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The eternal question. Spoiler alert for this post. I don't know the answer to the leading question in the title. However, as a designer this is the #1 goal players have when they approach your game. They want to have fun! Of course, what that means varies a lot!

I have talked to a lot of different players in my time to try to answer this question, "What is fun?". Here is a snapshot of answers I have received:

-Winning is fun!
-Hanging out with my buddies is fun!
-The spectacle of a good game is fun!
-Getting some insight into the period is fun!
-Telling stories on or about the games is fun!
-Playing and seeing what happens is fun!
-Painting and setting it all up, and seeing it all come together is fun!
-Letting my imagination run wild is fun!
-Trying to master the game is fun!
-Smack talking my friends is fun!
-Researching the period is fun!
-Being part of a larger community of folks is fun!
-Talking about the games is fun!
-Having a lot of choices in gameplay is fun!

The list is honestly endless. There are as many different answers to "What is fun?" as there are players. Each player comes to the table with their own history, personal preferences, styles, and calibrations for what is FUN and what is NOT FUN!

If you ask players the flip-side of the coin, what is NOT FUN you also get a variety of different outcomes too. If you list what is FUN on one side, and what is NOT FUN on the other you will often see the same answers!

Therefore, how is a designer suppose to tackle the elephant in the room? I take a crack at it on the Blood and Spectacles blog here:

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2024/01/wargame-design-what-is-fun.html

However, I am interested in what you design to create fun? What are your preferences and what do you stretch to include? How do you manage all these compete ideas of "FUN"?

My game design preferences have shifted quite a bit as I've gotten older. I used to love immersive games like West End's Imperium Romanum II, or time-wasters like the Brigade Series.

Alas, finding the time and opponents for these hasn't been feasible for a while. I'm now much closer to the Axis and Allies end of the spectrum.

This guided my game designs for the Air Force, which were focused on identifying friction or simply familiarization with the theater of operations. They needed to be quick because time was always short (military wargaming is mostly a box that is checked, not a serious evaluation, and you see the results around the world).

Thus, a design should above all things be brief, playable in an hour, easy to learn and the complexity should be tied to consequential decisions. Since October, I've been wanting to build a fast-playing card-driven game of the Indian wars in the Great Lakes basin, but finding time has been impossible. (I bought a box of Soviet infantry at Thanksgiving and still haven't been able to assemble it!)

At some point things will let up, and then I'll be able to show folks what I mean in greater detail.

Fun is a byproduct. You can't directly produce fun, fun can only emerge from something else. Thus, fun can't be a game design goal, but rather something you achieve by designing something more specific well. It's a metric in the same way a meter is, you can measure something by it, but don't produce 'meters'. EVERY* game is supposed to be fun. You can't make something that registers as fun for everyone, but you can make something that's extremely fun for specific subsets by focusing a design. Just do one or two things really well is usually enough.

* Some of the more esoteric roleplaying games that are about dealing with pain and trauma legit are not designed to be fun, but those feel sufficiently out of scope here.

Yeah, agreed with slyphic. The game should be *engaging*. Fun is a by-product of that engagement, and is often something out of control of the game designer and highly dependent on situation/scenario (i.e. location its being played in, context of the play, opponent, etc.).

Likewise, whether or not people play a wargame for "fun" is subjective in and of itself - I would wager that theres a lot of people who aren't necessarily having what most people would define as or consider to be "fun" while they are playing wargames, instead they are playing for the mental challenge or the stimulation offered, etc. That gets interpreted as "their idea of fun" of course, and they may legitimately gain enjoyment from the activity, but does it mean the technical or physiological definition (etc) of "fun"? That is a bit less clear.

 slyphic wrote:
Fun is a byproduct. You can't directly produce fun, fun can only emerge from something else. Thus, fun can't be a game design goal, but rather something you achieve by designing something more specific well. It's a metric in the same way a meter is, you can measure something by it, but don't produce 'meters'. EVERY* game is supposed to be fun. You can't make something that registers as fun for everyone, but you can make something that's extremely fun for specific subsets by focusing a design. Just do one or two things really well is usually enough.

* Some of the more esoteric roleplaying games that are about dealing with pain and trauma legit are not designed to be fun, but those feel sufficiently out of scope here.

I disagree. I think "fun" describes a specific type of entertainment, a form of pleasure distinct from engaging or engrossing. Generally complicated and profound things aren't considered "fun."

Games like Munchkin are designed to be fun - make you laugh, not take it seriously, not tax your mind too much. I just watched a fun movie - not at all serious, silly in places, and - as a work of art- hardly something one would describe as epic.

Fun games are at the shallow end of the complexity pool. No one calls Campaign for North Africa fun. No one.

