Fun: The final achievement

A long time ago I read a thread on a gamedev forum where the opening poster asked what was ‘fun’ and how was it achievable in a way that would raise the ‘addiction’ factor. I found the question to be very interesting but the debate around it, considering that was a gamedev forum, extremely poor.

Most of the people that participated in the thread could not separate their development background from their playing background. Remember the Gamer != Game Designer post? It’s pretty much the same argument but on a later stage. Why is this important or relevant? Read on…

Copying formulas

I’m betting that a huge percentage of flash game developers/designers implement features in their games because they’ve seen it in sucessful games. If it is successful it is usually named: high-scores, achievements and so on are excellent examples of successful features.

Implementing it enhances a game, for sure, but does it increase the fun and entertainment value? I bet you’ll say YEAH! but can you explain why? We are just copying formulas, not really digging why we are doing it.

Categorizing

Well we keep doing it… When we do a certain game genre, we are categorizing our game. Again we are copying a formula but by doing it we are giving the player an opportunity to filter what he wants to play. Don’t take me wrong, this is more than fine. After all we do want players to play what they want or that will take the fun out of the experience. Why does it take the fun out of the experience?

Understanding the factors

By copying formulas we are adding factors such has re-playability  and by categorizing we channeling that value. Both work if the game has value on its own and most don’t! It does not matter how many success formulas you include or how you categorize your game if you ultimately fail to understand why is a game fun and entertaining.

Some developers simply copy entire games and it works for them. I think they are convinced they have achieved a higher state of game design knowledge… well… I’d love to see them do something new under a different name, just to see what would the reaction of their fans be.

On the other hand, developers that understand the factors that create a great experience do wonders, they create new genres, make the gamedev theorists and journalist come up with new terms and I’m under the impression they don’t even think about it. The mob simply follows their lead.

So what are the factors?

That’s up to each one of us to find out I guess. Being a Raph Koster fan I believe that factors reside in the purest of forms, in understanding how the brain processes the experience. My personal view on it is that if you apply that basic processing to a target audience, it will work. Our talent and experience only makes it work more or less, but it will work! That’s the basis of how I design.

I bet other developers will have other ideas, but this whole post is a “think out of the box” kind of thing. What I’m trying to express is that if you don’t think in terms of your own gamer clichets. Don’t think that you like multiplayer, or that a certain game was cool because it had swords. Think on what will the reaction be to something you create. Think what is the typical player of the game you are creating. Think on how you’ll reach him or her individually. Stereotype your player, not you as a player.