What makes a game fun?
“How do we know a specific type of fun when we see it? Talking about games and play is hard because the vocabulary we use is relatively limited.In describing the aesthetics of a game, we want to move away from words like ‘fun’ and ‘gameplay’ towards a more directed vocabulary” (1).
As I begin this design project I am thinking about this issue of fun. I want this game to be fun for the players and yet live up to its goal to change the behaviors of parents who play it. My first thoughts are that the fun in this game is involves discovery in some way and it is, essentially, a rites of passage sort of experience. I spent this design session thinking about the former rather than the latter and concentrated on board games that foreground ‘discovery'.’ I pondered T.I.M.E Stories and Above and Below. In T.I.M.E Stories the players are agents sent into different time periods to protect humanity by preventing temporal faults. I love how, in this game, failure is impossible because the player can go back in time as many times as required to succeed. In Above and Below the players build a new village after theirs has been ransacked. “In the game, you send you recruit villagers with unique abilities and send them to perform jobs like exploring the cave, harvesting resources, and constructing houses. At the end of the game, the player with the most well-developed village wins” (2). What I find fascinating about this game is that there are two environments ‘above’ where you build your new home and ‘below’ which holds other possibilities, perhaps even treasure. This duality of experience is something I am thinking about. Perhaps the ‘bad guys’ could be identified and battled in this alternate environment? Then as I started to let my mind wander, at the end of my design session, I started to think about Unlock! Kids (3). The main feature that I love about this game is that the player is given a starting point and then each step reveals what to do next based on a discovery in the current step.
As I end this session by writing this blog post I am left with the lingering thought: The discovery aesthetic in games is all about an uncharted territory. What type of setting will I put the player in to navigate this uncharted territory? Is setting even important? How will I incorporate the experience of a “rite of passage” in this design? How can I reveal to the parent the challenges their child is facing effectively?
(1) (PDF) MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228884866_MDA_A_Formal_Approach_to_Game_Design_and_Game_Research [accessed Jul 11 2024].
