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Seriously folks, we need to stop talking about "fun." Or at least talk about it less. I've made this comment in various locales, but I thought given the resurgence of the topic, it would be good to put my stake in the ground here.
I think we should stop saying games should be "fun" when we really mean games should be "engaging."
This is the example I usually come back to, but there are plenty of films that I wouldn't call "fun," but I still enjoyed watching them. Requiem For A Dream isn't a fun film. Not in any way. Certainly not like Drag Me to Hell is fun. But Requiem is still very much a rewarding experience, because it's engaging. Similarly, is listening to Tom Waits' The Black Rider really fun? That seems ... inaccurate. Now is Movits! and their mad Svenska jazz/hip-hop fun? Without a doubt.
The Path, at least to me, is an instance of a game that's engaging but not necessarily fun. It's dark, slowly paced and obtuse in a Lynch-esque way. But I certainly didn't feel my time playing it was wasted or feel I didn't get anything from the experience.
I've got lots of respect for Raph and his book, but wow, I wish he wouldn't have said "fun." Because the satisfaction that he describes arising from discovering, internalizing and utilizing systems is equally valid if we label it as "engaging."
Fun has a lot of contextual baggage. As game designers, we can converse about "fun" and have a relatively decent chance of people understanding we mean Koster's fun, not ice cream, cake and clowns fun (okay, maybe clowns aren't fun for anyone). But many players, and nearly everyone that's not a core gamer, does not think of Koster's definition when they hear "fun." Their perception is largely that fun is a quality of shallow amusements, of toys. And while that's fine, Candyland isn't going to show up in the MoMA any time soon.
Speaking in terms of engagement is going to make conversing with two groups of people easier. One is the existing gamers that Anthony Birch addressed in his rant. While I'm sure some of these people are genuinely believe it's an anathema for games to be anything but shallow, escapist stab-fests, I don't think all of them do. I imagine when some of those people say, "games have to be fun" they really mean "games have to be engaging."
But more importantly, speaking from "engagement" will make the conversation with potential players who aren't core gamers easier. It's great that Nintendo has brought more folks into the fold via the DS and Wii. But to be honest, many of their core games are not exactly rich in emotional depth. Wii Sports Resort and Mario Kart don't exactly speak to the human condition. I don't think the Wii Horse Bag is going to change that.
Again, Nintendo's games are absolutely fine. They do not have an obligation to make more emotionally deep games. But for non-core gamers, their only experience with games is as "fun" things. Being able to say those are one kind of thing and here's another kind that are similarly interesting but won't make you smile like Frisbee Dog will be increasing important.
This subject was broached in a local design group I'm part of and one of the folks there works in more of the serious/health games space. He related that he frequently speaks with non-gamers (e.g. academia, non-profits, health companies, etc.) and he's had vastly more success when he comes at the conversation from "engagement" instead of "fun," even though he means Koster's fun when he says "engaging." It nothing more than a verbal texture swap, but without all the context baggage many have about what "fun" is, he's able to have a far more productive and useful conversation. I don't think his experience is unique.
Believe me, most games will still be fun (like mini-golf and milkshakes fun). But it's going to make the discussion about how to make and why one should play more emotive games vastly easier if we can sidestep the "what kind of fun" quagmire completely.
Ultimately, this isn't about us. We're already on board. We get what we mean when we say "fun." Speaking from "engaging" is about helping other potential advocates (or at least audiences) understand why we see so much potential in what we do. And at the end of the day, that's what really matters.
(The post originally appeared on Above49)
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Even "immersive" and "engagement" can be unneccessary for, say, a workplace passtime game like Minesweeper or Solitaire. Alexander's point was very important here: any single term, if given primacy, will eventually be judged inadequate for some cases. "Fun" is no more or less problematic than the term "game" itself; "fun" doesn't describe the processes but the emotional/aesthetic response of the player to those processes. Do all "games" have to be "fun", no - but can a "game" that's "fun" be more than that as well? I think so.
BTW, Joseph Cassano and Reid Kimball, among others, have posted blogs here on Gamasutra on this exact topic, for those interested.
Then if you don't want those, you can use engaging or any of those synonyms...
The problem is larger than just this 'fun' problem. Think of the few terms no one actually knows how to define or describe like casual, hardcore, or the likes. You only get so many words in an industry with a bunch of average English students.
Having said that, I think games should be rewarding :-)
But on a more serious note, I respectfully disagree. Maybe I need better definitions from you of what you mean by 'engaging' and 'fun.'