Cards Against Humanity is fun. Storm Over Arnhem looks cool, but it is not fun.

Cards Against Humanity is only fun once, basically. After that's its cringe.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Cards Against Humanity is only fun once, basically. After that's its cringe.

I think the point stands, though.

I would argue that 40k started out being fun, and has slowly leeched that away. Fun games never take themselves too seriously.

Well I find engaging and challenging things extremely fun, so I cannot agree.

Munchkin's design goals are: fast playing, satirical humor, simple rules, and replayability through large card pools. Munchkin stops being fun once a group understands it's a push-your-luck game where the the third or fourth player to try to win actually gets to win due to card attrition from other winning attempts, and the latter half of the game is an extremely random drag. This usually takes 3-4 games.

Cards against humanity is extremely diminishing returns on transgressive humor and ... that's about it. It's novel, then it's boring and not fun at all.

Campaign for North Africa isn't fun because it's a terribly designed game that merely asks the question: what if we did as little abstraction as possible. It does nothing well. It's about as fun as FATAL, as a joke to point and laugh at.

Not Storm over Arnheim, but I regularly play hex&counter wargames with my friends and I assure we have fun. The Air-Eaters Strike Back was on the table a couple weeks ago, and War in the Ice: Battle for the Seventh Continent is coming out soon.

 slyphic wrote:
Well I find engaging and challenging things extremely fun, so I cannot agree.

I think it's important to have an agreed upon definition before proceeding any further. I think the OP is treating "fun" as a subset of pleasure or enjoyment, one that usually involves humor or some sort of fooling around. People speak of "playing just for fun" to reference that it isn't taken seriously and that competition is beside the point.

Thus: Munchkin, which cannot be enjoyed if played to win. That's why the design continues to sell product and has decent replay value because it isn't a serious exercise. Winning is almost beside the point (particularly in our family games) where the "fun" factor is everyone dogpiling Dad.

Standard wargames approach the subject matter with great seriousness, as befitting the topic. No one considered logistics to be "fun," and games that represent them can bring pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction, but never fun. Stratego can be fun; Axis and Allies can be fun; serious hex-sheet games aren't fun unless you do something outside of their normal sphere.

For example, over Christmas Break in 1990 my friends and I set up a grand campaign of the Third World War series - a rule set that is absolutely NOT fun to cycle through (the turn sequence fills an entire sheet of paper in densely formatted type).

But we had fun because of how we approached it, with snack runs, overconsumption of sugar, jocular humor and the "satellite view" where one could climb a small ladder and survey the vastness of the map.

Rolling for aircraft availability, removing disruption markers and attempting to maneuver toppling stacks of cardboard counters was not the fun part. True, the sheer absurdity of the exercise and time needed was somewhat fun, but there was a reason we reverted to playing Shogun for our usual get-togethers.

Shogun was easier and faster to play, making it more fun.

You guys are illustrating my point. You can't design for fun, because everyone has different definitions of fun. Therefore, FUN should not be a design goal.

I think its rare for everyone in a dakka post to be almost unanimously in agreement on the original topic. We have some differences as to what exactly constitutes fun, but yes - it seems that we all agree that fun is subjective and often individualized, and so cannot or should not be something that a designer specifies as a goal.

That being said, the old chestnut piece of advice I've often heard is that as a designer you should try to design the games that you would want to play. Presumably, that means as a designer you should design a game that *you* consider fun, with the expectation that your interests are not so singular that nobody else on the planet would also find it fun as well.

I've had some really negative reactions from game designers about the usefulness of 'fun' as a design goal, both inherently and as something to convey to a customer.

"This game is designed to be fun!" OK, but where does the fun come from? "You're thinking about it too hard, it's just a game for fun" So it's a beer&pretzel game. "No, it's a game for having fun" So it's not a beer&pretzel game, it's serious and challenging "Shut up and just let people have fun".

Paraphrasing, but that was the last time it came up. I'm glad this one is going better.

Not surprised, many of the published game designers I've encountered have serious cases of head-ass. Nerds who have been ostracized most of their lives and suddenly achieve just a shred of niche fame seem to let it allllll go to their heads.

 slyphic wrote:
I've had some really negative reactions from game designers about the usefulness of 'fun' as a design goal, both inherently and as something to convey to a customer.

"This game is designed to be fun!" OK, but where does the fun come from? "You're thinking about it too hard, it's just a game for fun" So it's a beer&pretzel game. "No, it's a game for having fun" So it's not a beer&pretzel game, it's serious and challenging "Shut up and just let people have fun".

Paraphrasing, but that was the last time it came up. I'm glad this one is going better.

