Putting fun into a game!

So certain games recently have been touted as great technical achievements but lacking in the fun factor. So what makes a game actually fun? What actually makes a game a game? (If only there was a magic formula!) My thoughts are a game may consist of some of these things:

1) Searching/Finding things
2) Skill/quick reactions/to avoid dying
3) Working things out:
a) If I do this, then I can do this, then I can get here.
b) If I get this and I combine it with this/unlock this I can do this.
4) Completing tasks to advance in the game
5) Rewards such as music, animation, revelations, explosions, gore, speed, surprises
6) Satisfaction of doing something very difficult
7) Expressing your creativity

Also, there are things I missed such as the "inexplicable satisfaction gained by lining things up" which made Tetris so popular. And what makes a game boring or annoying is:

1) Repetitive or similar tasks
2) Bad things happening out of your control
3) The uncanny valley
4) Too slow
5) Too easy/difficult

It would be good to have a checklist which you could use against your game to measure it's fun factor.

 

If you find this and its not using other people as test dummies, please let me know!

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... monkeys and rocket-launchers.

 

I mean, it worked for Ape Escape.

Loved that game.

Also, I think this already kinda exists.

https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/434/game-design-8-kinds-of-fun

 

That's great @KnightsHouseGames. It'd be interesting if game genres were categorized by these 8 kinds of fun instead of like "action adventure" or "platformer".

 

I don't think that could happen though, because a lot of games don't just fit under one of those experiences. Just about any game I can think of contains at least 2, and usually closer to 3 or 4 of those.

I think it's less of a mechanism of sorting, and more of a way of breaking down and understanding how a player experiences a game. I mean maybe something that some people derive submissive fun from, others find to be a challenge for example.

Some people who play big AAA titles play them for the narrative enjoyment of Story mode, while other people playing the exact same game might just play the competitive multiplayer mode for the fellowship or the challenge aspects.

I think these are more for people thinking about the ways their game will engage their players

 

For a primer on 'what makes a game a fun' and other relevant topics, you can do no better than our own @Gigiwoo's Game Design Zen series. Spoiler (from Ep. 002):

1. Clear Goals
2. Feedback
3. Balanced Difficulty
4. No Distractions

You don't have to agree with this verbatim. In fact, Gigi responds to and discusses disagreements with this theory in a following episode. But if you've got yourself a game and are having trouble focusing the fun in it, this is a great place to start.

 

Fun is very subjective. What I find fun in a game is probably miles away from what most of you find fun.

My advice is to find your audience and use them to determine what is fun.

If your audience is PvPers then fun would be very different if it is Roleplayers or Casual players.

You might also want to look at Bartles four gamer personalities and see what would be fun for each group IF you want mass appeal. While I know this applies to MMO's, it could also apply to any game.

 

Still my favorite tower defence game.

 

Grinding and repetitive tasks can be fun if they're done right. See persona games, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Disgaea.

Dying, "Bad things going out of control" and unpredictable things can be fun in computer game, especially when emergent storytelling is involved. See Dwarf Fortress.

I absolutely hated searching for stuff in most games I played. Diamonds in far cry, pigeons and hidden drops in gta, saints row, etc. If I don't know where something might be, it isn't fun to search for it.

Among the "gore, explosions, etc" you forgot to mention STORY. Few paragraphs of text in the right place can set up the mood perfectly and can have greater impact than high-budget top notch animation, modeling music and vfx. See ShadowRun: Dragonfall for examples.

In general, I find games that give you something to think about it more interesting. "Something to think about" means complex mechanics that is slowly being unveilved (see: X series OR fihgting games like BlazBlue), OR constantly changing situation that requires your attention and demands that you make many decisions often (See: Collin McRay Rally, original Doom).

I think that "creativity in a game" is pretty much a non-factor (at least for me), because for creativity there are better way to express it.

Completing a task to advance and getting praised for it (i.e. "press B to get praised") can be annoying and even insulting.

