A Theory Of Fun For Game Design

quotes from the book

On Gamification

Often miss the point of games.

Gamification (rewards, points etc) is often layered on top of a system that lacks the rich interpretability of a good game. A reward structure alone doesn't make good games. => See Yu Kai Chou gamification 8 core drives (farmville example)

Like gamification, it's "dressing" is irrelevant to what the game is at its core.

The best test of a game’s fun in the strict sense is playing the game with no graphics, no music, no sound, no story, nothing. If that is fun, then everything else will serve to focus, refine, empower, and magnify. But all the dressing in the world can’t change iceberg lettuce into roast turkey.

Fun = Mastery/Learning/Understanding

Fun from games arise out of mastery, it arises out of comprehension. Solving the puzzle is what makes it fun.

Games that fail to exercise the brain fail. Ex: tictactoe -> boring when you get it. As we learn new patterns, novelty is needed to make a game attractive.

Fun comes from "rich" interpretable situations. The more rigidly constructed the game is, the more limited it will be. To make it long lasting, integrate less predictable variables such as human psychology, physics etc.

One of the moment that trigger the chemical reaction of good feeling is when we learn something or master a task. => See "Drive" Daniel Pink

The brain craves stimuli. All the time it is looking to learn something new.

But also the brain doesn't like to do more work than it has to.

If the brain fails to see a pattern it becomes noise. Nothing is more boring than "noise". => "It's too hard"

RNG/Gambling => design for multiple turns, teaches about odds

Good strategy games teach you to stay on your toes and should not become too predictable.

Games do better at emotions that relate to mastery.

Fun is contextual

Bernard Suits calls this "approaching things with a lusory attitude," which in part means putting the activity into that "magic circle" of lack of consequence. School is not usually all that fun because we take it seriously. Lack of consequences => "flow state" prerequisit Challenges need to match your skill level for flow. But precisely matching it is extremely hard.

People are not likely to tackle problems/patterns that look like noise.

Human beings are all about progress. We like life to be easier. We’re lazy that way. We like to find ways to become more efficient. We like to find ways to keep from doing something over and over. We dislike tedium, sure, but the fact is that we crave predictability.

The destiny of games is to become boring. Fun is the process, routine is the destination.

Successful games tend to incorporate the following elements:

• Preparation: before taking a challenge, the player get to make choices that change his odds (ex: rune trees in LoL)
• A sense of space
• A solid core mechanism
• A range of challenges: this is basically content
• A range of abilities required to solve the task
• Skill required in using the abilities

If a game involves no preparation, we say it relies on chance. If there’s no sense of space, we call it trivial. If there’s no core mechanic, there’s no game system at all. If there’s no range of challenges, we exhaust it quickly. If there aren’t multiple choices to make, it’s simplistic. And if skill isn’t required, it’s tedious.

To make it a learning experience:

• Variable feedback system
• The mastery problem must be dealt with. ex: bottom-feeding, high lvl player farming low levels
• Failure must have a cost (super meat boy lets you retry infinitely, the cost would be progression lost in the lvl)

Not requiring skill should be considered a cardinal sin of game design.

Checking for the absence of fun:

• Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge?
• Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed?
• Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge?
• Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake?
• Can the core mechanic support multiple types of challenges?
• Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge?
• At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge?
• Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental "move" in the game, like moving one checker piece?)
• Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.)
• Do advanced players get no benefit from tackling easy challenges?
• Does failing at the challenge at the very least make you have to try again?

"Emergent behaviour": pattern that derive from the initial set of rules, discovered by players that the designer did not foresee

PVP is a good way of getting endless source of content but failing to match the skill level makes ppl quit. User generated content too (ex: mario maker, portal map creation...).

Research tell us that happiness is driven by factors like gratitude, using one's strength, sense of social connection, striving for goals or optimism.

Grok

To "Grok" something:

You understand something so deeply that you become one with it & even love it.

3 levels:

• conscious thought, logical / mathematical thinking
• really slow, integrative, intuitive, associative. Links things that don't make much sense together
• not thinking, miscalled as muscle-memory, autonomic nervous system, instinctive descision making. You can just think of doing it and it'll get much of the way there