There are many online discussions regarding Raph Koster's Theory of Fun ("ToF", e.g. 1., 2., 3., 4.,5.) . It is an insightful read from a thoughtful industry insider, and equally notable, it is provocative for the questions it raises.
As this is not a review proper, consider Nick's review at Grand Text Auto as a good starting point.
My first reaction to ToF harkens to this exchange from Nick's review: "fun itself is “the act of mastering a problem mentally,” (p. 90) and "...is distinct from aesthetic appreciation, physical effort and mastery, and social actions." In a way this reaches to an earlier TN musing (Nouns and Verbs...) of a process-centric bias in game design nomenclature. On page 166 of ToF states:
"The best test of a game's fun in the strict sense will therefore be playing the game with no graphics, no music, no sound, no story, no nothing. If that is fun, then everything else will serve to focus, refine, empower, and magnify. But all the dressing in the world can't change iceberg lettuce into roast turkey."
To me, however, this proposition feels like a cookie-cutter with acute corners. Perhaps, it is due to what I perceive to be a process view of fun that discounts the aesthetic weight of the "game world nouns" themselves. Is exploration in virtual worlds fun because of the process of search or because of the delight of discoveries? In Raph's words on page 95 "people often take DELIGHT in things that are not challenges." Yet if "(d)elight, unfortunately, doesn't last (94)" does that necessarily mean, that its only process that can hold it all together? Just questions.
One quibble I have with ToF revolves around subsumption of what should be (IMO) a "first-class" discussion onto itself within a larger "ethics" grab-bag in chapter 10. On page 112, we read: "Cheating is a long-standing tradition in warfare (steal a march, attack by night...)... 'If you cannot choose the battle, at least choose the battlefield'... When a player cheats in a game, they are choosing a battlefield that is broader in context than the game itself... Cheating is a sign that the player is in fact grokking the game."
The battlefield metaphor is an interesting one... and if I may indulge a drifting thought on this fine Sunday, Koster's discussion vaguely implicates (though if you believe this analogy, derives the wrong lessons from) the "Least Effort Warfare" model employed by the Italian condotteieri in the fifteenth century (e.g. see: Archer Jones' "The Art of War in the Western World"). There we found employed by the Italian micro states highly professional mercenary armies who perfected a method of warfare by which they sought to minimize casualties (on either side): e.g. if one side clearly has "won" on the field through better maneuver etc., why fight it out - just conceed, try it again another year. Another game of a sort.
However, for the "scientific method" of warfare to work requires agreed-upon rules of conduct by all parties: "cheating", e.g. the sort resulting in mass casualties, had to be minimized. There was incentive by all parties not to reach beyond those rules (mercenaries didn't like to die in the course of their work, the Italian states didn't want disruptions to trade). And so, we're back to Koster's point about esculation: if play must culminate in cheating once grokked... it sounds to me that play as defined is not sufficient. I wonder, and would like to know more.
The other matter about the battlefield metaphor goes back to the question about process fixation: should all virtual worlds, or games more broadly for that matter, look war-like, dog-like and all? Are we, all players, mercenaries, and don't the dandelions along the way count for something?
[also, Gamasutra (12/03/2004) book excerpt (free registration req'd)]
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