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)]
I think my answer would be that yes, it is process that holds it all together. However, I'd point out that
it is the same process that holds together a great novel or a powerful film. Instant aesthetic response is
not what lasts in any form of art (the more sustained process of teasing out the hows and whys of the aesthetics
can last quite a while however--but that isn't mere delight anymore, it's actually what I call "fun" in
the book).
He also says
I don't assert that play culminates in cheating, but rather that play culminates in not playing. Cheating is
merely a way to bypass the game. It is play at a meta-level. As designers we dislike it because games
are meant to teach a certain set of things, and when you choose to solve the problem by bypassing those
lessons, you have avoided learning what we sought to teach. We're not always conscious of it, but that's what
seems to lie at the heart of the resentment of cheating. And, as I point out in the book, the danger is that
cheating, like cheating in school, may get you past that particular challenge, but then not provide you with a generically applicable tool to use when you encounter similar challenges in the real world.
Lastly,
Alas, humans in most situations seem to be bad at spotting the dandelions. That said, I do believe we can
build games that teach the lesson that dandelions are worth observing, and that mercenary is not all we
should be. But it's an uphill struggle, I suspect.
Posted by: Raph | Jan 30, 2005 at 22:54
"Instant aesthetic response is not what lasts in any form of art."
I have a problem with this idea, firstly because I'm not sure that art is necessesarily something that lasts. Art is a context of exhibition, not
a fantasy of delight and aesthetics. Its a open system of free signs and
signifiers that need context to gain value (intrinsic sometimes but largely
not.)
Damien Hirst, Matthew Barney, Bill Viola, Yasimasa Morimura, Mariko Mori, amongst
dozens of others all produce some kind of work in which instant aesthetic response
is what matters, and especially when the work of art may not even exist past that
point. Also consider abstract expressionism, where the first response was often the
one that determined the art-ness of the object. Jackson Pollock, if we're to take him at his word, hated contemplation.
I really think that game theorists from all walks of theory are still in the mindset of generalising about how people interact, when it need not be so prescriptive. When I play many computer games, I actually do watch the dandelions, engage in a purely aesthetic moment. I delve into the affectation of the graphics, the sound, these delights, and then turn off the game.
My experiences would say, without equivication, that delight *is* the process. When game writers like Aarseth say they always finish games, I have nothing to relate to that, as I've left games I thought were boring aside, sometimes right near the end.
An attitude to cheating, like so much of these things, is a deployment of personal affective systems. Do I want to see San Andreas from the streets or from a jetpack. The game designers have allowed to me to use a jetpack with a technical widget (called a cheat).
As an aside, cheating in computer games articles should all begin and end with a review of Disgaea, the RPG that encourages and develops new ways of cheating. You play a demon prince who berates and beats a room full of senators in order to gain access to new items.
Posted by: Christian McCrea | Jan 31, 2005 at 01:42
> Damien Hirst, Matthew Barney, Bill Viola,
> Yasimasa Morimura, Mariko Mori, amongst
> dozens of others...especially when the work of
> art may not even exist past that point
"Work of art". Love the irony. I haven't been so delighted by beauty in years. Big, red and yellow, hot flickery beauty.
Posted by: Endie | Jan 31, 2005 at 09:01
Christian, Pollock may have hated contemplation, but ultimately, the attraction of his work, as with most modern art, is fundamentally the attraction of formalism. Pollock's work has remained interesting as a commentary on painting itself.
It's important to keep in mind that the "instant aesthetic response" of someone well-versed in art (or rather, in any given medium) is going to be very different from that of someone who is not.
If you choose to approach games from a purely delight-driven point of view, as a canvas on which other media can be painted, that's fine, but it's not examining games as such; it's analogous to going to the ballet for the costumes.
Posted by: Raph | Jan 31, 2005 at 13:47
Remember good old Amstrad/Spectrum/Commodore games ? The graphics didnt say much but they were enough for the player to dress them with his/her imagination, a form of Sartrean synthetic projection, internally bridging the gap between rudimentary graphics and image in one's head. It worked and it worked fine. There were little if any dandelions on the way at this age but the games were just as enjoyable.
Try playing an FPS, adventure game or whatever that has, say Amiga standard graphics; the imagination doesnt manage to project as well and yearns for something more realistic, more given and less dressed in the imagination, looks for more of those dandelions along the way.
Being imaginatively 'spoon fed' by better graphics and aestehtically pleasing scenes and touches one often becomes somewhat spoilt and thus yes the instant aesthetic factor does make a huge difference because it enhances engagement with the virtual environment for a lot of players. more importantly, if a game doesnt deliver the expected standard (at least similiar to what is out in the contemporary market) of aesthetic enjoyment the sense of engagement (for a number of game genres, not all) is marred.