Do all games have to be fun? Of course not! What else would we use to needlessly take up retail shelf space and sucker people into parting with hard earned cash for a game that is...well....crappy.
I suspect even the greats make their mistakes from time to time. I hear Miyamoto's Wii Music was neither engaging nor fun. So what? The guy is human, a darn good human and game designer, but we all make mistakes.
Games SHOULD be fun. If it is not a design goal, I can pretty much guarantee that it won't happen. players will notice. And they will not like it.
Games strive first and foremost to be fun, enjoyable because that is their main intrigue. Depth and immersion can be fun sometimes and are also good goals. When I watch a film I don't walk away saying "that was fun." I think you have to do something with someone for it to be fun. Games are about doing. Even if it's a boring design and you only have one way of achieving your in game goals, you as the player, still have to DO it. This is one reason it is bad to compare games to other media. Sure we know other media, but we also should know that other media are different in many crucial ways.
Lastly, defining and understanding things clearly will allow for greater creative freedom, not less. It may at times seem the opposite, but I find with playing my guitar I can make up a wider variety of songs now that I have learned some music theory.
Alan, a Rubix Cube is a game, and most people would walk away saying that the game is not fun at all. In fact, it would be quite the opposite, as people are much more likely to get frustrated and walk away from it before ever being able to solve it in their life. If anything, I'd say a larger design goal of the rubix cube is that it is difficult, moreso than that it is fun. Yet, everyone knows what a rubix cube is and has probably tried to solve one at some stage in their life. This is just a common example of why, in my mind, pigeonholing games as anything in particular does no one any justice. If you like fun games, that's great, but it doesn't mean being fun is a requirement of all games.
The point I'm making is that as designers, we sometimes make games that try to be something they are not. A 'game' is a challenge that provides entertainment and produces an enjoyable sense of accomplishment - sometimes it has an immersive or engaging quality as well. To say that we should speak of games as being engaging instead of fun is a shallow endeavor toward justifying games as art, and ultimately many of those attempts fall short of being an actual game. In that case, what you are probably looking for is the forementioned "immersive experience", not an actual "game".
Of course, this is all symantics.
I personally agree that the word "fun" is a little bit loaded, with most people thinking of 10 year olds playing make-believe in the back yard when they hear it. So I try not to use it. But I don't really mind if, over the course of a conversation, I come to understand that someone is using the word to cover everything that makes a game "good", be it interesting characters or depth of mechanics or whatnot. So long as the speaker or writer defines their terms clearly, they can use the terms they've grown accustomed to.
Responding to Alan Youngblood: I think the "main intrigue" of games when compared to other media is interactivity, not fun, if you mean fun in the bubblegum sense.
People use the word fun because it's a well known concept that many have a basic understanding of. the funny thing is that *fun* is not a layman's term although it's in their vocabulary. Fun is a complex term that denotes the enjoyment of an experience, or even the enjoyment/appreciation of having the experience (two different things if you look closely). As such all games *should* be fun, because all games *are* fun. This is of course entirely subjective, it does not state that all people will find the game fun, it merely works under the assumption that someone, somewhere, is capable of enjoying the experience, or appreciate having such an experience (or perhaps even appreciate knowing such an experience exists, now there's a debate in the works).
This makes fun another loose term that we [unnecessarily] try to define far, far too rigorously, we assume a layman's definition of the word must be entirely correct, forgetting that our vocabulary is greater than that.
Now engaging is a grand word, one that shouldn't be pushed aside lightly. But it most certainly should not replace fun as the two denote very different things. Fun is an adjective, describing the set of emotions associated with the by-product or end result of an enjoyed(for whatever reason) activity. Engaging is a verb, it describes a process (the process of being engaged funnily enough). In this instance I'll make the logical jump that we're talking the engagement of one's physical senses, the engagement of ones mental faculties, and the engagement of our primal urges. All of which (individually or combined), serve to ultimately garner our attention/interest, once this is done we could be described as being"engaged".
My point is that they can all be used in one handy little sentence. "An engaging game is a fun game, one that fails to engage the player is boring". Boring being another fascinating word that we used to describe a complete lack of engagement/interest/attention in a particular item/person or activity. It may seem an absolute statement, but it's actually quite loose considering the things that can engage us and the things the human psyche is capable of finding fun.
Anyway hope you all take something away from that. I think a topic based on the things we find fun or engaging is a topic for another day, as is a talk about immersion, another term altogether.
