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I guess what surprises me is that we haven't written down mechanics or principles that will make a game fun instead of just addictive. (There seem to be many we

by flgr 10y ago

I guess what surprises me is that we haven't written down mechanics or principles that will make a game fun instead of just addictive. (There seem to be many well established dark patterns for getting people to spend money on freemium games, but I haven't seen much about what makes a video game more fun.)

marrone12 10y ago
You can't encapsulate fun to a series of algorithms. The brilliance of the Breath of the Wild is in it's imagination. When a game truly feels like magic, it needs someone to inspire it.
Negitivefrags 10y ago
There are numerous attempts at theories of fun out there, but none of them really let you look at a design and know if something will be fun without trying it. They don't even really give you much of any concrete guidance on how you might change a design to make it more fun if it isn't currently. The best attempts at this tend to be along the lines of looking at certain player profiles and trying to imagine what about your design appeals to those who enjoy that profile. It's possible that this isn't something we can easily quantify. If I asked you to write a book about what makes music good, would you be able to do that?
- komali2 10y ago
  Well, we can quantify things like circle of fifths and all those other weird music things I never seem to understand. Not well enough to automate music making, sure, but enough to teach people how to make good music.
  - mathw 10y ago
    Well, you can automate music making, but the automated systems tend to produce incredibly generic music that's fairly bland and kind of aimless. We still need that creative spark to give it emotional content, direction and to break the rules in just the right ways to keep things interesting whether it's just a slightly unexpected harmonic progression or whether you're blazing an entirely new idea. Nobody ever got told they were an amazing composer because they followed all the rules. You can be good, but the greats all redefined something about the common practice of their time. However, if you stray too far away, people find your music too alien and tend not to like it at first. History is littered with references to new music from composers we now consider to be truly magnificent, who were at the time considered to be merely mediocre, or whose innovations were not welcomed with open arms. And of course, computers are still terrible at writing lyrics. That's an entirely different game. Maybe one day there'll be enough video games and literature that we can formulate a video game theory which is as extensive as our modern understanding of music theory. The thing with music of course is that we've been doing music for a lot longer.
- mysterydip 10y ago
  Raph Koster has a good book, "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", which I think does a pretty good job as an easy read intro to the problem. My main takeaway from it, if I had to boil it down to one point, is your brain finds fun in mastering something (beating a challenge), but not so much afterwards (boring/repetitive) or if it's too difficult (frustrating). The problem is, where that line is for any given challenge can be different for everyone. You can also get more mileage out of something if an aspect of the challenge changes (people will play chess longer than tic tac toe for example, even though the game space is the same each time).
  - flgr 10y ago
    Just ordered this one; thanks for the recommendation and thanks for the takeaway summary as well. :)
  - npiazza83 10y ago
    My brother has a PHD in video games and I bought and read that book and he laughed in my face. He said its almost satire among people in academia like Barthes S/Z
bane 10y ago
There's a couple of efforts. I think this is the most public: http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/ http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/
- flgr 10y ago
  Wow, looks super interesting. Thank you!
Agentlien 10y ago
This is because it's very easy to break down and formalise what makes a game addictive, but it's very difficult to do the same for fun. At Ghost we often find ourselves looking at a proposed or newly implemented feature and asking out loud "but, is it fun?". The answer can be very difficult to find, especially since many great features aren't fun until they've received that final layer of polish. And here's part of what Zelda does so well. You can see how a lot of the great things in Breath of the Wild would be great fun even in a simple prototype. On the flip side, this kind of exhilarating feeling of being able to do so many cool things only works because every single piece of the game is designed with this in mind and all the crazy interactions people come up with are actually supported. It only works so well because people aren't getting that familiar feeling of "oh. That didn't work." This must have been a massive task and I'm amazed they pulled it off!
- a-saleh 10y ago
  I have read [1] that they actually tried large part of the systems (article mentions physics and chemistry) in a simple prototype. I would actually like to play the 2D version :) [1] http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-2d-prototype-gdc-2017 http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-zelda...
  - Agentlien 10y ago
    Yes, they talk about it in the GDC talk[1] and that's what I was referring to: That I can see how even in such a simple prototype the fun seemed evident. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyMsF31NdNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyMsF31NdNc
wingerlang 10y ago
What is fun for one might be torture for another.
cableshaft 10y ago
I'm a game designer. Something can seem super fun in your head, but until it gets in front of you and you can play with it, there's no guarantee it's actually fun. And almost always, there was one or more flaws in your thinking that will have to be ironed out by playing it over and over again, preferably along with other people and getting their opinions on it as well. I can't begin to tell you how many times I come up with this clever idea, mock up a bunch of components or start coding a prototype, and go... "oh, damn, this isn't much fun." I've been able to whip a lot of those failed ideas into something fun, but it often takes a lot of experiments with different ideas or borrowing pieces of designs from other games that have worked, a lot of time and rumination on the design (I get a lot of my ideas for new things to try while walking my puppy, commuting in a quiet car, or in the shower), and putting it aside to work on something else and letting my subconscious or things I encounter in life to inspire potential solutions to the problem (and often it'll still take multiple attempts to fix things). The ones that drive me the most crazy are the ones where you try it for the first time and go 'This isn't that fun with this set of rules, but it's close to fun. If I can just find the right tweak, this can be great.' It can sometimes seem like it takes forever to find that right tweak. I've got some prototypes that I think are almost there, but I've had to put aside because I spent so much time on it and still couldn't figure out the right tweak for them. There have been attempts to nail down Game Design principles. There are quite a few books you can get on Amazon that have some good insights in them, GDC lectures, Gamasutra articles, academic journals, etc. There's nothing that's totally universal, but the more you learn, the larger your design palette to draw from.

by flgr 10y ago

marrone12 10y ago

You can't encapsulate fun to a series of algorithms. The brilliance of the Breath of the Wild is in it's imagination. When a game truly feels like magic, it needs someone to inspire it.

