Gamasutra - Features - "Natural Funativity"

As promised in the introduction to this article, there are many ways to apply the theory in the practical aspects of game development. First and foremost, an understanding of the reason why our instincts have made us so fascinated with the aspects of survival in a hunter-gatherer society can help in evaluating new game concepts, or increasing the appeal of existing concepts. By tying game play to these key aspects of hunting, gathering, exploration, social interaction and status, and pattern perception we can capture the interest of large numbers of players and make games more fun.

Understanding that our key interest in survival comes from evolution shaped by millennia of life on the African veldt filtered through the lens of survival in our modern society helps us comprehend the appeal of all sorts of game types and gameplay mechanisms. The appeal of a racing game like Gran Turismo may seem well removed from the veldt, but remembering RSS we can see that the basic physical appeal of learning to move as quickly as possible, the social appeal of competing with our peers and gaining status and recognition, and the mental appeal of perceiving constantly changing patterns in the midst of a race and acting on them instantly and correctly all connect back to our prehistory.

In my freelance design work I have begun to use this theory to help give me insight on which alternatives to choose when I am in the midst of a game design, or analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of a game in development. As long as any discussion of fun is kept at the purely subjective "I'll know it when I see it" level, it is very difficult to achieve consensus or make decisions on any objective basis, but it gets much easier when a possible game feature can be measured against its ability to deliver on physical, social, or mental fun as described here. It is also particularly helpful when evaluating the success of a popular rival title. Some unimaginative game developers simply lift features wholesale from whatever has sold well before, without questioning just what is it about those games that made them popular, and consequently run the risk of taking the least fun aspects of a game. A deeper understanding of the nature of fun makes that process much more practical.

Are all forms of entertainment explained by Natural Funativity? I have yet to find any significant exceptions. Humor, including jokes, puns, and even slapstick pratfalls are a bit of a special case, as laughter is a signal meant to alert others in our social group about the harmlessness of a spurious threat (a view shared by V.S. Ramachandran in his book Phantoms in the Brain, probing the mysteries of the human mind.) The theory of Natural Fuantivity also makes sense in describing the appeal of not just entertainment but many other more serious areas of human interest, like art, music, various addictions, even science and religion, but that goes beyond the scope of this article.

Many other authors have their own takes on various aspects of fun and its origins. Jon Boorstin in his book The Hollywood Eye breaks film into the Visceral, Vicarious and Voyeuristic, corresponding to Natural Funativity's Physical, Social, and Mental fun. Stephen Pinker's books are very illuminating, particularly How the Mind Works. And other game designers have been probing this area as well, notably Raph Koster, Chris Crawford, Nicole Lazzaro, Jesse Schell, and Brian Upton.

Where does this lead in the future? Although some people have aspirations to create a formula or even a program to churn out game concepts or to exhaustively analyze and evaluate games, I think this is an aberrant side effect of the fact that game development is a multidisciplinary craft that includes a lot of programmers and software engineers. Video games are software, but are also at heart very concerned with creative and subtle psychological points, and like novels, plays, and film I expect that people will reject any overly mechanical attempts to codify them.

But like those other older forms of entertainment, it's clear that we are learning more about the structure and internal grammar of games and interactivity. As more researchers focus on games and more colleges and universities offer courses in game development, it's inevitable that there will also be more insights into the nature of fun. I also fully expect that we will increasingly find common ground with other developers of all forms of entertainment, as with genetics, once one looks beneath the surface it is apparent we have more in common than our surface features would suggest. I certainly expect to see the principles of Natural Funativity used increasingly to make games more fun. And who knows - some day we may even learn how to define and measure that elusive Funativity Quotient.

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