "games" and there will be entire genres of interactive entertainment that are moving or sad or romantic. Games would be just a subset of that sphere. Phew, I wrote a couple sentences without quotes around random words.
Do Games Have to be Fun to Sell Well?
Games are memes: non-genetic information that is copied/imitated and passed on amongst humans. You could say that the act of playing a game is the meme rather than the game itself, but there's no sense getting caught up in that yet. Memes--like genes--get copied if they...well...have properties that get them copied. There is the mistaken notion that genes and memes get copied because they are good and useful. Being good and useful is one of many, many reasons that a gene or meme might be successful.
Consider the folding of paper cranes that occurs in many elementary schools. It's relatively easy for one child to teach another the process of creating such a paper bird. The instructions are passed on (rather than the product being copied), which keeps the integrity of the copies pretty high. Imperfections in one child's crane aren't necessarily passed on to another child's. Anyway, there are elementary schools that have been making cranes for 30 years or more, and I don't think it's because it paper cranes are solving some big human problem. For whatever reason, it's a successful meme.
Memes can be harmful and still be copied. Consider the memes "copy this and pass it along" and "make money." There's not much reason to do the first and no clear instruction on how to do the second, but when the two ideas found each other, the meme for chain letters and pyramid schemes were born. These things are frauds and don't help anyone, but they are popular memes that live on today.
A meme needs some tricks to stick in your brain. It needs to be easily copied. It needs to stand out from other more boring memes like the story about someone's dream last night or jury duty. Memes compete against each other for space in your brain, and have no regard for you--other themselves. If they can be copied, they are copied. Survival of the fittest memes gives us some wildly popular ones. But again, memes don't care about helping you. Being helpful is just one trick to get copied, but there are many others.
So do games need to be fun? The property of fun is one reason why a game would be copied from player to player. Another reason would be that the game is addictive. That is, the game is specifically designed to tap into the so-called irregular rewards schedule that psychologists know is one of the most powerful behavioral trainers. (That means that you do x and you have a fairly low chance to get a reward. It's an addictive pattern because you don't know when you'll get it, but you know will get the reward if you stick with it long enough, and maybe you'll get two rewards in a row if you're lucky!)
Anyway, a game that was purely addictive but no fun might not sell well. A game that is incredibly, highly addictive and has just enough fun might sell very well. It's not simply "the more fun the game is, the more it sells." I could go into marketing or whatever else, but I think the design pattern of addiction illustrates that there are other things than pure fun that could make a game a big hit.
Final analysis:
We already have unfun games that perpetuate themselves.
Hopefully there will be games in the future that are not fun in the way we mean it today, but have even deeper importance--and don't use the addiction trick (much).
--Sirlin
October 10th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
One thing I’ve been trying to come to terms with since some philosophy classes, is the concept of ‘higher pleasures.’
Do some pleasures have a higher quality to them or merely a higher quantity of pleasure?
You brought up a good point with movies though. I thought of the movies ‘Crash’ and ‘Closer.’ Both are VERY difficult (at least for me) to watch, and I’m not sure I’ll ever watch them again because of it, but I wouldn’t take back watching them and they’re some of the best movies I’ve ever seen.
You also mentioned other feelings besides fun ‘interactive entertainment’ could provide. This immediately made me think of ‘art’ in a basic sense.
When I was younger , I was very torn about imagry that evoked negative emotion. Essentially I hated them. What right did that artist have to make me feel guilty or crappy? I brought it up with one of my teachers and he gave me an example of a gallery showing where everyone was given a butcher knife and permission to go ninja on any piece they didn’t like. I’m still not sure what he meant…
Now only SLIGHTLY related to the article (more toward that gallery showing), the bronx museum of art website had an INCREDIBLE program that simulated subway cars. It was a worldwide interactive flash program that let anyone write grafitti on cars via a nicer version of MS paint, but, like in real life, your stuff could get overwritten by another person or buffed by the owner of the property. You’d see great work on there, but some punk might just draw a giant line across your stuff or simply erase it. (this happens a lot in real life and if you’ve seen Style Wars, it becomes a big deal). Cooincidentally, no painting was ripped up in that gallery. A neat study of what online anonymity does. What I liked about these, related to the article, is the direct effect ‘drama’ had on the activity itself (There are street figher rivalries, but you play the same game either way). It’d be neat to see what else could be incorporated.
