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#$%& Fun

How the hell did I miss this?

A year or so ago it started to dawn on me that there were problems with the notion of fun. At first, I started ot think that maybe 'fun' was merely a formal quality of games - the same way rhyme and meter were formal qualities of poetry. If that's true then perhaps fun is no more necessary in a game than rhyme and meter are in a poem. I wrestled with that idea for a good year, before I finally spoke about it in a round-about way at Futureplay.

Ultimately, the conclusion I came to is not that fun is a formal quality of games that we may or may not need - but rather that fun is a useless concept because it is too subjective.

The solution I proposed was to stop talking about fun and start talking about an 'axis of meaning' that has at one end 'distraction' and at the other end 'engagement'. I think this allows for a richer possibility space than does the notion of 'fun', and lets us talk about ways to design mechanics and dynamics that lead to a wider variety of aesthetic experiences for potential players.

Feel free to challenge this notion, because honestly, while I think it pushes in interesting directions, I don't think that's the end of it. Fun - while subjective - is still something a designer can iterate toward and provide feedback to programmers on until he gets it right, and will still yeild a moderate probability of delivering a good game in the end. Iterating on 'distraction and engagement' without regard for fun is - I expect - very likely to end up with shitty games as output. So there's something incomplete with the concept.

Anyway - while I was wrestling with this concept, and in particular doing first drafts of my Futureplay presentation in the first week of October, The Escapist was publishing supporting material without me even knowing it. I usually pop in a check out The Escapist every week, but I was a bit busy and stressed that week, and missed it.

I found the response to my presentation to be surprising. A lot of people really seemed to agree with what I was saying. So to find that Warren (whose opinion I respect greatly) was simultaneously coming to the same conclusions, even more suggests that there is something to this notion.

David Sirlin also picked up on Warren's article, and blogged about it here. He seems to agree that - at very least - fun is a weak concept, and that games do not need to be fun.

Post Futureplay Podcast Interview

Dave Brodbeck, a psychology professor at Algoma U, who I met at Futureplay also does a podcast. He grabbed me after my keynote there and we did a little interview. You can listen to it here, or download it for direct from this link.

Good questions and good interview, thanks Dave. It's good to have a less formal forum to discuss the stuff I was talking about in the presentation. I think the interview helps put a lot of the issues I was driving at in perspective. Three cheers for dialogue, which is better than monologue... kind of like games.

Futureplay and Toronto

Just got back from the Futureplay 2006 conference in London, Ontario yesterday, where I got to give my first ever keynote. That was pretty exciting. The other keynote speakers were Justin Roche, Sheri Graner Ray, Don Daglow, and Ken Perlin, so very flattering to be among that roster.

I gave the same presentation the following night to the Toronto IGDA chapter, who quickly managed to get up a summary, here (thanks to Jason MacIsaac and Josh Druckman for all their hard work) Some cool folks there I got to chat with over beers after.

It was also good to give a quick plug to Ubi's currently running National Game Design Challenge. I missed a chance to blog about it during my recent trip to Vancouver when we launched the contest and associated promotion and recruiting campaign, but yeah getting to bounce around Canada with Fred made for a fun (though busy) fall.

Sherbrooke

I had the pleasure of going out to Sherbrooke University yesterday to give a presentation there as part of their Série ExperTIse hiver 2006. Due to relatively short notice and the fact that I was preparing and practicing my GDC 2006 presentation in the same window, I gave the presentation that I had previously done for the Montreal Game Summit called 'Next - The Game Designers' Generation', which is linked to the right.

I think these kinds of industry-to-university presentations are increasingly important given the current explosive growth in the industry. Any opprotunity to open dialogue with those who will go on - not only to make games - but to study them as cultural artifacts - is invaluable.

Merci a professeur Denis Bélisle et son equip pour l'invitation, et merci egalement a chacun qui a ete la pour tolerer mon anglais. J'espere que si je suis invitee encore, je pourrai parler en francais.