I detect a certain amount of defensiveness in those replies, where "fun" serves to hand-wave away poor design elements.

Words have specific meanings, and fun is a subset of something pleasurable. It's hard to quantify to the first decimal, but you know it when you have it.

I mean, much of the "fun" of Munchkin comes from Schadenfreude, not actually winning the game. I'd say in most of my game play winning is accidental - the primary purpose is to dish out punishment to the people around you, watch them fall ever farther behind, which can be a lot of fun.

As a design element, I think it's a good question to ask, because it is easy to get caught up into the complexity/realism trap, or "how do I monetize everything attached to this?" modes of thinking.

Contemplating whether it "sparks joy" and how it is supposed to be fun is a useful mental exercise.

In a more objective sense, surveying players and asking what they like most about a game is also useful. That helps you nail down what is fun and what isn't.

I think "how" it sparks joy is less important than to whom it sparks joy for. Who is your audience, and is it a big enough audience to pay the bills?

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think "how" it sparks joy is less important than to whom it sparks joy for. Who is your audience, and is it a big enough audience to pay the bills?

Identifying your audience is crucial, but so is understanding the mechanism by which you are reaching them. Going back to Munchkin, the designers understand that it's not a tournament-type deliberate strategy game where winning brings a sense of earned accomplishment. It's a party game where winning is incidental to what's going on, which is reading funny cards aloud, creating bizarre creatures and magic items while tormenting each other.

In a sense, it comes down to consistency in tone and purpose. As we discussed, some people really enjoy dry, immersive strategy games, but if you add too much randomness, the players are angry because all the planning and effort are undermined by dice rolls.

Conversely, a game of random draws and dice rolls that cause the game to veer all over the place encourages players not to take it seriously. I mean if we want to do a "fun/complexity" spectrum, on one side you have Campaign for North Africa, and on the other, Twister.

Twister is a great example of a game purely designed to be silly and fun. Operation is another. In both you have a unity of effort and result. Where games have issues is situations like the various GW iterations where it's not clear if the game's just a joke or serious tournament-level strategy.

I think the "how" also comes into play when envisioning what the players are doing. Are they precariously clinging to dots on a vinyl sheet or squinting at divisional counters piled up on the Eastern Front.? That's kind of important to know.

A while back we debated "engagement," and how that means different things to different people. In a card game with rapid turn rotation, you have a lot of engagement and also opportunity for cross-talk. Indeed, that's the peril of multiplayer games - too much crosstalk.

But that also can be a form of engagement, as in Avalon Hill's Civilization. So the "how" of fun I think is quite important.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Cards Against Humanity is only fun once, basically. After that's its cringe.

I think the point stands, though.

I would argue that 40k started out being fun, and has slowly leeched that away. Fun games never take themselves too seriously.

You aren't really wrong about 40k. By looking through the various editions you can kind of see the game morph from what the designers thought were cool, fun ideas, i.e. a game they made for themselves, to something designed for mass appeal and marketing, with the 'fun' factor being a very distant second to ensuring maximum sales. Even as early as the leap from 2nd edition to 3rd, you can see the game become more sterile in the pursuit of selling more models.

Not that that's necessarily bad, I'm sure there are plenty of people who were far more interested in throwing down large armies than rolling a scatter check for each individual jump-pack trooper. It's just interesting comparing the early editions against the later ones and seeing the difference in design decisions when designers make something for themselves and when they make something for other people.

chaos0xomega wrote:
The game should be *engaging*. Fun is a by-product of that engagement, and is often something out of control of the game designer and highly dependent on situation/scenario (i.e. location its being played in, context of the play, opponent, etc.).

This is it.

People have fun doing different things. But DOING the things is where the fun comes from. Some people have fun drawing or writing that others would find a miserable experience. So you make games ENGAGING. Your mechanics need to give players Game Play and the more deep (more viable options at any decision point) the more engaging the it is. That doesn't mean every game needs to be mind bending deep. That can also be exhausting. But it needs SOMETHING. Some degree of game play to keep the player/s engaged and interacting with the game. That is where the fun comes from.

Fun as a quantifiable metric is well known in media that has large enough budgets that it needs quantifying to someone. Advertising and video games have some clear thoughts on what's fun. There are of course lots of flavours of fun, like ice cream, but there are recuring themes.

The general theme is made of 4 pillars to differing degrees. The game or play is made by juggling these 4 into a nice balance that feels right for the subject of the play.

The first is amusement/interest. Jokes, cultural references and the like. Immediate attention grabs and short lived entertainment. If advertising is in the market for fun, this is its go-to usually via shock and awe if they can manage it. For someone to be able to have fun they first need to buy-in to it. Jokes and the like are good but aspirational world building, stories or striking characters do this too. But this is in effect the open door, potential players are invited in, it needs to look fun on the outside looking in. A *lot* of media is really good at this bit but then fail to follow through largely because there are more people training in selling than in game design.