Posted by: Gordon Calleja | Jan 31, 2005 at 17:30
That's all true, Gordon. But people do not stay playing a game because of the aesthetics. They stay playing because of the gameplay.
Posted by: Raph | Jan 31, 2005 at 21:18
I disagree on the question of art's attraction, but only in a definitional sense, what interests me is the connection of the feeling of delight to the perception of games as media objects;
"If you choose to approach games from a purely delight-driven point of view, as a canvas on which other media can be painted, that's fine"
I've never understood why the former translates to the latter, its generally been the reason given for my approaches not being about games before, you're not the first to point this out. I'd like to persist, though, I believe that delight always lasts forever, as its a way of forming memory.
The ballet question is very interesting, however, I think I wouldn't go to the ballet for the dancing, either. I'd go for everything, and for the company of the person next to me. I'd go for the experience of dressing up. To be honest, I'd be horrified to do anything for a single reason.
I guess my distrust of the velocity of the connection comes from experiences like playing Far Cry, which are not at all about finalising an approach to an enemy base, but very much literal appreciation of dandelions and rocket fire.
Posted by: Christian McCrea | Jan 31, 2005 at 21:19
PS - I think we game writers have had our asses handed to us so many times that we should be shy of determining what players generally want or get out of games.
Posted by: Christian McCrea | Jan 31, 2005 at 21:23
I know I'm saying that to someone who's just published a book called "Theory of Fun", (which is an awesome read, by the way!), but I mean in the sense that a quick look on the comment forums in the reviews of your book show people backing-and-forthing using their own experience as backing.
That in and of itself is interesting.
Posted by: Christian McCrea | Jan 31, 2005 at 21:26
Interesting comments, Christian.
I agree that memory lasts a very long time. (Maybe not forever ;) ). That is different, however, from active engagement with the piece. I am speaking in terms of the length of active engagement, and how often you return to active engagement.
On the ballet question--would definitely agree with you that the totality of the experience is really why people go. However, I suppose I would differ in that I would say that the dance is the particular reason why I would go to the ballet as opposed to the movies or a symphony. The dance is central to the ballet experience.
Why do people choose Far Cry over Zelda for their virtual dandelion-viewing pleasure? It mostly has to do with the shooting or questing.
I'm very happy to see the back-and-forthing over the book in the forums. To me, it means that the book accomplished what it set out to do. My observation of the general trend is that the academic commentators have generally wanted more argumentation, but that non-academic readers have not needed or wanted that. That fits perfectly with my expectations both for the book and for its audiences. At any rate, I am glad you thought it was "an awesome read." :)
Posted by: Raph | Jan 31, 2005 at 21:34
I don't think I know enough about art to respond to the idea of active engagement, but
Actually, I bought Far Cry because it was a PC game and I had just upgraded my computer. I generally dislike FPS games, with Half-Life 2 being an exception, which I'm replaying key sections of as I enjoying tooling around with ragdolls bodies and exploding barrels. (yes, its true).
What is key to my reading is gesture. Constructing a theory of games around gaming gestures, specifically and retaining the focus therein, is making me a bit pointed when it comes to these questions, but I think some interesting questions get missed along the way when we reduce gamers to types of people, and fun to types of behaviour, and reading the book, I can see you agree.
There's a moment in Giorgio Agamben's "Infancy and History", a bastard of a philosophy book, where the prose comes to a complete stop and he asks, directly -
"Where Is The Thing?"
This was genius for me; it was a broader question about philosophical practice, but it applies to cultural discussions like this - for me, the thing of games is in gesture and affect. What they are, how they interally work is secondary, as light and sound is secondary to my film experience, dance and movement to my ballet experience.
Posted by: Christian McCrea | Jan 31, 2005 at 22:06
"That's all true, Gordon. But people do not stay playing a game because of the aesthetics. They stay playing because of the gameplay."
I fully agree that gameplay is more central. What I was getting at though is that although is not that aesthetics would keep a player there, but a lack thereof (within the context of the general standard of the time) would put off a lot of people from getting into the gameplay in its initial phases.
Take World of Warcraft for example, it snares people in due to previous franchise (although an RTS experience has nothing to do with an MMOG experience), smoothness of play and above all; eye candy. strip it of its pretty graphics and you re left with very little which is new or innovative and indeed in many respects it provides an inferior experience to a lot of other MMOGs (lack of cahracter and avatar customization, drudgery driven production/trade goals among a list of other minuses) yet it ropes in players and there is a solid stream of comments that celebrate its aesthetic qualities.
Again I agree with you that, the aesthetics without the gameplay dont make up fo a game but its hard to deny that they are not a major factor in initial snaring users.
