I believe fun is multi-faceted and each of those facets is different and unique.
Long story ahead. Vaguely relates to my idea of "fun."
A free to play program was released by a Total Annihilation fan group for those that held the original game. It was called Total Annihilation Spring or Spring for short. I jumped into a 4v4 match on a map with a thick mountain range in the middle and flat open terrain on the edges. Resource points were spread around the map at random intervals.
The game started off okay but as we were getting our builds and bases constructed when one player quit on our side. This threw my team off as we struggled to adapt. This resulted in a loss of tempo that ended up with my team huddled at the top right of the square map while our opponents gingerly spread out at the bottom left and slowly took to the 6 o' clock to the 11 o' clock positions.
Total Annihilation and spring focus on an economic model. Resources are infinite but come in at a finite rate. You build your base and army while using the resource rate at the best of your ability, often trying to use more resources than you have coming in, depleting your reserves. Improving your technological level lets you improve the rate over time and lets you build better storage. All this take place while you pump out units up to the 500 unit limit and build enough building and factories so you can destroy your enemy over time, nuke them, or pop out something 50 ft tall that ravages the land in a blue laser of death..
That said, loosing a teammate and trying to change your dance early game can really screw you up. That said, we were hosed. We knew we were hosed. It was a slow dance over an hour as we pushed and they pushed back further and further eventually they dropped to two players but their teammate were curtious enough to transfer ownership of their base before quitting (lucky sob's). My original plan of becoming the air power of our team fell apart as more and more ground vehicle assaulted the static defenses at my end of the base at 3 o' clock. Eventually I started pumping out paralyzing air drones to slow them down while frantically repairing and building what I could.
The main force pushed north and assailed my team at 12 o' clock. More and more powerful units came into radar range and made it further and further into our firing line. I can't remember their names but they took what they could fire power and resources and threw it right back. Eventually, the enemy fielded an experimental unit I would best describe as the Megazord from the first season of power rangers. We were screwed and we threw everything we had at it.
Imagine the surprise of everyone playing when the giant froze in his tracks. The second most expensive experimental robot was frozen by my cheap drones. In the midst of our defeat, my team was given a small leeway.
We killed it, tried to revive it, were crushed when #1 expensive bot was deployed (this one had AA guns) and backed up with AA vehicles.
Still, the defeat was satisfying and a different type of "fun" because we worked hard and worked together and exploited the game to maximize our chances and survival.
In that story, the two sides had a different type of fun. I could describe the fun as being the same but coming from different sources, similar to the same nutrient coming from different foods, but I feel and believe that these are different "funs." That the fun and the emotions that they draw out of us are unique and have to be catered to differently.
Holding a defensive line against superior forces and loosing after giving it your all produces a satisfying feeling. Its fun in principal, but it feels really different reading a book and reading the tragic outcome you knew about from the beginning. You are happy you read it and are glad to have reached the end, but that core "fun" feels really, really different from the defensive line fun. Those two "funs" in turn are also different from the fun you have solving a ridiculously difficult puzzle or finish cooking a big meal or a new meal.
Fun is entirely subjective on the effort and skills needed to achieve a goal or participate in an activity. The part of your brain needed to reach/build point B dictates the fun you have.
Catering to a broad sense of fun while just analyzing WHAT is fun will only carry the industry so far. We need to ask, "HOW and WHY is this fun?"
How is city building in Assassin's Creed 2 fun?
How is collecting doodads in Mario, Rayman, and Sonic games fun?
Why are pacifist runs fun?
Why are massacre runs fun?
Why do extra story DLC's with no gameplay content sell?
This things are all "fun" but the fun from them are distinct and different.
I can't think of anything else to write what isn't the same soooooooo....
At the risk of dropping the deadest of horses I'm going to say Shadow of the Colossus. Like everyone points out, the titular entities don't attack you first, and it isn't a fanfare that plays when you kill 'em. There's all the adrenaline that lets go when you land the killing blow, and once it's done crying out in mortal pain everything's quiet again, and all the chaos becomes completely still. All you can really do is remind yourself that you're closer to your ultimate goal, which should itself come with a bit of unease, considering that ancient power you're doing all these murders for is a card-carrying devil.