October 12th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Reading your articles are memes within themselves; having to sort through a morass of both ellusive and repetative diction in the hopes of maybe learning something useful. SPACESHIP
October 12th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Example of games that are addictive but no fun: Korean MMORPGs
In these games you just find a spawn, kill the same creature for about 5-6 hours, level up, then kill that creature again for about another 5-6 hours, level up again, then you can move to another spawn that has the same creature (except that it is a bit stronger, and in a different color) and you have to kill it for 6-7 hours now to get to the next level. By the way, don’t steal kills from a fellow player, or he’ll be really mad at you since you’ll be stealing him precious experience points!
Seriously, what is the point of these games? There is almost no quests in there. There’s PVP combat in most of them, but since these games aren’t designed with it in mind, it is always far from being balanced and there’s no point in participating in it if you play a non PVP friendly class or build or else you’ll get owned in 2-3 hits. There’s just creatures to kill, respawning for no reason, over and over… and there’s plenty of ppl wasting their time and money playing these games, trying to reach level 200, while they are only at level 3 in their real social life…
October 13th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
“A game that is incredibly, highly addictive and has just enough fun might sell very well.”
That’s WoW all right!
October 16th, 2006 at 9:14 am
This was the most high-brow of all of sirlin’s articles ever
October 16th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
I disagree with your article, but only because I disagree with the way the word “fun” is used.
First off, I don’t think games are art at all. I feel that games can contain aspects of art, and even some of the repercussions of viewing art (and I do see parallels between the experience of playing games and the experience of observing art), but games (by themselves) are not art. Modern video games have ridden the immersion pony for so long that we’re confusing them with movies. When you really get down to the most basic of basics of what a game is you’ll find something like board games or sports. At the end of the day a game is about a set of rules that one must navigate, bend, break or work around to reach a specific goal, and games at there very core have always been about working with a set of rules to reach a goal (even Indigo Prophecy, which just barely scrapes by.)
That said, not everyone is attracted to every game. For example, the game Fluxx (and I’m sorry for using a Wikipedia link, but it’s the fastest way to learn what I’m talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxx) could be said to be “intuitive” but I find intuitive games fun. The way I see it fun means entertaining, and something entertaining is an activity that a person is willing to commit time to and will enjoy. In this way the movie Schindler’s List is one that may be moving and important but it’s still produced as a piece of entertainment, while a documentary about the Holocaust is moving and important but aims to educate.
Games produced for education or exploratory means like Myfanwy Ashmore’s Mario trilogy are obviously not created with the intended purpose to entertain, but they can be entertaining. Moreso, the Mario Bros. series of games are created with the intended purpose to entertain, but not everyone will find them entertaining. What is “fun” is relative. You may say Schindler’s List isn’t “fun”, but by virtue of the fact that you find it important leads me to believe you also find it fun. Fun doesn’t mean “happy” or “funny” as you seem to put it, but entertaining. Thus any game put out by a major publisher nowadays would have to be fun to sell.
Of course there are games out there that seek to educate (those being training simulations) however, outside of required learning materials I see no place for games that aren’t fun. People play games with the intention of passing the time they have in what they consider a meaningful and relevant way. Even your papaer crane example falls under the category of fun. Kids aren’t just building paper cranes for the hell of it, it has to have some entertainment value or emotional reward for it to be copied. And as for chain letters, that’s a different issue entirely.
Even addiction (in the case of gambling and addictive games) reaps a benefit from the victim. The reasons people get addicted to anything is because of neuropeptides. If someone has a cell neuropeptide addiction to a certain emotion then they go out of their way to create a situation where they will feel that emotion. The id is rewarded (in a way) with the fulfillment of being in that position (of gambling, sitting in a slot machine room or in front of a computer hacking away at cute bubbly pink things) the ego is rewarded when its goals are fulfilled (if ever) and the superego mediates between the two assuring the ego that it will become lucky one of these times and the id is satisfied in the environment because it’s cell structure is based around being in a position of gambling. A person playing poker online feels that poker is a good use of their time, thus they are satiated, thus they are entertained.
October 16th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
I LIKE SIRLIN BECAUSE HE DOES THE CROUCHING STRONG!
October 16th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
What a strange comment. Why do you apologize for linking to wikepedia?
I’m not sure why you disagree with how “fun” is used. It’s not like I am creating a defintion of fun. I’m using the word in the exact way that it was intended by Warren Spector when he asked the question, and the way that it is used by any game executive who is judging whether or not to keep paying for his next port of Spiderman or Harry Potter or whatever. Schindler’s List is *clearly* not an example of *fun* by those standards. And that is exactly why Warren and I are saying that the industry should really reconsider being all about “fun.” In defense of random marketing people, they would say that the consumer of today has a mindsent of looking for “fun” and “important” so it’s just easier to sell fun.