Negitivefrags 10y ago

There are numerous attempts at theories of fun out there, but none of them really let you look at a design and know if something will be fun without trying it. They don't even really give you much of any concrete guidance on how you might change a design to make it more fun if it isn't currently. The best attempts at this tend to be along the lines of looking at certain player profiles and trying to imagine what about your design appeals to those who enjoy that profile. It's possible that this isn't something we can easily quantify. If I asked you to write a book about what makes music good, would you be able to do that?

komali2 10y ago
Well, we can quantify things like circle of fifths and all those other weird music things I never seem to understand. Not well enough to automate music making, sure, but enough to teach people how to make good music.
- mathw 10y ago
  Well, you can automate music making, but the automated systems tend to produce incredibly generic music that's fairly bland and kind of aimless. We still need that creative spark to give it emotional content, direction and to break the rules in just the right ways to keep things interesting whether it's just a slightly unexpected harmonic progression or whether you're blazing an entirely new idea. Nobody ever got told they were an amazing composer because they followed all the rules. You can be good, but the greats all redefined something about the common practice of their time. However, if you stray too far away, people find your music too alien and tend not to like it at first. History is littered with references to new music from composers we now consider to be truly magnificent, who were at the time considered to be merely mediocre, or whose innovations were not welcomed with open arms. And of course, computers are still terrible at writing lyrics. That's an entirely different game. Maybe one day there'll be enough video games and literature that we can formulate a video game theory which is as extensive as our modern understanding of music theory. The thing with music of course is that we've been doing music for a lot longer.
mysterydip 10y ago
Raph Koster has a good book, "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", which I think does a pretty good job as an easy read intro to the problem. My main takeaway from it, if I had to boil it down to one point, is your brain finds fun in mastering something (beating a challenge), but not so much afterwards (boring/repetitive) or if it's too difficult (frustrating). The problem is, where that line is for any given challenge can be different for everyone. You can also get more mileage out of something if an aspect of the challenge changes (people will play chess longer than tic tac toe for example, even though the game space is the same each time).
- flgr 10y ago
  Just ordered this one; thanks for the recommendation and thanks for the takeaway summary as well. :)
- npiazza83 10y ago
  My brother has a PHD in video games and I bought and read that book and he laughed in my face. He said its almost satire among people in academia like Barthes S/Z

bane 10y ago

There's a couple of efforts. I think this is the most public: http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/ http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/

flgr 10y ago
Wow, looks super interesting. Thank you!

Agentlien 10y ago

This is because it's very easy to break down and formalise what makes a game addictive, but it's very difficult to do the same for fun. At Ghost we often find ourselves looking at a proposed or newly implemented feature and asking out loud "but, is it fun?". The answer can be very difficult to find, especially since many great features aren't fun until they've received that final layer of polish. And here's part of what Zelda does so well. You can see how a lot of the great things in Breath of the Wild would be great fun even in a simple prototype. On the flip side, this kind of exhilarating feeling of being able to do so many cool things only works because every single piece of the game is designed with this in mind and all the crazy interactions people come up with are actually supported. It only works so well because people aren't getting that familiar feeling of "oh. That didn't work." This must have been a massive task and I'm amazed they pulled it off!

a-saleh 10y ago
I have read [1] that they actually tried large part of the systems (article mentions physics and chemistry) in a simple prototype. I would actually like to play the 2D version :) [1] http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-2d-prototype-gdc-2017 http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14780954/the-legend-of-zelda...
- Agentlien 10y ago
  Yes, they talk about it in the GDC talk[1] and that's what I was referring to: That I can see how even in such a simple prototype the fun seemed evident. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyMsF31NdNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyMsF31NdNc

wingerlang 10y ago

What is fun for one might be torture for another.

cableshaft 10y ago

I'm a game designer. Something can seem super fun in your head, but until it gets in front of you and you can play with it, there's no guarantee it's actually fun. And almost always, there was one or more flaws in your thinking that will have to be ironed out by playing it over and over again, preferably along with other people and getting their opinions on it as well. I can't begin to tell you how many times I come up with this clever idea, mock up a bunch of components or start coding a prototype, and go... "oh, damn, this isn't much fun." I've been able to whip a lot of those failed ideas into something fun, but it often takes a lot of experiments with different ideas or borrowing pieces of designs from other games that have worked, a lot of time and rumination on the design (I get a lot of my ideas for new things to try while walking my puppy, commuting in a quiet car, or in the shower), and putting it aside to work on something else and letting my subconscious or things I encounter in life to inspire potential solutions to the problem (and often it'll still take multiple attempts to fix things). The ones that drive me the most crazy are the ones where you try it for the first time and go 'This isn't that fun with this set of rules, but it's close to fun. If I can just find the right tweak, this can be great.' It can sometimes seem like it takes forever to find that right tweak. I've got some prototypes that I think are almost there, but I've had to put aside because I spent so much time on it and still couldn't figure out the right tweak for them. There have been attempts to nail down Game Design principles. There are quite a few books you can get on Amazon that have some good insights in them, GDC lectures, Gamasutra articles, academic journals, etc. There's nothing that's totally universal, but the more you learn, the larger your design palette to draw from.