[In this reprinted #altdevblogaday-opinion piece, HB Studios executive producer Pete Garcin talks about the dangers of using broad terms like "fun", and the value of using precise language to communicate your vision.]
Fun is probably one of the most (over) used words in game design discourse. It's also a broad, non-specific, subjective term that actually doesn't actually tell us anything meaningful about a game experience.
I'm not here to pick on "fun" specifically, but rather to talk about how non-specific language, and overly broad terms actually prevent us from effectively communicating design visions, and from building a shared vision of a game on a team.
Generic words like "fun" or "nice" offer no meaningful information to the reader, and no concrete direction or detail for those who need to act on the contents of a document.
Developing a shared vision for a game is difficult – and every ambiguous word is an opportunity for there to be misinterpretation and uncertainty about direction.
Broad is Bad
One of the biggest dangers in using broad terms like "fun" is that they leave far too much room for interpretation. "Fun" is a pretty wide-ranging concept, and even for a single person there are a wide range of experiences that might be classified as fun.
Let's say you're talking about the controls for a game and you describe them as needing to be "fun". What is it you mean? What does fun represent? Are fun controls accessible? Easy to learn? Obvious? Or are they challenging? Require mastery? Have depth and subtlety?
To different players, and in different contexts, all of the above descriptors might be broadly described as "fun" controls – but without using more descriptive terms, you cannot get at the intended vision for the controls. And so what you get back might be wildly different than what you asked for.
Instead, design documentation calls for specificity – for the vision for the controls to be laid out in precise detail, rather than broad sweeping terms. As we'll see shortly, precise detail does not mean exhaustive tomes of text, but instead, tightly honed, meaningful phrases.
Who Is The Judge Of "Fun"?
Subjectivity is the other major downfall of overly broad and imprecise language. Let's say you managed to get controls that were more-or-less what you were after, but that something isn't quite right.
If at the outset you used terms that were subjective, like "fun", it is difficult to refer back to those and use them as an evaluation metric. You're stuck with: "Well, what I actually meant was…" – which isn't a very effective way to give feedback.
Using precise, non-ambiguous terms to describe features and requests helps minimize the amount of subjectivity present – and as a result, makes discussion about what things need to be, and whether they are at that point easier.
Be Precise
So much design and communication surrounding creative development is sprawling and unfocused. It dances around the core of what it is trying to communicate and fails to convey concepts effectively.
It's not because the visions being communicated are so nebulous that they can't be put into words – but more a failure of discipline, to recognize that writing and communication is often an act of reduction: of paring things back to their bare minimum, rather than adding more.
When asked to clarify something, the first instinct is often to write more to "expand" on a thought. Often the right thing to do is to reduce, and distill what is already there to something more concise. In audio, subtractive EQ is the process of removing certain frequencies to accentuate others: you gain clarity and focus by removing information from the signal.
When writing about features, design, or even technical specifications – clarity, precision, and brevity can be powerful tools to helping be more effective communicators, to help build a shared vision (by effectively communicating the vision inside your head to another person!) – and to help reduce ambiguity about expectations and outcomes.
Documentation needs to stand on its own – when someone refers back to it and its author is not around to clarify, having clear, effectively written documents become critical.
If we move away from using overly broad, subjective filler words like "fun", and take the time to focus and craft our phrases to be precisely what we mean – we'll actually go a long way towards actually being able to realize the visions that we're trying to communicate.
[This piece was reprinted from #AltDevBlogADay, a shared blog initiative started by @mike_acton devoted to giving game developers of all disciplines a place to motivate each other to write regularly about their personal game development passions.]
For my part, I think the biggest problem with our understanding of fun, I mean people in general, is that a lot of designers believe that fun is something and do not yet realized that fun comes from the quality of an experience. In other words, just like time, fun isn't a thing and can't be kept as a trophy. It rather is a potential fun that is relative to our different past experiences. To affirm that fun is subjective is not true, fun is just partially subjective, because it depends of our judgement and our judgement is forged on past experiences while past experiences are based on what exist.
If you have a great culture and know what already exist, you can do better and potentially create something fun for everyone targeted. To say that fun is subjective when not everyone likes a product is ridiculous, simply because every product targets a specific audience and never attempted to target everyone on Earth.