Posted by: Gordon Calleja | Jan 31, 2005 at 22:32
Gordon - isn't what many people say about World of Warcraft is that its graphics are "sub par"/cartoony etc. The thing that snags people (imho) is its nice short term goals - each quest is small and achievable in short enough time that people dont begin to feel a grind, and they are oft times funny.
To me the advantage or warcraft is the gameplay, not the eye candy. Lots of little steps of achievment, rather than the much longer grinds of level "pings" in most MMORPGs
Posted by: Cenn | Feb 01, 2005 at 02:03
I completely agree that the visuals (and sounds, and so on) are critical in snaring users. I spend a fair amount of time in the book talking about the art of the game as the whole.
Posted by: Raph | Feb 01, 2005 at 02:08
Really looking forward to reading it. Ordered it for the uni library and hoping it gets here soon :)
Posted by: Gordon Calleja | Feb 01, 2005 at 03:39
Hmm... I haven't read the book yet, but if I play a game it is usually for the aesthetics. Most fall to the ground after one hour though. :) Games like Myst and Deadline did manage to capture me, but more for the texture than the structure. In a more mature field like music you have some genres which are all structure and others that are all texture. Maybe texture-game-design is less well understood, but still possible?
Also, if you think in terms of roleplayers (role-actors) texture becomes very important. Did I miss the point?
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Feb 01, 2005 at 03:58
"That's all true, Gordon. But people do not stay playing a game because of the aesthetics. They stay playing because of the gameplay."
Ironically, I started playing a little title you may have heard of - SWG - because of the gorgeous screenshots. There was then a period when I investigated the gameplay (wasn't really my thing), then I kept playing for quite a while longer because I wanted to see more of the (rather attractive) gameworld.
Posted by: Endie | Feb 01, 2005 at 04:20
In a more mature field like music you have some genres which are all structure and others that are all texture. Maybe texture-game-design is less well understood, but still possible?
Also, if you think in terms of roleplayers (role-actors) texture becomes very important. Did I miss the point?
No, I think we're talking at cross-purposes because of definitions.
When I say aesthetic response, I am speaking of our instant feeling of "this is beautiful." This is a fleeting moment. When Endie says
I started playing a little title you may have heard of - SWG - because of the gorgeous screenshots. There was then a period when I investigated the gameplay (wasn't really my thing), then I kept playing for quite a while longer because I wanted to see more of the (rather attractive) gameworld.
he's saying that he was chasing after more of those fleeting moments; it was not a sustained emotion. It rarely is.
A feeling of "I appreciate this aesthetically because it uses the medium well" or "I appreciate this aesthetically because it presented something ugly in a startlingly beautiful way" are NOT what I am talking about--both of those are in fact acts of analysis, and therefore call under what I call "fun."
As a side note, music is not directly comparable to games. Music is what you might call a foundational medium; it works on its own but is also frequently used as a building block towards a more complex medium. Film, ballet, and musical theater all rely on music's presence in order to fully work.
Games are like film--they encompass a wide array of disciplines. The direct analogy to music, or to choreography in dance, is what I ended up calling ludemography, for want of a better term.
Posted by: Raph | Feb 01, 2005 at 11:37
Yes, it's probably about definitions. But let me put it this way: if you have low resolution (bricks) then you have structure (gameplay) that you add texture to (aesthetics). If you increase the resolution (sand/clay) then structure and texture becomes one. This is what has happend in (fine art) music the last 50 years (throwing away the melody and sculpting the timbre). So well, poor analogy, but perhaps a decent metaphor? Right now the rigidity of the tool (computer) makes us unable to get much beyond predictable bricks, and therefore the aesthetics stay in the background, but perhaps that can change?
I think of improvised music as game play, and well I think any artform where you improvise can be considered as game play. I.e. you either go the right or wrong way about your progress and you learn what patterns that work (kind of like a markov chain). The timbre (sound of the instrument) has an impact on the dynamics of your improvisation (gameplay). Isn't that sustained aesthetical "fun" where the aesthetics cannot be separated from the "gameplay"..?
Not challenging what you say about status quo, more questioning the future.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Feb 01, 2005 at 12:10
Well, I have to admit that much of contemporary fine art music, like language poetry and other such explorations, appeals to me (and to most people, I suspect) almost entirely on an analytical level, and not an aesthetic level. Very few people approach even older fine art music, such as 12-tone serialism, and say "that sounds pretty." It's appreciated mostly by musicians who understand how it works.
Improvised music is a form of gameplay, I agree. But I would treat it more atomically; we have an aesthetic response to each phrase, to each note. The blatt of a poorly played note does not cause that response and yet the "gameplay" of figuring out the correct note to play was still present. There's a dance there between the aesthetic and the gameplay, as I see it.
As a thought experiment, you could improvise with an instrument that has no sound. Perhaps a MIDI keyboard with no monitor speakers. The aesthetic experience goes away (except for you hearing the notes in your head, if you're good enough), but the gameplay experience remains.