Next, you don’t call games art. Ha! I have to agree with Scott McCloud on this one. In Understanding Comics he drew a few panes showing a caveman searching for food, then encountering a tiger. The caveman runs for his life to get away from the tiger, then reaches the edge of a cliff. The tiger (who is running very fast indeed) isn’t able to stop quickly enough, so he falls over to his death. The last panel shows the cameman looking down at the tiger and the caveman makes a funny face at him. That last panel is art, says Scott McCloud.
He defines art as expression that is for expression’s sake, rather than for survival’s sake. His real point is that obviously comics are art because he casts such a wide net with the word.
Games are currently made mostly under intense commercial pressure that really makes a lot of them souless and crappy. But to say that the medium isn’t an art? I can’t believe I have to spend words even explaining that.
If you want to play to win, you do what’s necessary to win. That’s clear by definition, but the implications seem to scare people. Likewise, if you want to make a successful game, you make a successful meme. That is also by defintion, and those implications seem to scare people too. “Fun” in the way the executives mean it really is one narrow way of making that meme. I suggest the book The Meme Machine to read about many other ways.
–Sirlin
October 17th, 2006 at 5:16 am
I apologized for citing Wikipedia because some people (namely Sean Howard) get all angry and upset when someone cites from a source of their pre-pubescent rage.
Yes, Scott McCloud’s book is required reading here at my college (every human action outside of procreation and preservation of life is art.) However, games by themselves aren’t art, moreso, it’s the act of playing the game that creates the art. In my mind a game by itself is like a canvas or art supplies. It means nothing by itself until you give it definition and this is through playing it and expressing oneself through the rules presented.
Likewise a painting is art because it’s observed and interpereted. Music becomes art when it’s heard. Games contain visual and auditory content which when viewed by the player would be “art,” but this is not “art” as far as games are concerned in my mind. If we’re talking about the way a guy drives a semi-through a crowded mall in GTA, then I’m with you. But I don’t believe games should be categorized as an art form as-is.
I didn’t consider the executive side of things, but then again I’m not in the gaming business so I wouldn’t have thought of that on my own. It does put an interesting spin on things. But to try and clarify something you said earlier, from your writing it read to me that you felt that “fun” content was happy and funny content. I felt that fun can fall outside that category, for example a haunted house is neither happy nor funny, but people consider them fun.
October 17th, 2006 at 10:47 am
That seems like a fair argument Ixis, if maybe somewhat moot - we assume the presence of an audience to play the game to define its artistic merit. The “art” of a game is judged based on the player-machine interactions, not just how the system acts in a vacuum (although the entropic decay in games like The Sims or the upcoming Spore could possibly qualify the state machine as an autonomous art generator. That’s just being pedantic though.) They may not be art “as-is” without anyone playing them, but the ‘Mona Lisa’ isn’t art either if it’s in a matte black burlap bag where it cannot be seen.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
Ixis:
If you observe an image, you explore it’s two-dimensional surface and interpret it.
If you observe the movie, there is an additional dimension of time that contains additional information to interpret.
If you play a game there is even more content, the game allows you to navigate optional paths. It’s the artist who selects which paths are accessible, so it’s another dimension to add content into.
Of course people might use the game in a way the designer didn’t intend or didn’t notice. On the other hand people probably interpret most books in a way the author possibly didn’t mean at all, so books also only set up a frame in which the reader picks the meaning. With games it’s the same, people interpret the rules (or the intention behind them) as they would with any content, just look at the ’scrub’ discussion.
Especially videogames like Killer7 or PN03 do have an artistic background, others are as functional as a teaching book for Linux.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Sirlin, why is this in the “Blog” section instead of the “Article” section of your website? This seems pretty clearly an article to me…
October 18th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Fieari,
The boring answer is that it’s not polished enough to be an article, and I like to put in a bunch of useless pictures in articles that I haven’t done here. It’s also only about 870 words, which means it doesn’t treat the subject in enough detail.
The more interesting answer is that I am planning a book on game design and I was testing the waters with this post and my ohter post on the far future of games. I will eventually write an article on this subject though.
–Sirlin
October 18th, 2006 at 1:09 am
Wikipedia rocks. By its very nature it FORCES you to stay critical when reading it.