In general, it most likely won't be possible to make a "checklist for a fun game", unless you have a specific target audience in mind, because people look for different things in the games they play.

 

Love Boons! I still play monkey city every day! (lvl 36 - 35,512,997 bloons popped)

 

Nice. I hit a wall at about level 20. Haven't played in a while.

 

I slowed way down around that point as well. The levels get really long to play through at that point. But since they introduced the beacons, every 4ish hours there is a map that is just 15 levels and a nice 10min play. That is pretty much all I play now. I have built everything and literally have nothing to spend coins on anymore. It would be nice if they added more content.

 

Hmm... in way I think what makes a game "fun", is similar to what makes a tune enjoyable.
For example, variation, surprises, familiarity with a twist, etc.
But then again some people like repetitive dance music so you never can tell!

 

Sure, but this is what I was getting at. For me personally, I'd find it more useful to sort by the type of fun a game is focusing on than the traditional genres. Obviously those are useful as well, but I care less about the type of game it is than I do about the type of fun I'm going to get out of it. If I'm in the mood for some exploration fun, I want to be able to find that game, regardless of if it's a platformer, shooter, whatever. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive

Just a bit of wishful thinking that it'd be nice to be able to sort games by experience -- am I the only one who'd want this?

And heck ya, sometimes I just want some repetitive af game to get into a flow state. Sometimes I wanna chill out w/o much mental exertion. Sometimes I want the challenge. I'm a pretty open-minded gamer, so most of the time I'm on the hunt for experience over the particulars of how we achieve that experience.

And most games these days do hit on more than one category. You run into this same issue with genres too.

 

Absolutely, I hate the way games are sorted these days, the genres are not very descriptive and confusing to some people. I once saw a girl in the comments of a game video who thought all AAA games were referred to as FPS games, and thought Assassin's Creed was therefore an FPS. Thats when I knew our way of catagorizing games had totally failed.

The only problem with this system is it it's different for everyone. Each person's skill level and way of experiencing these forms of fun is different, so maybe some people find a game challenging, while others might zone out playing it. Their tastes also come into play, I mean some people love first person shooter games, and get certain types of joy out of that style of game, while I absolutely hate those kinds of games and find no fun in them whatsoever.

When I used to play The Last of Us Multiplayer, in the beginning I found it to be incredibly challenging, and enjoyed it for that. But over time, as I improved as a player, it eventually became a submissive experience for me, it became a way for me to turn my brain down a few notches and relax. So in that sense, the fun someone gets out of a game can even evolve, at least using this system.

I do agree that our current genre system is totally broken though, and something like this is closer to what would be more helpful to describe a game, but I feel this exact system just isn't concrete enough, maybe something in between genres and this system would be the best. Something that notes the kind of enjoyment one will get from the game, but also describes the mechanics of the game.

 

Yeah, might be wandering slightly off topic here, but the difficulty in categorization does go to show just how varied people's definition of fun can be. And that's not even touching the question of whether games need to be fun as a requisite.

I do like the parallel @yoonitee's drawn to what makes a song enjoyable. And this perhaps allows for some broader sense of enjoyment vs strictly "fun". I mean, I listen to songs when I'm sad too!

 

It's perfectly on topic. What would be off topic if I wondered about what kind of marketing I would need to sell game a Koala Bear would play. We are still discussing fun in games, so it's all good

Well, movies and music figured out acceptable genres over time. Granted, they have it easier, games contain both movies and music, and have game mechanics to worry about as well. We have a much harder job than those two mediums, and have had less time.

I feel like perhaps these 8 types of fun are sorta like basic building blocks. Perhaps we can classify things with a more multi layered approach, like the animal kingdom, like [game x] provides [y fun types] to people with interest in [z game mechanics], so therefore it is this.

I think a good thing our inability to classify games into rock solid genres tells us is that there isn't an obvious formula for every type of game yet, the way there is with the wide majority of movies and music. I mean yeah, obviously you have the big yearly super american patriotic FPS games, your massive open world action games, and your garbage mobile shovelware, but I feel like the majority of games are still so fresh that they're hard to classify with an obvious formula. In that way, maybe its a good thing.

