One Problem

So, now it would appear we have all the answers. Flow states are pleasurable. We are driven by our hardwired tendencies to build useful hunter-gatherer skills. Games can exploit these to produce that thing we call “fun.”

Is that it?

Well, no.

First, we must question our collective obsession with this “fun” business. Fun is not the only pleasurable emotion. For example, designers often talk of:

Fiero, the triumphant feeling of completing a significant, challenging task. “You rock!”
Schadenfreude, the gloating feeling you get when a rival fails at something. “Tragedy is when I stub my toe; comedy is when you fall off a cliff and die.”
Naches, the warm feeling of self-worth that you get when your child, student, or other person you are mentoring succeeds. “I’m so proud of you!”
Kvell, the emotion you feel when bragging about your child, student, etc. “My kid is an honor student at Wherever Elementary.”

None of these emotions would be described as “fun” exactly. None of them are directly related to flow states, either. But they are pleasurable. And they could certainly add something to a gameplay experience.

Also, as we discussed when talking about art games, “fun” is not necessarily the only purpose for which games could be made. We may read War and Peace and say that it is a good book, but we would not call it fun. We may say that Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan are great movies, but people would look at us very strange if we said either one was fun. Macbeth is not particularly fun. Viewing the Mona Lisa is not fun. The daily news is rarely fun. And yet, these things can all be deeply meaningful.

A game reviewer might say of the Mona Lisa: “Great visuals, but only one level, low interactivity, not much replay value. Interesting, but not very fun. 2/10.”

The rest of us would not.

So, that premise that I started with last Monday – “a game designer’s job is to make a game fun” – is something that you should all be a bit uncomfortable with by now. Fun is certainly a strong component of many games, but games do not have to be limited to that. Our role as game designers goes beyond making a game fun. A game designer’s job is to craft a meaningful gameplay experience.

Fun just happens to be a convenient and easy way to do this. But never forget that it is not the only way.

Another Problem

Koster points out in A Theory of Fun that players are, at their core, lazy. They tend to seek games similar to those that they’re already good at, so they are not learning something that is new, which reduces the amount of learning-pleasure they can receive. They tend to look for loopholes, exploits, and cheats, which likewise circumvent the pleasurable learning process. Players make the game less fun – but they do it anyway.

In fairness, game designers do this too. We probably do this even moreso than most players, since we are so experienced at finding patterns in games and we see the forms so quickly. This leads to lots of derivative work. Personally, the first game I ever worked on was a collectible card game, and even now I instinctively want to add cards, custom decks, cost/benefit decisions, and the concept of rarity to every game I make. Another designer I know sees everything in terms of RPGs. Another one of my colleagues tries to turn everything into a Sim game. Most of us, I think, tend to think in terms of one genre even if we’re working in another. In my experience, it’s usually the genre of the first game we work on professionally.

Is there something about us that makes us like one kind of game over another? If it is as simple as “personal taste” then why do we see so much overlap among gamers?