Posted by: Raph | Feb 01, 2005 at 12:47
I admit that a lot of fine art can be too challenging, but I attribute that more to a lack of a natural selection process (hard to find the pleasing good works) and exposure. When I was younger I had problems with 12-tone music, now I don't even notice the difference. Non-melodic monotone trance music would also be a type of music where structure/texture blends. Clear structure (steady rythm), but it isn't the main feature and it is very repetitive so its function is almost that of texture/tapestry. If only the grind was more like dance music...
Yes, I agree there is a dance between aesthetic and gameplay (in my experience), but I don't think you could design the gameplay without considering the aesthetics. It is almost like a fractal, the seed is the original aesthetic input (from the designer) and then it generates new aesthetics through play.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Feb 01, 2005 at 13:14
Just came to think of it. I haven't tried the program called "fruity loops", but I suppose it can be considered an example of the type of "gameplay" I am thinking of.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Feb 01, 2005 at 13:20
I am not at all suggesting you design the gameplay without considering the aesthetic experience! That would be a horrible mistake. I am saying that if you don't have a fun game without the aesthetics present yet, then you won't have a fun game after you add the aesthetics.
In the book I talk about that moment of delight being not the experience of figuring out a pattern, but the moment of recognizing one. That's what I am calling aesthetic delight; by its nature, however it is brief. And yes, the more patterns you know (or the more educated you are in the 12-tone serialism) the mor elikely you are to instantly recognize the pattern and be delighted by it.
Posted by: Raph | Feb 01, 2005 at 14:55
> I am saying that if you don't have a fun game without the aesthetics present yet, then you won't have a fun game after you add the aesthetics.
Aww, flirty stripping games aint no fun without cute women to admire... Sounds like a good evaluation technique anyway. (I am getting your book soon so you don't have to explain it all :-)
I've always thought of this in terms of fractal dimensions (fd). Boring: fd < N+0.2; Frustrating: fd > N+0.5; If I am used to 12-tone then I can "reduce" the structure to fall into the fun interval by removing those patterns I recognize and focus on what deviates from the expected. If I am not, it gets too complex. That's also why breaks are so delightful IMO, the unexpected within the expected (and constrast, and... "cognitive shifts"). Too complicated to get into here, but very interesting topic.
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Feb 01, 2005 at 16:28
Gordon - "Take World of Warcraft for example, it snares people in due to previous franchise (although an RTS experience has nothing to do with an MMOG experience)..."
This interests me. As "experience"s go, is it more important that we are playing an mmo rather than an rts, or that we are playing a warcraft game rather than everquest? I think more traditional mmo players will agree with Gordon, but perhaps one of the keys wo WoW's success is that there are a large number of people on the other side. And surely this is even more true with virtual worlds, as the idea of the product is to 'live in an imaginary place'. So the fact that this place is one familiar from previous games is more important than whether we are playing as an abstract general in command of armies or an individual hero on his daily quest...
perhaps?
Posted by: Biggles | Feb 01, 2005 at 19:39
[
Some of the parameters of the above discussion follow this debate (below).
]
Just Give Me a Game, Please
by Jessica Mulligan
August 14, 2001
http://www.skotos.net/articles/BTH_07.html
#15: What's Entertainment?
by Travis S. Casey
August 24, 2001
http://www.skotos.net/articles/BSTG_15.html
[
Ed/
The following is quoted from Travis Casey:
]
Jessica's column was about game designers wanting to create Art. Her argument, boiled down, was that trying to create Art results in game designers forcing players into their "pre-ordained" vision of what the game should be like, and ignoring what the players might actually want. She continues on to say that, instead of Art, designers should try to focus on Entertainment instead.
Posted by: Nathan Combs | Feb 02, 2005 at 14:30
What about users who actually want Art?
Posted by: Ola Fosheim Grøstad | Feb 02, 2005 at 15:03
They read my essay in response to hers! :) I'm surprised that Nathan passed along only those two, since they're usually read as a triad.
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/caseforart.html
Posted by: Raph | Feb 02, 2005 at 15:17
What about pop art, art for the masses, and something in between entertainment, game, and art?
Nathan makes a good point about Ralp's "best test for game's fun in the strict sense". I assume that passage was to make a point, but I believe the magic of transforming an lettuce into a turkey is still there.
Who has or is going to advocate for magic-for-the-masses?
Posted by: magicback | Feb 02, 2005 at 21:09
Just FYI, more reviews here:
http://www.grimwell.com/index.php?action=fullnews&id=223>Grimwell
http://books.slashdot.org/books/05/02/04/202228.shtml>Slashdot
Posted by: AFFA | Feb 05, 2005 at 15:16