So, let’s just walk through the whole thing, end to end. Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design.
One: Fun
There are a lot of things people call “fun.” But most of them are not useful for getting better at making games, which is usually why people read articles like this. The fun of a bit of confetti exploding in front of you, and the fun of excruciating pain and risk to life and limb as you free climb a cliff are just not usefully paired together.
In Theory of Fun I basically asserted that the useful bit for game designers was “mastery of problems.” That means that free climbing a cliff is in bounds even though it is terrifying and painful. Which given what we already said, means that you may or may not find the activity fun at the time! Fun often shows up after an activity.
There’s neuropsych and lots more to go with that, and you can go read up on it if you want.
Anything that is not about a form of problem-solving is not going to be core to game systems design. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful to game experience design, or not useful in general.
Also, in case it isn’t obvious – you can make interactive entertainment that is not meant to be about fun. You can also just find stuff in the world and turn it into a game! You can also look at a game and choose not to treat it as one, and then it might turn into real work (this is often called “training”).
This rules out the bit of confetti. A game being made of just throwing confetti around with nothing else palls pretty quick.
Bottom line: fun is basically about making progress on prediction.
Two: Problems and toys
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