I believe that calling 'Fun' its dictionary definition is the real problem. Not everything has to be light hearted humorous to be fun, it just has to make you feel good, and even the word 'good' is subjective. As long as you want to continue that's the main thing.
@Aurich Since I actually played SotC I can tell you that they don't attack you first.
As long as they don't notice you first.
If you walk anywhere near them just chilling out, they'll attack you, some can be explained as territorial defense but many of the Colossi canonically roam all over the place, what would happen if there were human colonies in that world and a Colossi stumbled upon it?
It would be gone in a few footsteps
"The prayer wasn't for him, Commander. It was for you."
That moment CRUSHED me. I'm not even kidding when I say that. My mother entered hospice care THE MORNING Mass Effect 3 came out. So I was grappling with all this really awful, complicated stuff while I was playing it. Death of your mother + massive deaths of millions in a fictional universe you've come to love + death of one of your favorite NPCs + I woke up at 7 AM to do all this before work, so I was emotionally raw already = Total Annihilation. I get choked up just thinking about it. That moment justified every frustrating thing that Bioware has ever had me do in the ME series - the godforsaken Mako, the planet scanning, the war asset fetching. Long, long, long after I've forgotten all that crap, I'll remember Thane using his dying breath to pray for me, because he knew I had a long, awful road ahead, and I needed all the help I could get.
I like this, although I disagree that making a game fun necessarily removes its capability to affect us in other ways. Case in point: Saint's Row 2.
Anyone who's played this game will absolutely know that SR2 is designed around the idea that fun is better. They take the idea of a fun sandbox crime simulator and push it to 11. There is no design decision that was made without thinking "okay - now how can we make this fun?"
@DCKitty, they never said that making a game fun removes its capability to affect us in other ways. They pretty much said the OPPOSITE of that at around 3:35. What they're saying is that games are being constrained to this one dimension of engagement when being made because of what's being focused on.
After all, if a dev team is going to try to make its main method of engagement for its newest title focus on more than it just being fun, guess who's going to make an uproar? Most likely publishers, their source of funding. Of course, this isn't to say it happens all the time (again, watch 3:35 again to see examples), but I'm willing to bet that for many games, features have been changed, watered down, or removed entirely because they're "not fun enough." It's not just a publisher thing; developers also do it to themselves.
Er, James, Daniel... I understand the point you're making. I do. The problem, however, is that you're making a distinction that the average human being will have a little bit of dissonance when considering. You're making a distinction between Engagement and Fun.
These are different things. I know it. Anyone who's got a reasonable education knows it... But in common parlance, every day usage? Engagement and Fun, regardless of their strict definitions, are considered synonyms by common human beings.
It's gonna make that argument hard to make. You might wanna rephrase.
Posts
Long story ahead. Vaguely relates to my idea of "fun."
The game started off okay but as we were getting our builds and bases constructed when one player quit on our side. This threw my team off as we struggled to adapt. This resulted in a loss of tempo that ended up with my team huddled at the top right of the square map while our opponents gingerly spread out at the bottom left and slowly took to the 6 o' clock to the 11 o' clock positions.
Total Annihilation and spring focus on an economic model. Resources are infinite but come in at a finite rate. You build your base and army while using the resource rate at the best of your ability, often trying to use more resources than you have coming in, depleting your reserves. Improving your technological level lets you improve the rate over time and lets you build better storage. All this take place while you pump out units up to the 500 unit limit and build enough building and factories so you can destroy your enemy over time, nuke them, or pop out something 50 ft tall that ravages the land in a blue laser of death..
That said, loosing a teammate and trying to change your dance early game can really screw you up. That said, we were hosed. We knew we were hosed. It was a slow dance over an hour as we pushed and they pushed back further and further eventually they dropped to two players but their teammate were curtious enough to transfer ownership of their base before quitting (lucky sob's). My original plan of becoming the air power of our team fell apart as more and more ground vehicle assaulted the static defenses at my end of the base at 3 o' clock. Eventually I started pumping out paralyzing air drones to slow them down while frantically repairing and building what I could.