Anyway on topic, I don’t wanna make Ixis feel like he’s being ganged up on, but it really does look like you’re using a double-standard. The arguments you use to qualify games as non-art can be used for any other art form.
October 18th, 2006 at 3:31 am
Of course games don’t have to be fun. Just look at World of warcraft! (I am the only person in the world laughing now, I’m sure.)
October 18th, 2006 at 4:28 am
Well, to help clarify a little more I consider the act of playing the game as the act that produces what one would define as art. When watching a movie, reading a book or listening to music, just by the fact that you are taking in data and interpereting it means you are experiencing art.
You could change the way you recieve the “art”. In a movie you could pause or fastforward and cut up clips, for art you can make a collage out of art, etc. This is taking something else and making art from it, and the end product is also art. However, just because you can change art that already exists doesn’t mean the product by itself is not art.
A game can have multiple ways of sending and recieving data (you hear the music, you see the avatar jumping around and if the avatar falls of a cliff the controller might vibrate making you “feel” the impact of the fall.) This is enjoying one aspect of the “art” of games, but when people define games as “art” I see the actual art part coming from the way the player expresses themselves in the game, not the aesthetic values tacked unto the game.
In this way I suppose I do see games as art, but in a more abstract way, if that makes sense.
October 18th, 2006 at 5:14 am
It does. To me anyway. :) I suspect a mis-understanding of what people mean when they try to define games as art, but I’m not going there. Suffice it to say I’ve never interperted that statement as refering to simple visual aesthics. Maybe I’M wrong, tho.
I find it funny how I was reading up on this thread moments before discovering that this week’s escapist is on this very topic: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/67
And I don’t think it’s unrelated because the creative process used to determine whether or not you think the meme you’re creating will be catchy enough to spread out is part art too.
October 18th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
http://design.siu.edu/brian/Why Art Should Be Bad (strange link, leads to a download)
An article from David Hickey about the state of art right now. A major point is that art has made itself to ‘high-brow’ (as stated by someone else here) and it is more of a detriment than a good thing.
There’s also a video interview from IGN that asks Hideo Kojima if he thinks games are art. He says no. (i wanted to upload it to youtube, but i’m guessing IGN has the rights to it). He makes an interesting point about having to appeal to the masses.
I brought up both articles ’cause it sorta depends on your definition of art. My thoughts are similar to both the articles. The Hickey article is similar to what Sirlin said about the ’state’ of video games. There are a lot of things holding them back in certain ways. The definition of art is tough to define much like fun is.
I also think there’s a problem with drawing the line between ‘interactive entertainment’ and ‘games’.
But, to be honest, I don’t like the idea of a genre. Something is what it is.
Freecell’s fun and so is MGS3. But one tells me more about life, survival, relationships and politics than the other.
October 18th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
The previous link to Hickey’s article requires the whole line “Why Art Should Be Bad” with spaces in it. Thus clicking the link wont work.
October 18th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Ugh, I need to add the ability for people to at least preview posts, and give nice buttons for inserting links and formatting. I tried to install EditorMonkey into WordPress a while ago and I couldn’t get it to work.
–Sirlin
October 21st, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Ixis, search for “art” in wikipedia.
Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, or even REZ can be considered art.
October 21st, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Ixis: Consider the fact that you interact even with every painting. You explore its surface, focus on details and ignore others. That means you could apply the same argument here: you’re ‘expressing yourself’ in the painting by selecting details that are important for you, ignoring others or looking only at the left half of the image.
Kicks: When using the term ‘games’ here I’m talking about ‘interactive media’, since I don’t think it makes sense to draw that line now. Especially it would be reather theoretical, because I’d include Electroplankton to games even if it doesn’t have a goal. Still it has some kind of a ruleset and it is handled as a game (and it’s also another example for ‘artistic games’ alias ‘artistic interactive media’).
On topic: I don’t think ‘fun’ is useful here at all. While it contains multiple motivations it doesn’t cover some closely related ones.
October 23rd, 2006 at 1:48 am
Whatever.
October 31st, 2006 at 11:10 pm
Of course a game has to be fun. If it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t be a game, it would be some activity that offers no amusement.
November 4th, 2006 at 5:52 am
Well, this whole article is pointless. You’re not talking about the sentence “Do games have to be fun?”, you’re talking about “Do games have to be funny?”