The second is learning. Learning, discover then mastery is fun. The pacing, difficulty ramp and amount of learning is core design work. To little and players get bored, to much and they get frustrated. However the market of players is huge so although this does need to be just-right the target audience will gravitate to the level that fits them. This does put a max life on almost any game, when mastery is achieved it's no longer much of a game for that player, one pillar/theme of play is ended. This is where playtesting comes in, to get this part right because as the designer you become an expect so loose all judgement of this pillar.

Third is achievement or just simply play. Play has a point or a short term goal and this has to be easily reachable. This is somewhat like self-directed learning. This could be playing the game and winning against a friend, army list building or making house rules. Our hobby does this very well naturally as it has lots of routes for self expression. This is why side-quests in videogames are hard to design because this is a large part of what they are for but after a while the player and game can easily diverge on interpreting what is a short term goal, this diverges on what is fun.

Last but no means least is reward. What we learn to expect is scant reward, so games give high reward or at least make a lot of drama of reward. D&D does this well, play by solving the scenario then get the treasure and XP, reward for play! Rewards that are constant can be addictive like doom scrolling FB. Rewards is a big subject involving hunting for food, falling in love and the like. However, if you know to look for rewards in media (and food) you'll find it's an almost constant flood of rewards at every level which isn't healthy but its what our society is because everyone loves dopamine. A different pace of dopamine is reward for play as it fulfils the second pillar of self direction/control, rewards are a game design tool and don't have to be constantly like a kid eating sugar cubes.

If you have a think about these 4 themes you'll soon work out that they dovetail together over and over again. Getting this feedback looping working on top of the balance of the themes to fit the subject neatly is what makes a game.

Of course the hobby of wargames (and roleplaying) has a big advantage over videogames. This is shown by people playing D&D and Warhammer for decades even though there is only repetitive overpriced DLC content endlessesly recycled. The two biggest advantages are the hobby and social parts.

The hobby aspects like painting are evergreen, a lifetime isn't long enough to stop learning or being surpised and delighted by it.
Also the social aspect (& the social aspect as they apply to the above themes) are baked in.
Because of this even fairly simple or thin entertainment can be fun in the hobby because its propped up by the depth of the evergreen aspects.
I saw a video by Goobertown Hobbies talking about how playing 40k sucks. If you include the subtext of the evergreen aspects of the hobby and these themes of play you can see it clear as day in his video. Though he didn't express it so clinically.

As a general rule, if feels like it will be fun, you're probably on the right track, our understanding of fun and play is intuitive and natural to large degree. Some training and experience help but you can get a fair way on intuition. Got to remember, we've all being playing since we were born so we're really good at it.

I hope this spurge of stuff is helpful to any designer struggling with "fun". I'm an old hand videogame developer and this is the sort of thing you pick up being in-the-biz.

In this theory are you trying to fill each box you laid-out in the design or something else?

Fun is a relative experience highly dependent on context.

If you have created a game well, it will give the contextual framework for you to experience it as fun, regardless of its content.

It is evident that humans can find virtually anything fun/enjoyable given the right circumstance and contextual framework. See gym junkies and bondage fans.

You see this in cinema all the time. Tell someone that they have to see The Room because it's great, but don't provide the additional context that you are watching through the lens of it being a terrible movie, and people won't have fun because their expectations are at odds with the experience.


A game designed well will contextualise itself in a way that shapes your expectations to make you more inclined to find its goals fun, regardless of what they are.

Beer and pretzel appeals to a relatively standard, statistically common expectation of fun so there isn't much expectation management to be had.

But games that deviate from this, are odd, or unusual have more work in setting the expectation. The good ones can become popular in spite of this.

NoisyGuy wrote:
Fun as a quantifiable metric is well known in media that has large enough budgets that it needs quantifying to someone. Advertising and video games have some clear thoughts on what's fun. There are of course lots of flavours of fun, like ice cream, but there are recuring themes.

I would LOVE to see any evidence of this. Do you have any sources of quantifiable metrics for fun? What are these clear thoughts? Because if studios actually have them then they also seem to ignore them quite often when they release duds.

The general theme is made of 4 pillars to differing degrees. The game or play is made by juggling these 4 into a nice balance that feels right for the subject of the play.