 

One of the big problems I think is the sense of separation between the developer who is sitting there in a technically-minded mode, and the end-user experience which is really very different. Like, when you are doing a performance art or something, like you act in a play or you sing for an audience, there is much more of a direct and immediate transfer and communication. Of course there's also body language and emotion and so on, but the key is.... What the developer/actor/singer is doing - their performance - is what goes 'into' their product, like, in the 'now', not down the road. If the developer is sitting there being all technical and intellectual and is not really able to translate a 'performance' into the game, then the game ends up being a reflection of that. Things can get really technically impressive, which means the author has gone into their head, and maybe has lost touch with their heart.

I feel like, for me personally, when I am making the game I try to actually feel what it would feel like to be "having fun". That means I need to get myself into a "funny" mood and lightening up and start to feel some "energy" and a sense of engagement. I need to get the creative juices flowing. I need to sort of 'meditate' on what I want things to feel like or what kind of experience I want the player to have. It's like, putting some passion into it... But mainly, putting some FUN into it. If I can't be a fun person, if I can't "think funnily", if I can't enjoy myself, if I can't enjoy what I'm doing, if I can't laugh at myself, if I can't myself get into the 'experience' of fun, as I create, then there's just no way it's going to end up embodied in the final product.

Ever made a tech demo? Yah great.... Technical, intellectually impressive, difficult, complicated, serious, not exactly fun to make, and not exactly fun to play with.

I Think one of the hardest things for people to do is to play, to have fun, to lighten up, and especially to create comedy - because fun and funny are very closely related. Far too few games are funny or fun.

 

Yeah its going to be hard to come up with a general formula that can apply to all games. You need to figure out what it is people like about the genre of game your making, what they dont like about it

 

You just described this game:

How will you tell the right answers from the wrong answers unless you already know which is which?

 

This has been debated to death a million times in game design circles. Simplified explanation; fun is a stimulus that causes a positive response in the player. The problem is that people can be so different that it is somewhat impossible to categorize it perfectly. Especially if you take extremes like mentally different people into account. An autistic person might hate blip sounds but loves blop sounds, a generic person might not understand the behavior att all. Still, that didn't stop people from trying and Bartle is very famous for his models. I threw in a quick video explaining his work and a gamasutra link on the topic. The topic has gotten a long way since then but... the question is if all the models that have been developed add or subtract from our understanding of the elusive "fun".

Gamasutra - Personality And Play Styles: A Unified Model

 

Here are 10 secrets I have compiled. These powerful secrets are unknown to the majority of people. In fact, most people can't handle these secrets. Are you ready?

Spoiler: Most Developers Can't Handle These 10 Secrets

1. Take your game, and yourself, especially yourself, very, very seriously.
2. Focus on graphics. Based on science, since people see things before they hear them, and because first impressions last a lifetime, the only thing that matters is that your game looks good. Everything else is insignificant.
3. If anyone says your game isn't fun, they're wrong. argue with them so everybody can see that they are wrong and, logically, they will conclude that your game is in fact fun. If they don't, they are probably racist and can be safely ignored.
4. Never work on your game's design. You know what you're doing. As long as you take a very serious approach and make a prototype you are doing it correctly. If anyone says otherwise, ignore them. They are probably a misogynist, anyhow.
5. Play testing is for lesser developers. Most play testers are not serious enough to know a good game when it 'bites them on the nose'.
6. Seriousness creates fun. And the more seriousness you have in your Developer DNA the more seriousness you will be able to impart to the game...thus resulting in higher quality.
7. Rarely work on games. Whenever you work on games, you impart your Seriousness into the game and this drains your Seriousness reserve, thus resulting in burnout and fatigue. You might have to watch some Ted talks, Anita Sarkeesian or Extra Credit videos to recharge your seriousness reserves and remind you why you became a game developer in the first place. To make a difference.
8. A game is finished when you say it is finished. Fun is highly subjective, sure, but since you are the most serious person you're the best judge of fun. It has been scientifically demonstrated that when you lose interest, it's your brains way of telling you that the game can't get any better so there's no point in doing anything more. Release as-is and if your game gets rejected on Steam, criticize Greenlight on all of your social media feeds 24/7 for at least a week.
9. Only be friends with other game developers. The last thing you want is uneducated, non-informed opinions mixing with your perfectly good opinions. It could corrupt your seriousness listening to people prattle on about enjoying other people's lesser games. Something to do with patriarchy but it doesn't really matter. You get the idea.
10. Never play games. Everyone else's games suck, anyway, and all other developers are terrible. Also you should talk about this whenever the opportunity arises, for as long as you can, so that the world will know that they suck. Listening to other people agree with you increases your seriousness level, as well. One of the most effective things for developers to do is to constantly reinforce one another's seriousness, in a circlular manner, thus creating a synergetic seriousness to the benefit of all.