Quote from merriam webster, definition of “fun”:
‘1 : what provides amusement or enjoyment; specifically : playful often boisterous action or speech
2 : a mood for finding or making amusement
3 a : AMUSEMENT, ENJOYMENT b : derisive jest : SPORT, RIDICULE
4 : violent or excited activity or argument ‘
The first meaning is what the question is about.
definition of “funny”:
‘1 a : affording light mirth and laughter : AMUSING b : seeking or intended to amuse : FACETIOUS
2 : differing from the ordinary in a suspicious, perplexing, quaint, or eccentric way : PECULIAR — often used as a sentence modifier
3 : involving trickery or deception ‘
Sure, Schindler’s List is not a funny (note the different word) or amusing movie. But it certainly is enjoyable, therefore clearly qualifying as fun.
November 7th, 2006 at 8:23 am
You know what? This blog entry/pseudo article brings to mind the PS2 game, ICO. ICO is a game that I didn’t find very “fun” to play; there was virtually no challenge factor and combat was very simplistic. In fact, much of the game felt like a chore (luckily, it’s only about 5 hours long).
Still, though the game wasn’t “fun” in that sense, the terms “relaxing,” “emotionally involving,” “immersive,” and “haunting” describe it very well. I found myself liking this game for reasons other than the pure entertainment factor. As a result, it’s now one of my favourite PS2 games of all time.
~Avatar Z
November 8th, 2006 at 1:20 am
Kdansky, using your own choice of definition of “fun,” Schindler’s List is not fun.
1 : what provides amusement or enjoyment; specifically : playful often boisterous action or speech
While Schindler’s List may fulfill the first half of the definition, to truly be fun, it must fulfill the second. The inclusion of the “specifically” extension in the definition is necessary. Schindler’s List is not playful, therefore Schindler’s List is not fun.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:46 am
I think we’re getting too caught up in nonsensical things, (like the definition of fun) and totally ignoring the real impact of the article/blog entry.
“Fun” is purely and totally subjective. You can define it however you wish and the definition that you use will probably not be broad enough for everyone. However, just because a game isn’t “fun” that does not mean that you do not “get something” out of it.
Think of it like this: Each person has a certain set of “wants”. A person might want to play a game which is “fun”, but that same person might also want to play a game which is “competitive” or “expressive”. You might have fun while being competitive, but there’s also a possibility that you won’t have any fun at all. Nevertheless, if you want to play a competitive game, then you’ll play a competitive game whether it is fun for you or not.
I’ll give Super Smash Bros. Melee as an example.
When I play SSB:M by myself I don’t really have much fun with it at all. Sure, the visuals and items were amusing when I first bought the game, but I’ve had the game since its release and I’ve seen them all before. I’m not really having fun playing it. The excitement is all gone.
But I DO “get something” out of it. When I play solo I get the chance to explore different niches of my character and different strategic options. In a way, it’s training. In another way, it’s expressive. Is training fun? Not by my standards at all. Do I do it anyways? Sure. And I find it a good way to spend my time as well. The same can be said for self-expression. It’s not always fun, and I might be expressing certain parts of my self which I don’t quite like, but I want the self-expression so I do it anyways
Simply put, the time that I invest in exploring my character’s options equates to a deeper understanding of the game. It’s not the same as training against friends or tournament-level players, but it does help to increase my abilities in ways that I would not expect. It allows me to use my character’s moves in a tightly controlled environment and explore options that I may have previously overlooked.
So by now you’ve probably asked: Why play SSBM if you’re not having fun? Well, I just said that playing SSBM “solo” wasn’t fun. The fun comes when I go over to a friend’s house and play with them… which we do like EVERY TIME that I go over there. It’s like a tradition. Some of us have found that tradition to be rather annoying too, actually. The time I play solo is less about fun and more of an investment, with the expectation of a payoff (in essence, more fun later).
Does the game itself have to be fun? No. The fun comes with playing with those whose company I find enjoyable. Instead of playing SSB:M we could just as easily be playing Double Dash or Armored Core or any other game for any other system. SSB:M ceased to be fun a long time ago, but we still have fun playing it for reasons outside of the actual game. In other words, I still “get something” from the game itself aside from the “fun” that is contained within the actual game.
So, back to the question. Does a game have to be fun? My answer is: No. Fun is subjective. Not only that, it’s something that will wear off over time. Fun generally means some form of excitement or enjoyment, both of which tend to eventually wear off. If anything, one might consider that trying to design a “Fun” game is actually counter-productive. After all, fun wears off some day, and if your game is based upon fun then you’ve basically made a game that will “die” shortly after the fun goes away.