Spoiler:

The first is amusement/interest. Jokes, cultural references and the like. Immediate attention grabs and short lived entertainment. If advertising is in the market for fun, this is its go-to usually via shock and awe if they can manage it. For someone to be able to have fun they first need to buy-in to it. Jokes and the like are good but aspirational world building, stories or striking characters do this too. But this is in effect the open door, potential players are invited in, it needs to look fun on the outside looking in. A *lot* of media is really good at this bit but then fail to follow through largely because there are more people training in selling than in game design.

The second is learning. Learning, discover then mastery is fun. The pacing, difficulty ramp and amount of learning is core design work. To little and players get bored, to much and they get frustrated. However the market of players is huge so although this does need to be just-right the target audience will gravitate to the level that fits them. This does put a max life on almost any game, when mastery is achieved it's no longer much of a game for that player, one pillar/theme of play is ended. This is where playtesting comes in, to get this part right because as the designer you become an expect so loose all judgement of this pillar.

Third is achievement or just simply play. Play has a point or a short term goal and this has to be easily reachable. This is somewhat like self-directed learning. This could be playing the game and winning against a friend, army list building or making house rules. Our hobby does this very well naturally as it has lots of routes for self expression. This is why side-quests in videogames are hard to design because this is a large part of what they are for but after a while the player and game can easily diverge on interpreting what is a short term goal, this diverges on what is fun.

Last but no means least is reward. What we learn to expect is scant reward, so games give high reward or at least make a lot of drama of reward. D&D does this well, play by solving the scenario then get the treasure and XP, reward for play! Rewards that are constant can be addictive like doom scrolling FB. Rewards is a big subject involving hunting for food, falling in love and the like. However, if you know to look for rewards in media (and food) you'll find it's an almost constant flood of rewards at every level which isn't healthy but its what our society is because everyone loves dopamine. A different pace of dopamine is reward for play as it fulfils the second pillar of self direction/control, rewards are a game design tool and don't have to be constantly like a kid eating sugar cubes.

If you have a think about these 4 themes you'll soon work out that they dovetail together over and over again. Getting this feedback looping working on top of the balance of the themes to fit the subject neatly is what makes a game.

Okay. So here you are proposing a model in which there are 4 pillars of fun. I have seen a lot of models over the last decade or so try to quantify these kinds of things and I think with the exception of 1 they have all had some pretty damn big holes poked in them. Even the 1 that kinds of holds up came to really bad conclusions with it's data.

In this model you suggest that "fun" comes from -

1) Amusing little bits to get people in the door
2) Skill Mastery
3) Completion/Achievement
4) Reward

I... don't really agree with this model at all. Never mind that games don't even need to be fun as a baseline (sometimes the intended experience can be harrowing. A truly awful time). Just pretending that all game experience should be "fun" most of what you are talking about here is motivators Not really metrics for entertainment. The first one doesn't really seem to be anything other than a marketing tool. Or understanding behavioral psychology enough to plant visual and audio hooks.

Of course the hobby of wargames (and roleplaying) has a big advantage over videogames. This is shown by people playing D&D and Warhammer for decades even though there is only repetitive overpriced DLC content endlessesly recycled. The two biggest advantages are the hobby and social parts.

Let's be real here. TTRPGs and by a very LARGE margin even more so Wargames are niche markets. There is no inherent advantage to them. They don't make the big bucks. 40k, the biggest game in miniature wargaming spent years with an internal memo that the games goal was not to be a good game but to sell models. That "Games Workshop" was not a game company. They were a model company. There is NO advantage in these genres.

The hobby aspects like painting are evergreen, a lifetime isn't long enough to stop learning or being surpised and delighted by it.
Also the social aspect (& the social aspect as they apply to the above themes) are baked in.
Because of this even fairly simple or thin entertainment can be fun in the hobby because its propped up by the depth of the evergreen aspects.
I saw a video by Goobertown Hobbies talking about how playing 40k sucks. If you include the subtext of the evergreen aspects of the hobby and these themes of play you can see it clear as day in his video. Though he didn't express it so clinically.

This idea ignores the oceans of grey unpainted plastic out there. Or the fact that many tourny lists come with their minimum 3 colors just sprayed onto them. People have to make rules to force people to paint their models because if they didn't they wouldn't. Which goes back to the point made earlier. You CAN'T quantify fun. You are talking about these aspects as though their entertainment value has some amount of baseline fun that is experienced by all. But it's factually and provably not true.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:
Fun is a relative experience highly dependent on context.

If you have created a game well, it will give the contextual framework for you to experience it as fun, regardless of its content.

What about game play experiences that are not meant to be fun?

Beer and pretzel appeals to a relatively standard, statistically common expectation of fun so there isn't much expectation management to be had.

But games that deviate from this, are odd, or unusual have more work in setting the expectation. The good ones can become popular in spite of this.

