Do Games Have to be Fun?

I read Warren Spector talking about this (whether games have to be "fun") in The Escapist. Warren is a good guy. Anyway, since it's such an easy question, I thought I'd take a crack at it.

No.

Well, what is meant by the question though? It could have two meanings:
1) Do games have to be "fun" to sell well? (not exactly)
2) Should games be fun? (not necessarily)

Should Games Be Fun?

I'll take the second (easier) question first. Should games be fun? Certainly we have fun playing games and we can mention many games that are fun that we like and many games that aren't fun that we don't like. But fun is only one narrow state of mind and interactive entertainment has far more potential than just that.

There are some other states that exist in games already that we tend to lump into "fun" whether the word fits or not. The word "relaxing" or even "contemplative" might describe some games. Occasionally, there is a glimmer of being emotionally moved in story-based games. That might not be "fun" but it's perhaps even better.

Consider the movie Schindler's List. I would call it moving and important. I wouldn't call it fun. It's hard to imagine our culture if we were to remove all the films that were not "happy" or "funny." Some day in the future we might call the sphere of interactive entertainment something other than "games" and there will be entire genres of interactive entertainment that are moving or sad or romantic. Games would be just a subset of that sphere. Phew, I wrote a couple sentences without quotes around random words.

Do Games Have to be Fun to Sell Well?

Games are memes: non-genetic information that is copied/imitated and passed on amongst humans. You could say that the act of playing a game is the meme rather than the game itself, but there's no sense getting caught up in that yet. Memes--like genes--get copied if they...well...have properties that get them copied. There is the mistaken notion that genes and memes get copied because they are good and useful. Being good and useful is one of many, many reasons that a gene or meme might be successful.

Consider the folding of paper cranes that occurs in many elementary schools. It's relatively easy for one child to teach another the process of creating such a paper bird. The instructions are passed on (rather than the product being copied), which keeps the integrity of the copies pretty high. Imperfections in one child's crane aren't necessarily passed on to another child's. Anyway, there are elementary schools that have been making cranes for 30 years or more, and I don't think it's because it paper cranes are solving some big human problem. For whatever reason, it's a successful meme.

Memes can be harmful and still be copied. Consider the memes "copy this and pass it along" and "make money." There's not much reason to do the first and no clear instruction on how to do the second, but when the two ideas found each other, the meme for chain letters and pyramid schemes were born. These things are frauds and don't help anyone, but they are popular memes that live on today.

A meme needs some tricks to stick in your brain. It needs to be easily copied. It needs to stand out from other more boring memes like the story about someone's dream last night or jury duty. Memes compete against each other for space in your brain, and have no regard for you--other themselves. If they can be copied, they are copied. Survival of the fittest memes gives us some wildly popular ones. But again, memes don't care about helping you. Being helpful is just one trick to get copied, but there are many others.

So do games need to be fun? The property of fun is one reason why a game would be copied from player to player. Another reason would be that the game is addictive. That is, the game is specifically designed to tap into the so-called irregular rewards schedule that psychologists know is one of the most powerful behavioral trainers. (That means that you do x and you have a fairly low chance to get a reward. It's an addictive pattern because you don't know when you'll get it, but you know will get the reward if you stick with it long enough, and maybe you'll get two rewards in a row if you're lucky!)

Anyway, a game that was purely addictive but no fun might not sell well. A game that is incredibly, highly addictive and has just enough fun might sell very well. It's not simply "the more fun the game is, the more it sells." I could go into marketing or whatever else, but I think the design pattern of addiction illustrates that there are other things than pure fun that could make a game a big hit.

Final analysis

We already have unfun games that perpetuate themselves.
Hopefully there will be games in the future that are not fun in the way we mean it today, but have even deeper importance--and don't use the addiction trick (much).

--Sirlin

2006 Robbie Awards

I'd just like to announce my victory and acceptence of the 2006 Robbie award for

Most interesting Video Game Industry Personality Robbie: David Sirlin.

If you haven't heard of this award, it's because it's "A fictional non-award from a person with no pull in any industry whatsoever," according to award-giver Rob Howard. Howard goes on to say:

In an industry that is still more about "team" than "stars," Sirlin is becoming the first real divisive figure. His articles in Gamasutra.com and other places usual stir up tremendous discussion in the industry (a good thing). Obviously, Mr. Sirlin is quite the self congratulatory fellow, and his bravado (honed while dominating Street Fighter II tournaments before he became a game designer) will lead him in either one of two directions: The Will Wright direction: Gamers become so enamored for his design skills, they will literally allow him to release pong with SNES graphics and call it great. The John Romero direction: Folks will eventually tire of his ego, and wait for their first opportunity to pounce. His career will then be nothing like it was.

(Author's note: As of now, Sirlin is much more of a theoritician than a real designer at the moment, as he works for a studio that mainly seems to do small titles and arcade compilations. We'll see what he actually produces as his career grows.)

Award Winning Moment: His article dissing World of Warcraft (and social gaming in general), launching an excrement storm throughout the game development community.

I'm seriously trying to do something that will qualify me as a "real designer" for next year's Robbies. If only I could speak about what I've done so far at work that no one has seen or ever will see. Sigh. Seeing my fate decided by the whims of others is getting old. If I make a digital version of my awesome card game, will that qualify me as "real designer?" Or would contributing 0.5% to Starcraft 2 count for more?

--Sirlin

The Far Future of Games

This topic is out there, I admit, but perhaps you have some ideas.

What would a game look like that could be created today that would also be played in 100 years or 1,000 years. As a side issue, I wonder if there's any difference in a game that would last 100 as opposed to 1,000 years.

It takes an awful lot of effort to create a video game these days, and most games end up being played a few hours at most. A life of 6 months would be considered very long. That's unfortunate considering all the work involved.

StarCraft is about 8 years old and still popular.
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo is about 12 years old and still played in tournaments today.
Poker in its modern form is about 100 years old.
Chess is about 2,500 years old.
Go is over 4,200 years old.

1,000 years ago there weren't airplanes, cars, computers, electricity, or the United States of America. Ironically, 1,000 years from now, there won't be any of those things either. (Airplanes are cars are terrible forms of transportation, we'll be way beyond that. Electricity might be replaced by a better technology, "computers" will be woven into clothes and hiding in paint molecules on the wall or something, not in big boxes that sit next to a desk. The United States will have been disbanded somehow, its fall traceable to all the way back to George W. Bush's decisions.)

So what do we have to work with here? Card and board games seem safest, because it's too hard to even imagine what a "computer" game would be like. Would it run in a crazy resoultion that's like 2,000 dots per inch and on a display the size of a wall? Maybe everyone's walls will be used as giant "computer screens" in 1,000 years. Or maybe 3D will really mean 3D with hologram technology (that will hopefully look better than R2D2's "help me Luke, you're our only hope.") This "3D" stuff we have now will probably be a joke.

2D on the other hand is more likely to stand the test of time, especially on a card or a board. Now, cards and board games of the future will surely not be printed on cardboard but instead on super thin, light computer displays.

Anyway, back to the question. What properties would a game have if it is to last 100 or 1000 years? What kind of thing could it be and what kind of thing could it not be?

--Sirlin