The main force pushed north and assailed my team at 12 o' clock. More and more powerful units came into radar range and made it further and further into our firing line. I can't remember their names but they took what they could fire power and resources and threw it right back. Eventually, the enemy fielded an experimental unit I would best describe as the Megazord from the first season of power rangers. We were screwed and we threw everything we had at it.
Imagine the surprise of everyone playing when the giant froze in his tracks. The second most expensive experimental robot was frozen by my cheap drones. In the midst of our defeat, my team was given a small leeway.
We killed it, tried to revive it, were crushed when #1 expensive bot was deployed (this one had AA guns) and backed up with AA vehicles.
Still, the defeat was satisfying and a different type of "fun" because we worked hard and worked together and exploited the game to maximize our chances and survival.
In that story, the two sides had a different type of fun. I could describe the fun as being the same but coming from different sources, similar to the same nutrient coming from different foods, but I feel and believe that these are different "funs." That the fun and the emotions that they draw out of us are unique and have to be catered to differently.
Holding a defensive line against superior forces and loosing after giving it your all produces a satisfying feeling. Its fun in principal, but it feels really different reading a book and reading the tragic outcome you knew about from the beginning. You are happy you read it and are glad to have reached the end, but that core "fun" feels really, really different from the defensive line fun. Those two "funs" in turn are also different from the fun you have solving a ridiculously difficult puzzle or finish cooking a big meal or a new meal.
Fun is entirely subjective on the effort and skills needed to achieve a goal or participate in an activity. The part of your brain needed to reach/build point B dictates the fun you have.
Catering to a broad sense of fun while just analyzing WHAT is fun will only carry the industry so far. We need to ask, "HOW and WHY is this fun?"
How is city building in Assassin's Creed 2 fun?
How is collecting doodads in Mario, Rayman, and Sonic games fun?
Why are pacifist runs fun?
Why are massacre runs fun?
Why do extra story DLC's with no gameplay content sell?
This things are all "fun" but the fun from them are distinct and different.
I can't think of anything else to write what isn't the same soooooooo....
BELLY DANcE!
As long as they don't notice you first.
If you walk anywhere near them just chilling out, they'll attack you, some can be explained as territorial defense but many of the Colossi canonically roam all over the place, what would happen if there were human colonies in that world and a Colossi stumbled upon it?
It would be gone in a few footsteps
That moment CRUSHED me. I'm not even kidding when I say that. My mother entered hospice care THE MORNING Mass Effect 3 came out. So I was grappling with all this really awful, complicated stuff while I was playing it. Death of your mother + massive deaths of millions in a fictional universe you've come to love + death of one of your favorite NPCs + I woke up at 7 AM to do all this before work, so I was emotionally raw already = Total Annihilation. I get choked up just thinking about it. That moment justified every frustrating thing that Bioware has ever had me do in the ME series - the godforsaken Mako, the planet scanning, the war asset fetching. Long, long, long after I've forgotten all that crap, I'll remember Thane using his dying breath to pray for me, because he knew I had a long, awful road ahead, and I needed all the help I could get.
Anyone who's played this game will absolutely know that SR2 is designed around the idea that fun is better. They take the idea of a fun sandbox crime simulator and push it to 11. There is no design decision that was made without thinking "okay - now how can we make this fun?"
And then you play the "Red Asphalt" mission.
After all, if a dev team is going to try to make its main method of engagement for its newest title focus on more than it just being fun, guess who's going to make an uproar? Most likely publishers, their source of funding. Of course, this isn't to say it happens all the time (again, watch 3:35 again to see examples), but I'm willing to bet that for many games, features have been changed, watered down, or removed entirely because they're "not fun enough." It's not just a publisher thing; developers also do it to themselves.
These are different things. I know it. Anyone who's got a reasonable education knows it... But in common parlance, every day usage? Engagement and Fun, regardless of their strict definitions, are considered synonyms by common human beings.
It's gonna make that argument hard to make. You might wanna rephrase.