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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.

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

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