So, by better understanding the structure of an experience, you basically have the guidelines to create a fun experience.
I thought "flow" was the more correct alternative to "fun", at least when you're talking about what you want people to experience when playing video games.
According to Wikipedia flow is "the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity."
Still, the quality of flow is relative to the quality of the experience once compared to all past experiences of the user. But yeah, flow or engagement might better express the meaning of fun.
I agree with you, and if I try to focus what you're saying, it's okay for a novice or consumer to say something isn't "fun" (anyone Just Knows what isn't fun). But once you allow for individual tastes, it takes a craftsman or expert gamer to elaborate exactly why something isn't fun.
Anyone making a game should be a craftsman, so "fun" without qualification is just lazy and shows you're just winging it without really knowing what you're doing. That can work in any field if you're a natural genius.
"Fair" is another good example here. A player instinctively knows what isn't "fair" - it's when you try to snap the controller in half and curse the game because you think it's the game's fault you're failing horribly and not your own. But that covers a huge umbrella of separate mechanism a craftsman should know - unclear platform boundaries would just be one of hundreds.
So yeah, I think you're right that it's okay for artistes and consumers and reviewers to say something isn't "fun" but game making professionals should aspire for more than that.
''"Fair" is another good example here. A player instinctively knows what isn't "fair" - it's when you try to snap the controller in half and curse the game because you think it's the game's fault you're failing horribly and not your own. But that covers a huge umbrella of separate mechanism a craftsman should know - unclear platform boundaries would just be one of hundreds.''
I fairly disagree when you say that everyone knows what isn't fair, because a lot of people still believe that because a certain overpowered is available through menus or on the map for both team, it automatically makes it ''fair'', because they don't understand that they also need to take into consideration the balance of the weapons all together.
''So yeah, I think you're right that it's okay for artistes and consumers and reviewers to say something isn't "fun" but game making professionals should aspire for more than that.''
I actually find interesting with someone affirms he doesn't find something fun. There are only 2 options, he isn't the right audience or what he experienced simply isn't great enough yet.
Am I the only one who at first impression found the existence of this article, that further implies that there's a need for it to be said, scary? But thinking more about it now, it's also possible to be assume that "everybody knows" what "fun" means too...
http://8kindsoffun.com/
For my part, I think the biggest problem with our understanding of fun, I mean people in general, is that a lot of designers believe that fun is something and do not yet realized that fun comes from the quality of an experience. In other words, just like time, fun isn't a thing and can't be kept as a trophy. It rather is a potential fun that is relative to our different past experiences. To affirm that fun is subjective is not true, fun is just partially subjective, because it depends of our judgement and our judgement is forged on past experiences while past experiences are based on what exist.
If you have a great culture and know what already exist, you can do better and potentially create something fun for everyone targeted. To say that fun is subjective when not everyone likes a product is ridiculous, simply because every product targets a specific audience and never attempted to target everyone on Earth.
So, by better understanding the structure of an experience, you basically have the guidelines to create a fun experience.
According to Wikipedia flow is "the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity."
Anyone making a game should be a craftsman, so "fun" without qualification is just lazy and shows you're just winging it without really knowing what you're doing. That can work in any field if you're a natural genius.
"Fair" is another good example here. A player instinctively knows what isn't "fair" - it's when you try to snap the controller in half and curse the game because you think it's the game's fault you're failing horribly and not your own. But that covers a huge umbrella of separate mechanism a craftsman should know - unclear platform boundaries would just be one of hundreds.
So yeah, I think you're right that it's okay for artistes and consumers and reviewers to say something isn't "fun" but game making professionals should aspire for more than that.
I fairly disagree when you say that everyone knows what isn't fair, because a lot of people still believe that because a certain overpowered is available through menus or on the map for both team, it automatically makes it ''fair'', because they don't understand that they also need to take into consideration the balance of the weapons all together.
''So yeah, I think you're right that it's okay for artistes and consumers and reviewers to say something isn't "fun" but game making professionals should aspire for more than that.''
I actually find interesting with someone affirms he doesn't find something fun. There are only 2 options, he isn't the right audience or what he experienced simply isn't great enough yet.