Fwd: Book on Fun

From: "Kevin J. Burns"

Shlomo: When I was in U.K., at IEEE conference on Computational Intelligence in Games, I learned of a book titled "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", by Raph Koster. He has a degree in English/writing and also studied music and art. He never studied programming but I guess he is considered a guru of game design. He is currently Chief Creative Officer at Sony Online Entertainment (in San Diego).

The book is an easy read with every other page in cartoons with captions. It's mostly common sense, I think, but I guess game developers are eating it up - maybe because sense is not so common among them. FYI, in a nutshell Koster says:

(1) Games and fun are important because they can tell us a lot about learning. (pg 2)
(2) Games are most fun when they are at the right level, not too hard or easy, and this level changes as players learn. Games are also most fun when they are the right genre to match the personal preferences (style?) of the player (e.g., spatial, social, etc.). [This is, of course, the common sense that underlies my Goldilocks Theory.](pgs 10, 132)

(3) "Games are puzzles to solve, just like everything else we encounter in life." (pg 34)

(4) "Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun." [This is, of course, the common sense that underlies my EVE' Model.] (pg 40)

(5) "In some ways games can be compared to music... Music excels at conveying only a few things - emotion being paramount among them. Games do very well at active verbs: controlling, projecting, surrounding, matching, remembering, counting, and so on. By contrast, literature can tackle all of the above and more." [Here I agree that games can be compared to music, but I disagree about the "few things" in music. I think music involves a LOT of controlling, projecting, surrounding, matching, remembering, counting, etc.] (pg 64)

(6) "... fun isn't flow. You can find flow in countless activities, but they aren't all fun. Most of the cases where we typically cite flow relate to exercising mastery, not learning." [And yet he says earlier that "fun from games arises out of mastery". So I don't get his point.] (pg 98)

(7) "To recap... Games aren't stories. Games aren't about beauty or delight... They stand, in their own right, as something incredibly valuable. Fun is about learning in a context where there is no pressure, and that is why games matter. [Here I would disagree because I think pressure matters a lot. Maybe the pressure in games is self-imposed, but it's still pressure.] (pg 98)

(8) "Emergent behavior is a common buzzword. The goal is new patterns that emerge spontaneously out of the rules allowing players to do things that the designer did not foresee... it usually makes games easier, often by generating loopholes and exploits." (pg 128)

(9) "We also hear a lot about storytelling. However, most games melded with stories tend to be Frankenstein monsters. Players tend to either skip the story or skip the game." (pg 128)