Take Chess as your example. It’s not a video game, but it is a game none the less, and it happens to be competitive. The pieces don’t really have to be well-made, and the board is nothing spectacular, and there’s really nothing new or exciting about it. Aside from maybe some small changes over the years it really is the same game that it has always been since its inception. It is fun for maybe the first few times you play it, sure, but unless you’re goofing off or doing something to add fun to the game then it really tends to get boring and maybe even tedious after a while. Yet no one can say that it hasn’t stood the test of time. It is not designed to be fun, but it is a game that people want to play.
Instead of being designed around something as fleeting and subjective as “fun”, Chess is actually designed around solid rules and sound mathematical principles. It is a game that has a lot of depth, which basically allows the player to have a vast amount of options and strategies. And really, much competitive play revolves how many options that each player has. In fact, in chess, when a player runs out of options (in other words: can’t move) then that player has lost the game.
So, in reality, fun is not a very important aspect of games. Instead of focusing on a fun system, a designer should instead attempt to develop a DEEP system. This is true for games which are competitive, but it is also true for single player games as well. Games are interactive, and the player should be able to express themselves in the way that they play the game, thus having a game with a lot of depth and a lot of important options will, in the long term, win over a game with a lot of excitement.
I could go on and on about this forever, but I think I’ve made my point. To summarize: No, games do not have to be fun. If anything, “fun” is really a side-issue at best.
January 8th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
I just found this blog and I realise I’m replying to old comments; but I feel compelled to provide my opinion so I hope you guys don’t mind me for bumping this.
By “fun”, I’m referring to providing the entertaining factor. I feel that “fun” is subjective and varies from people to people. I had a debate with my friend over the topic of “job satisfaction” and to my surprise, our definitions of the term were clearly very different. I referred to “job satisfaction” as being satisfied at the very least with official job-related activities while his definition centered around more of (but not limited to) satisfaction with the opportunities (including personal ones such as oppotunity to travel overseas) that a job provides. While I still hold to my own perception of “job satisfaction”, I have also come to see my friend’s way of putting being valid as well. Just a matter of different perspectives, there’s no real answer I believe; in fact, they may all be valid answers since we had not set any boundaries or context before we started talking about this. Similarly, is chess not fun? I don’t know alot about the history of chinese chess, but one thing for sure is that the depth of chess can be defined as “fun” for many players. At the same, there might also be a fair amount of players that play chess not because they found it fun to do so.
Anyway, should a game be fun?
Honestly, I feel that it is hard to make a statement on this unless I throw away all reality of the purpose of commercial games. There’s no hard and fast rule here to say that a game must have any form of “fun factor” to pass off as a “game”. The thing about games is that the initial designs may not neccessarily be targeted at “fun”; it could have been simply a design. What’s so confusing about the term, “fun”, to me is that this quality could have very well been derived by ourselves such that games are so commercialized now, the fun factor has to be fabricated in it. A game does not need to be fun, but I feel that it needs to have a level of design depth that is intriguing. Whether it ends up as fun or not, however, depends on the mindset of the players and the level of play.
P.S., I hope I’m not off-topic. :P
May 19th, 2007 at 8:19 am
[…] Originally Posted by Little Deb One has to keep in mind that books, movies, TV shows are just stories. They are NOT REAL. Certainly a brilliant human being has had the privilage to creatively write (and get paid for) these inventions, but the characters do not live. The towns they live do not exist. It is interesting to be able to wonder how a favorite character would handle a difficult situation or deal with a complete crisis. We all can learn alternative problem solving techniques from books and movies, but in all, they are just diversions. So, when your expected movie or book disappoints you, suck it up Princess, then take a long walk in the park. That’s real. While you definitely have a point, I think you vastly underestimate the ?virtual? world and media in general. Books, movies, TV shows, games, and the stories and characters that are a part of them are an extension of what we know as "real", and I think in time people will eventually begin to understand and respect the true potential of these valuable mediums. To quote David Sirlin: Some day in the future we might call the sphere of interactive entertainment something other than ?games? and there will be entire genres of interactive entertainment that are moving or sad or romantic. [They may even have a purpose beyond making statements and teaching skills/lessons.] Games would be just a subset of that sphere. That said, I’ll be the first to say that the various media industries still have a long way to go before they reach that point, but it’s important that people themselves make that transition in terms of their thinking as they’ll be the pioneers of the future to make these things happen. __________________ - Bruce Achterberg […]
February 20th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
<strong>Incorporating Your Small Business</strong>
Having a self-sufficient business is probably one of the most common of dreams. Even more so incorporating small businesses into big businesses with larger perspectives and larger visions.