Beer and Pretzel on this site tends to mean miniature wargames like 40k and WH:FB. For me, the game was regularly the least enjoyable aspect of anything to do with the hobby. The game was decidedly unfun. This wasn't a break from expectation. I would also argue that anything coming out of such a niche market has nothing statistically common about it at all. Miniature Wargames are a microcosm of a microcosm in the market. They are appealing to almost nobody as far as market shares go.

Cool. Thanks for taking an interest Easy E, Hellebore & Lance 845. I'll pick your points in order.

Easy E - In this theory I'm trying to precise some bigger subjects. IME intellegent and motivated people are interested in game design and development. A bit of food for thought goes a long way so this is what this is, food for thought from someone with some relevant experiences.

Hellebore - I'd agree with you on every point there except the contextual framework. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding you. I'll try to explain what I think you mean and see if we're talking the same language.
A game of <content = football manager> has a specific contextual framework that is highly reliant on its content and the game would have limited appeal in other domains. There is movement in this, in that <content = team sport> has a lot of ground it can cover which isn't all that different. Compare this to <content = dungeon management> and you get to a different game experience because the former is not the right contextual framework for it. In the context of wargames you may be right though as there is a lot of shared context.

Lance 845. - Dud games, yep plenty of those, made me laugh. Don't forget all those cringy advertising and marketing campaigns that are also duds! The dud to success ratio of creative endevours is always skewed to failure.

I'll try to give you some insight into this by way of an aside:

Spending a few million on a longshot is pretty exciting for videogame funders, its always a longshot. This is why you only ever see a tiny fraction of games actually finish, the vast majority are killed during development. A studio that is killing games before production starts is considered pragmatic. Points to learn here about making a fun game is, fail fast, don't be precious. If you can invent one idea you can invent two, when you can invent two you can do it all day.

Game developers are not of a single mind. This is tru within teams as well. Game designers are not all good managers which is the core skill in videogame development for a game designer. This isn't to different in marketing studios either. The more seperated the minds the higher the likelyhood of a dud. For example if you and I can't get to some accord then we'd probably be a poor team. If we can reach across and communicate that we're probably of the same mind (mostly) then a stronger team is formed by thrashing out the issues. So many teams don't do this, they're to busy trying to ship something before the cash runs out!

Take a moment to imagine steering a project. Say 100 people made up of artists, programmers, scripters, tool builders, musicians, story writers, level designers - all of who have thier own interpretation of your vision from reading the same design. A great many artists and programmers are so distant from each other they can't even communicate about the project effectively, they literally think and speak in different languages. Add in a management structure where you're near the bottom and this is not an untypical position for a game designer. Steering a good game project is no mean feat.


So, back to evidence. Well I don't feel the need to offer any, sorry. What I've taken here is a simplified version of pretty much every model I've come across that holds water and have been through a project cycle successfully. When a game designer is having to justify thier decisions (and themselves) in a hostile meeting this is the sort of explanation they'll reach for. They may describe it differently but essentially this is as simple as it gets. Hook, learn, achieve, reward, repeat. If they can steer the rest of the team to agree context then the games entertainment value as a game should stay intact.

There are plenty of GDC talks on youtube, books on game design and the like but often they are dense and talking to a target that may not be an amateur wargame designer. This is an attempt at brevity. I've tried to bake down some core components I've seen work. If you don't like them, fine, you're not alone, a fair whack of any dev team would argue against them too. The subject can be framed in many ways so even if you did agree, my brief version may not speak to you.
An important point we come to by disagreeing is that there is no single right way to approach game design. The trick is to find a system that you find comfortable and go with it.
I would temper this with a note on design books by academics, they are IME word salad that takes a lot of effort to work through for a few weak points. However if Warren Spector, Julian Gollop or some other giant with a track record writes a book on design give it a look. People who have done it successfully not only know their stuff but must be great communicators to have done so.

On "1) Amusing little bits to get people in the door" This is also art, story and all the wrapper content of a game, the stuff that hooks interest. The point here is that a lot of games never gets past this so identifying it and getting past it when looking at the game beyond its wrapper is helpful when seeing others work. Wrapper is important but for design, if you remove a videogames art, music, fx and story and see whats left, this is the game. This is the part a game designer does day to day. To give this more context, the bulk of a videogame development team does all the rest but its for nought if it drown the game designers work. Now to contradict myself. The many variations of D&D campaigns and content you can find on DriveThruRPG contain some real gems while being mostly wrapper, leaning on the D&D game for the game itself. This is still solid work and is significant in its own right.

