At a meeting at school last week, we discussed several ideas about just what made games fun. There were a variety of topics, from the definition of a game (versus a puzzle, a challenge, etc) to gender differences in game appeal. What interested me the most is the actual theory about what it is in a game or puzzle that translates to the experience of fun in the human brain. Many of the ideas we discussed came from the book A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. I am just beginning to think about these things, so the ideas expressed below are sketches and are still evolving (actually, I believe every idea should be either evolving or evolvable).

One of Koster’s main points is that the human brain is a pattern matching machine. We find patterns everywhere, be they sequences of moves in chess or where to aim in first-person shooters. When the patterns are too complex or are just random (essentially the same thing from an information theoretic standpoint), the brain grows bored or annoyed. When the patterns are too simple and we discover them all (as in Tic-Tac-Toe), that is also boring. Koster says the following:

“If I were Will Wright, I’d say that ‘Fun is the process of discovering areas in a possibility space.’”

My advisor made the point that there is a certain zone you get into during a game where everything else goes away and you are totally focused. This can also happen with an Excel spreadsheet or coding (or knitting or playing sports). So we seek the zone. I think the zone is a state of mind where your brain is attuned to certain patterns and you are able to find new, related patterns quickly. The zone is a feedback loop that arises from the successful discovery of certain initial patterns that allows you to solve increasingly complex patterns.

When I used to play Halo, the zone was the most awesome experience of all. I would charge a base, kill all the guys between me and the flag, grab the flag, rush back out and zoom back to my home base to score. It was addictive (so addictive I had to get rid of Halo).  So how do you make a game that encourages finding the zone?  Koster’s book has some tips, which I won’t go into, but it’s worth checking out.