Game Fun

 Week 08

What is Fun in Gaming

Fun is something that is very powerful in video games and it has been a very common component that a lot of game studios over the years, Most people see gaming as a way to escape stress and get away from it all, they want to relax and immerse themselves and most importantly have fun. When a player is having fun they will come back to the game and will play it again to experience the feeling of joy, happiness, and that sense of engagement.


There was a guy who wrote a popular book on the theory of fun his name was Raph Koster said that "the fun of the game comes from its rich possibility to get better at it and offers a space for learning"
Most games perceive fun in a challenging way, if there isn't something positively stimulating someone they ain't going to enjoy it as much. If there's a challenge and the player can beat it feeling accomplished afterward then they are going to feel good this is what's going to make the game more enjoyable and "fun" for them more so than having them do meaningless things in the game that aren't going to challenge them or going to gratify them. A game that appears to have infinite depth is a game that will keep its player playing and will create fun, the players will never get bored.
"Games are concentrated chunks ready for our brain to chew on," said Raph Koster, I think this is a great way of describing a game, how we perceive games, and how fun a game could be.
Fun is just a feeling of dopamine in our brain firing when presented with a new situation to learn from. 
You can learn a lot from games and learning can be fun too. What can games teach us though?
  1. Minecraft teaches the player resource management and survival.
  2. Other games like FPS shooters would teach better hand-eye coordination.
  3. The Sims would teach the player a basic understanding of civilization.
  4. Tactical games like CSGO or Valorant would help with team building and strategy.
Fun is the feedback the brain gives when we are absorbing patterns for learning purposes. Raph said "an understanding of fun correlates to our understanding of games as an art form and that games are fundamentally a creative art that allows us to learn"
This concept of fun and how it links to learning is fascinating and I never truly thought about it until now. One of the games that keeps bringing me endless fun is Rocket League this game always has me coming back simply because of the skill challenges and how you can constantly learn new ways of playing and playstyles another thing that makes this game so fun is the fact that the mechanics that are in the game are constantly evolving. 
Some links that I found interesting on this topic:



And there was this really interesting video that talked about Raph Koster and how he had such a strong influence on this topic:


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