To be real here. Sorry, you've misunderstood my point, my bad, I'll try again.
Wargames can be really crappy and still accepted and played because the hobby has a lot going for it.
An xbox is pretty dull without its games by contrast. A videogame as poor as a poor wargame would be dire.
This isn't to say wargames are poor compared to videogames, a good wargame and a good videogame share a lot. Having a computer do a games book keeping is a shortcut wargames don't have so a good wargame has to be super lean and sophisticated where a videogame can get away with being cumbersome by way of extolling the strength of a good wargame.
The argument here is that to make a game within the broader hobby a designer can lean on the hobby to shortcut thier development effort. Army list designing is a hobby many enjoy, lean on it. Hanging with friends is fun, lean on it. This isn't so different from videogames leaning on tech development, GTA3 was way more playable than GTA2 for example. Other media has its crutches and so does our hobby.
Personally I think our hobby's crutches are really powerful because they keep players for so long and some games are quite poor but are still worth spending time with and are enjoyable. This is one reason why I pointed to the goobertown hobbies video on 40k as its an interesting exploration of this. As a game designer I think consideration of the many activities in the hobby can broaden the appeal of a mediocre game because the game need not be great. This is a fantastic opportunity because it means that a design can be a minimal-viable-product and be out-there and experimental and still attract players then entertain and satisfy them. This is a great envoronment to design into because minimal-viable-product and experimental can both be janky it allows a designer to take risks. Players will find the entertainment in games that have good seeds no matter the jankiness.

We'll have to agree to disagree about grey plastic. Painting is one hobby activity, buying minis is another. Assembly and gluing another, dreaming of a painted army and watching youtubes of others painting another. List making, house rule making, game design. The wealth of valuable entertainment experiences in the wargaming and roleplaying hobby is huge. Compare this again to an xbox where the variety of not-game experiences is pretty thin.

I do like your note that some games are not fun, an important point.
This is true of all media and the answer is just emotions. We're an advanced sophisticated and decadent society, emotional responses of all types are available as entertainment.
I would hazard though that tabletop games that do not work in concert with context of the enjoyment of the hobby at large and hanging with friends isn't one that will become a regular. Good for variety, but not core. Like Cthulhu is really fun but D&D is the go-to for the majority of RPG players most of the time. 40k wouldn't be 40k without the body horror and the horror of war and death but this isn't at the forefront of most minds during play. So although its a point well made, I'd counter that fun is a core objective for most games in our hobby and to do otherwise would be damn hard and take great skill. Though I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

NoisyGuy wrote:


Spending a few million on a longshot is pretty exciting for videogame funders, its always a longshot. [spoiler]This is why you only ever see a tiny fraction of games actually finish, the vast majority are killed during development. A studio that is killing games before production starts is considered pragmatic. Points to learn here about making a fun game is, fail fast, don't be precious. If you can invent one idea you can invent two, when you can invent two you can do it all day.

Game developers are not of a single mind. This is tru within teams as well. Game designers are not all good managers which is the core skill in videogame development for a game designer. This isn't to different in marketing studios either. The more seperated the minds the higher the likelyhood of a dud. For example if you and I can't get to some accord then we'd probably be a poor team. If we can reach across and communicate that we're probably of the same mind (mostly) then a stronger team is formed by thrashing out the issues. So many teams don't do this, they're to busy trying to ship something before the cash runs out!

Take a moment to imagine steering a project. Say 100 people made up of artists, programmers, scripters, tool builders, musicians, story writers, level designers - all of who have their own interpretation of your vision from reading the same design. A great many artists and programmers are so distant from each other they can't even communicate about the project effectively, they literally think and speak in different languages. Add in a management structure where you're near the bottom and this is not an untypical position for a game designer. Steering a good game project is no mean feat.

I am very familiar with the complexities of project management. My degree is in Game Design, but I am a Six Sigma Black Belt with certifications in Agile Project Management and Lean Manufacturing and professionally I work in Continuous Improvement development and implementation (because game design simply doesn't pay the student debt bills). Steering cross departmental teams to accomplish unified goals while not actually being a part of any of the teams is a big part of what I do.

So, back to evidence. Well I don't feel the need to offer any, sorry. What I've taken here is a simplified version of pretty much every model I've come across that holds water and have been through a project cycle successfully. When a game designer is having to justify thier decisions (and themselves) in a hostile meeting this is the sort of explanation they'll reach for. They may describe it differently but essentially this is as simple as it gets. Hook, learn, achieve, reward, repeat. If they can steer the rest of the team to agree context then the games entertainment value as a game should stay intact.

So this is also something that I do. It's often called ROI or Return on Investment. You need to pitch to the higher ups who both don't actually understand how their company works or what exactly it is you are doing to get buy in so they will leave you alone and let you work. The thing is, it's mostly bs. You gather data and present it in ways that make it look like you are doing good (because you ARE doing good) in a language that they speak. Sometimes the thing you are doing doesn't really translate into their corporate speak. You need to spend the time to make it in their corporate speak so they back the f off.