Wii Sports can be "fun" and "enjoyable", not necessarily "addicting" or "immersive", but in the way we like to spend leisure time, it is meaningful. The Path is not meant to be a "fun" or "addicting" experience, but it is certainly "interesting", "immersive", and though-provoking, so in a wholly different way, the way we like to challenge our own thoughts and ideals, it is meaningful. Chess, for its accessible way it introduces us to think ahead, consider our opponent and be a part of a long-lived game history, is meaningful. Japanese (Girl Chasing) games, for the way they allow players to safely take part in a rare, if somewhat deplorable, experience, is meaningful. Watching sports, for the camaraderie and vicarious action through the players on the field, the coaches on the sidelines, etc., is meaningful.
And I further (stick my neck out) and say that the term "meaningful" cannot be entirely excluded from the description of a successful (by any measure) game. *ducks*
Perhaps now, we can join the other, more established, entertainment domains in their efforts to try to properly define "meaningful" and present that, because that effort has been going on for a long time and I think we can help. :)
My WiiSports example tries to paint the experience as enjoyable and therefore meaningful in terms of how you choose to spend leisure time. If "meaningful" sounds loaded with high-minded stuff relating to the human condition, then maybe the term doesn't fit your taste, but I would still argue that enjoyment has deep meaning.
Isn't that in fact why we care enough to engage in this particular discussion?
Meaningful is again an entirely subjective term. It's in fact just as bad as the word fun, one can say that all games should be meaningful because all games are meaningful, in as much as we assume someone out there is capable of assuming meaning from what they are doing. Again though it is separate to immersion and engagement, rather than their being a "flavour" of "meaningful". The problem with this discussion is that the terms argued about aren't mutually exclusive, and because that's the case we shouldn't be trying to pick one over the other, or replace one or the other, as each is just as accurate as long as it describes what we are trying to describe.
When people who claim "games should be fun" do so, they're actually crying out for games to be fun for the lowest common denominator. They want games that are fun for a majority of people, rather than to entertain the niche crowds that enjoy their meaningful games, artistic games, so on and so forth. This is most assuredly the best way to make money, and keep the majority of people happy.
In truth many of these arguments are quite juvenile, can't we just use the words that mean what we're trying to say. If you're talking about an ephemeral experience of enjoyment that is highly subjective to the individual then by all means, talk about fun. If you're trying to talk about a games ability to attract and keep your attention, then by all means, talk about engagement. If you're trying to talk about the messages and values a game is trying to impart, fully realising that such is always subjective, feel free to talk about it's meaning. If you're talking about a heightened (and entirely theoretical) state of engagement in which the user is no longer able to distinguish reality from fiction the feel free to talk about immersion.
Once we bypass that barrier perhaps we can start to talk about how to achieve these things the words describe, rather than useless discussion over language that exists with meaning already attached.
e_quotEngagingquot_not_just_quotFunquot.php
Now, to be on topic. I think, personally, those arguing fun VS engaging are kind of missing the point. I think what's to be gleaned from all this is that fun and engaging are very much related. I state this in more clarity in my above-linked post and in its comments, but one must first be engaged before one can be having fun. Engagement thus contains fun, as well as other experiences that may not be "fun", but still worthwhile. For example (and I use this example often, and Nels Anderson also uses it in the above), the film Requiem for a Dream is not, at all, a fun movie, but it is still worthwhile, and it does engage its audience. A game of Tetris also engages its audience, but it is much fun. This whole engagement business, then, is just to get the idea going that games can be anything we want them to be, and that the word "fun" is a bit loaded/limiting.
Granted, as people have said above me, this is all semantics and subjective. I think the meaning behind the semantics, though, is important (and I guess I just stated it not too long ago): games, like other creative works, should be anything we want them to be, not just one way or the other. Variety is what is important here.
Oh, and just to address part of Christopher Wragg's comment:
"rather than useless discussion over language that exists with meaning already attached. "
Language discussions like this are never entirely useless. Unless you propose making up new words, we will always be using words that have "meaning[s] already attached" to describe what we mean. This happens in every field, not just games.
Sure language is something that evolves and shifts as it's needed, it's not needed here, we'd all be better served by simply talking about ways of improving "fun" or "engagement" in our games, rather than deciding whether or not they're appropriate words.
