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I think you've nailed a core point of this discussion SirDonlad. I agree, fun is the wrong word.

Maybe we should really be talking about the factors that separate play from work?
Or perhaps what separates activity that we choose to do of our own violition with no consciously considered benefit from that we do for a conscious result.

What I mean by this is some of the things we do, we do because we're preprogrammed to do so.
Having a romantic relationship for example has nature reward us in multiple ways but even without this we're compelled to try to have romantic relationships. Its nature adding layers to push us to procreate. I assume (a hunch) that with the increasing sophistication and complexity of our concious willpower that evolution has layered more incentives to keep us on track.

So here I'd suggest, rather than "fun" we'd looking at natures reward. In our modern society we're programmed to think of reward as financial or transactional but in our natural state reward is biological, free and often compounded.

By contrast work is an activity we do to live. There is a lot of work we can do that is enjoyable but we do not do much of it without the incentive of money and life security. However this isn't strictly correct because we're rewarded in the same way as above for many work activities.

I can attest that professional game development is genuinely enjoyable, the shear variety of tasks and thinking strategies gives a great deal back. However I can say with a great deal of authority that I only do the work for money. When I'm between jobs engaging in professional development, this is what I'd do full time if I could. Making games as a result of this development is really just testing theories and the like. When the work has outlived my personal need for reinforcement it becomes just work. This is supposed to be the best job in the world but I'd rather spend quality time with my loved ones or learn stuff and this is echoed across an industry packed with "dream jobs".

A more stark example might be hunting.
I envisage posh English people walking moors with shotguns and small dogs murdering Pheasant and Grouse for entertainment. This is a game of hunting which is a natural state of work but I'd counter that this activity has a core feature of fun in that it has zero consequence for the hunter.
A more "realistic" hunting regime would be to hunt mammoth with spear and rocks which I'd suggest was a lot less fun and often tragic.


So after this ramble I'm agreeing with SirDonlad suggesion that "fun" could be replaced with a better word.
Not sure what this word is but I think the definition would be something like this:
"Engaging the layered physical biological rewards of doing what our evolution wants us to do"


As an aside. One thing we (people) do a lot of is horde calories, attempt to take in more than we need and expend as little as we can. Many activities we engage in take the form of consumption and/or relaxing or doing something with less effort. The reason I bring this up is Lance845 talks of engagement.

Any word that better defines fun should include active engagement. In the context of our hobby the calories required are higher than a videogame but not as high as rock climbing. I think we should consider that to aquire the level of "fun" we can work with as physical game designers it requires that there is a minimal level of engagement to activate fun. The overcoming of saving calories.
Perhaps the subject of quick-start or easy-in's where we meet the compulsion to save calories half way is a strategy that needs addressing with more nuance?

Had a big think about why we attribute value to 'play'. No results yet.
I like the idea of a calorifc ratio for evaluating a game but aquiring accurate data will be very entertaining (playing warhammer underwater to capture the body heat lost)

Started thinking about some of the keywords you used - incentive, reward, benefit, compulsion.

Got the sense that the root of it tends to be "'some thing' for 'some thing'"

Seems to be alot of deep conversation going on here that I don't really understand.

But I'll throw in an opinion based upon the games that were fun for me and perhaps why.

40k 2nd edition. Apart from the fact you have Super soldiers and alien gribblies going head to head, there were loads of great tables which gave you results based on which score you got on a dice, vehicle exploded, a minor captain turns into a giant demon, your entire army dies to a single toxic virus grenade and not to forget the scatter dice for artillery and slinging around all kinds of templates.

Full thrust, you gave your all your ships movement orders secretly before all players then moved their ships, it was a neat mechanic, You could try and coerce players into moving certain ways by firing torpedoes so your main battleships guns would line up with them for instance. Also as your ships took damage different systems would fail and go down. Not to forget massive death star lasers and all sorts of goodies. It was also miniature agnostic, so you could create your own ships out of anything.

Circus Maximus. You guided your little fantasy lion drawn chariot (with driver and gladiator on the back) beasts would die, wheels would break as you crashed your chariot into the walls, a dude wall fall off and get crushed by the next chariot coming along. There was just lots of fun little things that could happen.

Guess I'm not the kind that would want to sit down and do serious wargaming. Did take part in a game of kriegspiel once and did very well, considering I couldn't see the game board and spent most of the time cooped up in a back room waiting to relay orders via messenger. Never again.