I fully believe these developers are in these hostile meetings defending their decisions. What I don't believe is they are quantifying "fun" as any kind of metric that can actually be tracked. Oh sure, they are TELLING the producers and money lenders how x fun will translate into y dollars. Because that is their language. But the x fun metric is made up gibberish that looks nice on a graph. You, of course, don't need to back up your claims on this weird internet forum. But fairs fair, I don't need to take the unsubstantiated claims as anything other than baseless gibberish without it. Not intending to be insulting or confrontational here. Just calling it as it is.

There are plenty of GDC talks on youtube, books on game design and the like but often they are dense and talking to a target that may not be an amateur wargame designer. This is an attempt at brevity. I've tried to bake down some core components I've seen work. If you don't like them, fine, you're not alone, a fair whack of any dev team would argue against them too. The subject can be framed in many ways so even if you did agree, my brief version may not speak to you.
An important point we come to by disagreeing is that there is no single right way to approach game design. The trick is to find a system that you find comfortable and go with it.
I would temper this with a note on design books by academics, they are IME word salad that takes a lot of effort to work through for a few weak points. However if Warren Spector, Julian Gollop or some other giant with a track record writes a book on design give it a look. People who have done it successfully not only know their stuff but must be great communicators to have done so.

Agree to an extent. Game Design as a subject is still in it's... adolescence? Angry teens? It's not great. Many of the books have helpful through lines but it's mostly up the individual to find the true meat of the subject and learn how to apply it outside of the written word. Some good designers have some good things to say. Others don't. The BIG Model and GNS theory is touted by a lot of people even though it's been proven over and over again to be complete bs. I am less inclined to listen to anyone who thinks GNS is a valid starting point no matter how many copies their game sold.

On "1) Amusing little bits to get people in the door" This is also art, story and all the wrapper content of a game, the stuff that hooks interest. The point here is that a lot of games never gets past this so identifying it and getting past it when looking at the game beyond its wrapper is helpful when seeing others work. Wrapper is important but for design, if you remove a videogames art, music, fx and story and see whats left, this is the game. This is the part a game designer does day to day. To give this more context, the bulk of a videogame development team does all the rest but its for nought if it drown the game designers work. Now to contradict myself. The many variations of D&D campaigns and content you can find on DriveThruRPG contain some real gems while being mostly wrapper, leaning on the D&D game for the game itself. This is still solid work and is significant in its own right.

I am not disparaging the value of art/sound/"wrapper". I am disagreeing that it is a pillar for "fun". It is a major component in how you build and shape the game play experience for sure. Or get people in the door to try that experience. But framing a model for "fun" and claiming that is 1/4 of the components doesn't sit right.

We'll have to agree to disagree about grey plastic. Painting is one hobby activity, buying minis is another. Assembly and gluing another, dreaming of a painted army and watching youtubes of others painting another. List making, house rule making, game design. The wealth of valuable entertainment experiences in the wargaming and roleplaying hobby is huge. Compare this again to an xbox where the variety of not-game experiences is pretty thin.

My point was not that nobody enjoys it. Or that there isn't a market for the people who do. My point is that the baseline idea that it is "fun" by it's nature is flawed. What people find "fun" is too subjective to be given a blanket statement like that.

I do like your note that some games are not fun, an important point.
This is true of all media and the answer is just emotions. We're an advanced sophisticated and decadent society, emotional responses of all types are available as entertainment.
I would hazard though that tabletop games that do not work in concert with context of the enjoyment of the hobby at large and hanging with friends isn't one that will become a regular. Good for variety, but not core. Like Cthulhu is really fun but D&D is the go-to for the majority of RPG players most of the time. 40k wouldn't be 40k without the body horror and the horror of war and death but this isn't at the forefront of most minds during play. So although its a point well made, I'd counter that fun is a core objective for most games in our hobby and to do otherwise would be damn hard and take great skill. Though I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

This is why I argue that the true goal of effective game design is not fun but engagement. You want an ENGAGING experience. If that experience is a comedy of errors (Paranoia) or a dungeon crawler (DnD) or a terrible deeply personal time (Wraith The Oblivion) is down to the shape of the actual design. But the design is effective when it brings in the players and engages them in the intended game play experience. If players check out (dnd in combat pretty much all the time because of down time. 40k when it's not your turn because you have nothing to do for the next 30 min-hour) then your design fails to engage the players and the design is lacking. "Fun" comes from engagement. Boredom when it's not.