In the same vein, the word "fun" obviously has connotations to begin with, and -- as is evident above -- some consider fun to be a very finite term. I understand your point about talking about ways to improve fun rather than fun's meaning, but that's merely sidestepping the issue, in my mind. Fun, as this article states, is a loaded term. To those outside of gaming, fun is very finite, and some people within gaming even share that finite definition. In order to better communicate with those outside of the industry -- and to some of those within -- the semantics become important. This is especially true when the sentence "This game is engaging" is much shorter than "This game is fun because it captures your attention in such a way...". Both sentences carry roughly the same meaning, but the shorter version is easier for those outside of the industry to hear.
I am by no means saying that we should stop elaborating on the "why", but just that, as the article states, "fun" is a bit of a loaded term, and "engaging" is less of one (if not merely more malleable). We as an industry need to develop proper/more precise terminology if only to better communicate.
EDIT: I find I tend to repeat myself. I should have trimmed this comment better. I apologize.
Mr. Anderson, like so many other pundits on the state of the video games industry, makes the mistake of equating games with other forms of media. Games, no matter how frivolous or serious their subject matter, are played. We do not play movies (except in the act of inserting a DVD and pressing the "Play" button) in the same way that we play games.
Wiki's definition of the concept of "play" begins by stating "Play refers to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment." Webster defines play as "a : recreational activity; especially : the spontaneous activity of children b : absence of serious or harmful intent". Sounds like FUN to me.
Any well-crafted game is fun to play, no matter the depth or breadth of its content. I had fun during DOOM 3, Dead Space, Resident Evil 5, Mass Effect, and many other mature-themed games. I never had fun playing sloppy, bug-filled junk.
Put thought and polish into your game, and the fun will follow.
And just to use your movie analogy, yes, the audience does not play whilst watching, but what of the actors? They play their roles within the film. Cannot a player in a game be akin to an actor of sorts? Players are one of the only (if not THE only) audience that also interacts with the work. In a good RPG, the player is even asked to play a role, something which actors have been doing for centuries. So yes, gamers are entirely unlike the audiences for other media, but to say that games are entirely unlike other media is to simplify things too much. Gamers are a fusion of audience and actor, to an extent.
After all, weren't actors in plays in days of yore known as "players"?
EDIT: This player-actor idea is not my own, though. It comes from a post by Michael Abbott from his site, Brainy Gamer: http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2009/02/not-movies.html
I can understand your point about things being understandable to a wider range of people, but rather than argue against the use of the word fun, I'd say rather use it (people understand it after all), but then proceed to explain (in whatever way you choose) why someone may find it so. If fun is too binding for you, then feel free to make use of other words as appropriate, for instance enjoyable and fun, are so closely intertwined in our language, and yet the connotations socially are different enough that it could serve your purpose (for instance one might consider good food enjoyable but not fun, yet the experience of eating enjoyable food can quite accurately be termed "fun").
Ultimately what I'm going for is that "replacing" a word is a bad idea, words have meaning and words like fun have a very broad meaning, to say they're inappropriate is an inaccuracy in and of itself. If the meaning fits what your trying to say then by god stick with it. If you feel you need a different word then use it, but DON'T replace "fun" simply because you "wouldn't call an experience fun" (because I assure you, someone else would, and they wouldn't be wrong to do so).
Interactive movie, fun game, enjoyable experience, engaging visual delight, ALL are ways of describing the same thing, none of them are wrong, some are more precise, and some vague, some understandable and some not, this manipulation of our language is one of it's many delights, and occasionally one of it's many flaws, embrace it as it is and stop telling people which words they can and can't use (unless they have a definition problem, but that's a different issue entirely).
But why must I, as you say, say something along the lines of "this is fun because such and such a reason" when I can say "this is engaging" and get the same meaning across?
I think, essentially, we're arguing the same thing. The point of this article, and the point I am striving for, is to get people to stop saying merely that "games should be fun". There are two ways we can approach this issue. The first is by your method, which is that we elaborate on what we mean (example: "This game is fun, but not in the classic sense"). The second is by using words that better contain the meaning we're trying to convey (example: "This game is engaging").
Also, I think you're kind of avoiding my point that, in my case, engaging and fun are very much related. I am not "replacing" fun with engaging, I am using engaging because it encapsulates a larger number of possibilities, and a fun experience is merely just one of those possibilities (a point I elaborate on in my previously-linked post on the matter). Yes, we as gamers know what we mean by fun roughly, but that doesn't excuse us from developing a possibly better language for what we mean. A better language does not benefit only those new to the industry, but those within it as well so that ideas can become less nebulous and more focused (if need be).