I have to say that "random" is not equal to "fun".

For years I've heard people addressing random mechanics as "fun" (i.e, orcs and goblins in old warhammer), when they are actually not.

They can be fun, sometimes. A better term is probably quirky.

I stopped playing skaven when they removed the randomness from them and made them horrifically unfun.

My favorite games of WHFB were when the Screaming Bell cracked and the Doomwheel went for a joyride into my Skaven Slaves before wheeling around and squashing the Green Knight!

Now, I can't even look at the Skaven, they are the epitome of meh.

SU-152 wrote:
I have to say that "random" is not equal to "fun".

For years I've heard people addressing random mechanics as "fun" (i.e, orcs and goblins in old warhammer), when they are actually not.

I agree - the more the game is taking away my agency and replacing it with randomness the more it makes me indifferent to what is happening on the board.

Coming up with 200IQ Rube-Goldberg machine plays is fun. Games that are deep enough (doesn't equal "complicated") to allow that are fun.

 Quixote wrote:
I stopped playing skaven when they removed the randomness from them and made them horrifically unfun.

My favorite games of WHFB were when the Screaming Bell cracked and the Doomwheel went for a joyride into my Skaven Slaves before wheeling around and squashing the Green Knight!

Now, I can't even look at the Skaven, they are the epitome of meh.

So for your, the "fun" was the expectation of the wide possibilities and part of the strategy element was playing in such a way as to maximize the chaos caused by those possibilities.

I can see that. I think a lot of the old orc/ork players enjoyed the sense that they were merely starting a thing and interested to see where randomness would take it with victory being secondary to tabletop mayhem.

For me, I like the decisions made by the player to be more consequential, so I lean to the side of less randomness.

And yes, my 2nd ed. Ork army is built around the more reliable units, but does have a sprinking of absurdities because that is inherent to the faction.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Quixote wrote:
I stopped playing skaven when they removed the randomness from them and made them horrifically unfun.

My favorite games of WHFB were when the Screaming Bell cracked and the Doomwheel went for a joyride into my Skaven Slaves before wheeling around and squashing the Green Knight!

Now, I can't even look at the Skaven, they are the epitome of meh.

So for your, the "fun" was the expectation of the wide possibilities and part of the strategy element was playing in such a way as to maximize the chaos caused by those possibilities.

I can see that. I think a lot of the old orc/ork players enjoyed the sense that they were merely starting a thing and interested to see where randomness would take it with victory being secondary to tabletop mayhem.

For me, I like the decisions made by the player to be more consequential, so I lean to the side of less randomness.

And yes, my 2nd ed. Ork army is built around the more reliable units, but does have a sprinking of absurdities because that is inherent to the faction.

Exactly. I almost started an Empire army after reading about Engineers and Pigeon Bombs... that had a chance of coming home to roost and blowing up over the Engineer.

To me, part of the fun was trying to react to unplanned events and unforseen consequences.

I was also a fan of missions that could cause the game to swing wildly in the favor of either player due to random factors.

Skaven and Orks were my favorite WHFB armies. Dwarfs, I found incredibly boring, because I knew exactly how they were going to be played, no matter who played them.

 Quixote wrote:


Skaven and Orks were my favorite WHFB armies. Dwarfs, I found incredibly boring, because I knew exactly how they were going to be played, no matter who played them.

To be fair, Dwarfs are the most limited army in terms of choices and tactics. Even if you gave them a bunch of wacky weapons, it wouldn't push the envelope too much.

Some years ago an opponent remarked that he really feared my Chaos Marines. I said that was strange, since my Ultramarines had a much better record against him. His response was that yes, the Ultras were good, but also predictable insofar as they methodically destroyed you.

Chaos Marines, on the other hand, struck almost at random, and you were never sure what was really going on with them. That was scary to him.

This reminds me of a simulation I did for the Air Force some years ago that had absolutely no randomness in it. It was designed to introduce staff into the upper levels of command and the decisions planners had to make. It was basically a slide show and it had decision points about force structure, composition, setting objectives, etc. and the 'players' wrote their answers on a sheet of paper. The objective was to align your plan with your mission, so there was no one correct answer.

At the end, the sheets were turned in and scored and the highest scorers were the middle ranks, captains and senior NCOs.

What does that have to do with fun? Well, the competition to get the best score made it fun, and having the opportunity to sit in the Big Chair and play the role of a three or four star general was very popular.

Lots of different ways to have fun.