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90% of people will not understand the true meaning of this post.

 

I said that up there and they ignored me. lol Everyone is just posting what is fun to them. Sometimes, I think the problem with making fun games is that we tend to make games we think are fun and ignore the fact that other people are playing them....and that we WANT other people to play them.

 

Well it is pretty simple really... fun is as fun does.

 

I disagree! Like I said before, fun is subjective. It can't be boiled down to "fun" because we think it is fun.

I know people who only enjoy playing games because they can abuse other players. If there isn't a PvP system, if there are not newbies they can attack and harass, then the game is not fun.

On the other side, I know people who refuse to play PvP games or games with blood and gore, because it is not fun to them.

Fun is actually very complex. Even outside of games....for example, jumping out of a plane is not fun to me but it is to many. Playing chess is not fun for me, but my kids love it. Some of my grown up friends think I am crazy and immature to make games....because they do not at all see why that is fun. lol

 

That's what I said. Look at your various examples of what is and is not fun to different people. Fun is as fun does.

Whenever you find people having fun doing something and enjoying it ... that is fun... for them.

Fun should be a simple thing because a game should be created for a target market. In that audience certain things bring "fun" and certain things remove "fun". The only things that are relevant are what is "fun" to them. It doesn't matter what people outside those people think. Just my view on it.

 

In that case, I agree.

 

Reminds me of the beginning of a funny Ark review on steam:

Games with that kind of possibilities can also be appealing for non-abusive reasons. In Rust I like the challenge of surviving as a lone wolf without a proper base and competing with tons of more experience players and groups of players that have superior weapons and bases up in no time.
I don't like Ark because it has way too much grinding for my taste.

 

Did you guys know there are games that aren't multiplayer, online or survival rogue-likes.

 

Yeah, tends to happen in these forums but we have to remember that it is also made up of a mix of professionals, indies and hobbyist game developers and probably a few more that aren't even game developers

Yeah, I have heard those thoughts many times and they are often true in their own situation but there is a question that need to get answered first; why am I / are we making this game? You need to know if it is for money, mass appeal, maybe yourself or simply to explore a new idea... the list of reasons can be long but the important step is to get it written down and to prioritize the reasons (this also makes decision-making a lot easier).

My description of fun was just a very quick and simple version of the academic topic in Game Design. It always applies but the way you use the knowledge depends on your strategy. To take your and honestly common situation; you make the game for yourself. You hope that: if it appeals to you, it might also appeal to others. That is a completely fine strategy that many indies follow and many big game series got born that way. Where would we be today if crazy people didn't go against the flow and make something different, something we haven't seen before?
This strategy only becomes a problem if it wasn't your main priority, maybe you were supposed to make a game for money, to satisfy the shareholders? Ops... xD

 

Ehh... The idiocracy feel that your post is too serious and full of too many difficult words.

Seriously though... some of those points are serious topics that some people get seriously wrong.