# A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster > I will write my personal thoughts and experience with this > indent # Chapter summapy ## Chapter 1 - Why Write This Book? Kids love playing games and their tastes change in time. "I don't need to know whether tic-tac-toe is NP-hard or NP-complete to know that it's a dumb game" I love this sentence, you can enjoy or hate a game regardless of it's arbitrary properties and kids like the simple games. You become cognitively worse at solving tasks as you age is his point. > Although I am 23, I am VERY afraid of this happening to me, simply starting to rot from the inside and not being able to achieve anything after I hit certain age ... > Do you know that Einstein had theory of relativity when he was 26 and Newton invented calculus before he was 20 years of age? Author rambling about typing games and that he decided to figure out what games are. ## Chapter 2 - How the Brain Works How is fun in games made? "We pattern-seek the process of pattern-seeking" Example in human faces. Big part of human brain is for faces. Concept of chunking = brain can keep only ~7 short term memory items so we put complex info together and under one label put it into the memory Our ability to put concepts together improves with practice (the more we practice the more we can save memory) Trained chunks can be useful or dangerous, e.g.: cars Artists use golden section to make us chunk better so we think art is prettier. Chaos and unpredictibility = ugly Can't see pattern = frustration > This is very annoting, but the author does not give us any source for these statements, > and it's not like he is saying this is his experience, he is generalising it to everyone. > !because something seems like it might be true does not mean it is! Chunking of Jazz, at first chaotic, then he likes it. Grokking and 3 levels of thought. (Thinking = IQ), (asociating and bulding patterns) and (muscle memory and chunks) building library of chunks = practice (dreams if alot) ## Chapter 3 - What Games Are Games are often described as being in their own world disconnected from reality. We turn real life into games. Games have presentable chunk (real life often does not). People cannot practice on a book, but games give feedback immediately. Language obeys math rules, humans can't comprehend too much nested objects intuitevly. Games can become boring quickly since we can practice. What is fun? Dictionary definitions and etymology of the word. fun = feeling good, triumph when mastering or learning Humans crave new data Sensory deprivation vs overload Boredom ruining games: - game is too easy, player figure it in 5 minutes - there is depth, but it is useless (e.g.: tons of charts and statistics) (Dwarf Fortress actually came to my mind) - can't see any patterns, the game is too hard, players get stuck - upping the difficulty and patterns too slowly - "got too hard too fast", too many patterns - beating it all, mastering the pattern fun = keep the player learning If learning is boring, the method is wrong. > This makes me remember elementary school when teachers and my parents would just shout when I got anything wrong, > and I would get humiliated for it at home. It really makes you hate learning. Fun game = good teacher ## Chapter 4 - What Games Teach Us People think games are childish, less old pople play games. Would not important things(fire drills) be more effective if they were fun? Process of gamification, but "reward structure alone does not a game make" Most game use spatial reasoning. But we also need to know how our influence affects it. Like gambling games and odds > This reminds me of board-games with imperfect information, like Poker or Stratego "A many games involve recalling and managing very long and complex information" Games often mean managing and using power and status. > Maybe we as human enjoy power fantasies, where we can get from our current place somewhere higher > Like in online ranked games (Counter strike, DOTA2, ..) we want to rise in rank because it is easier the in real life Survival in the wild -> olympic sports (spear throw, running, ..) WW2 -> rationing supplies games Humans evolve, so games evolve. Now games need more mathematical sophistication. Author identifies traits that game designs currently reinforce: - Blind obedience to leaders - Rigid hierarchies or binary thinking - The use of force to resolve problems - Like seeking like, and its converse, xenophobia > And I disagree with this generalisation, the author does not even state which games do this > In fact, I can think of many games that do the oposite > The trope or rebel is very common and is the oposite to blind obediesnce > Use of force? Maybe for shooters, but that is a small subset of all games, probably didn't hear about racing or farming games. > xenophobia? have you played any sci-fi games like Stelaris, where you ARE the xenos? or fantasy like WoW where you ARE the Orc? > I can see why someone might think that if they only played 3 games in their life, but this guy is suposed to be game designer.. ## Chapter 5 - What Games Aren’t Games are like word probles. History od Deathrace. Media arent mind controll devices and people don't kill because of videogames. Pacman does not make you want to eat dots. He says in general people don't play games beacause of the story. Games are not stories: - Games tend to be experiential teaching - .... > No idea what the aouthor is trying to say 8 different types of fun: defined eight types of fun: sense-pleasure, make-believe, drama, obstacle, social framework, discovery, self-discovery and expression, and surrender Authors own definition: Fun, Aesthetic appreciation, Visceral reactions, Social status signals We often enjoy challanging ouselves. "Beauty is found in the tension between our expectation and the reality" > I like this quote, it reminds me of when I do something I enjoy like reading and it's better then I expected it to be. Fun does not last long. Concept of Flow like explained in the teacher's lectures. More reasons to play games: Practice, Meditation, Storytelling, Comfort ## Chapter 6 - Different Fun for Different Folks Differences show at young age: IQ, logic, visualisation, verbal skills 7 forms of intelligence: Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Bodily-kinesthetic, Spatial, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal > it seems strange to me to see all these lists of intelligence > whenever I talked to anyone talented in music or languages, they always say it's the hard work > but when I read something about IQ, it always says how it is inborn, I find that strange ... > And even the author says there are not tests for these inteligence types Man vs Girl differences of inteligence Who is better and at what, personalities, .. Talking about Myers-Briggs personality type > I've heard that the Myers-Briggs thing does not work and is some scam to sell personality tests > (you know the ones you always see in those trashy ads), so I am bit sceptical about this whole section This chapter is not really interesting, just that: Different age, sex, personality and inteligence -> different preferences ## Chapter 7 - The Problem with Learning Our mind wants to take shortcuts, but it can be more optimal to calculate slowly. Cheating is braking (even percieved) patternt of game In war it can be "Let§s attack at night" Like cutting the Gordian knot Cheating vs Exploitin loophole in games Both circumvent our effort, the cheater did not master the pattern like we did. This is fixed by good game design. Successful games incorporate: - Preparation - before challange - A sense of space - e.g.: landscape of a war game - A solid core mechanic, A range of challenges, A range of abilities required to solve the encounter, Skill required in using the abilities, .... It hits the right "cognitive buttons" To make it learning experience: - A variable feedback system - Can't predict completly, reward for skill - The Mastery Problem must be dealt with - High skill players can't just only do low difficulty (bottom-feeding) - Failure must have a cost > for whatever reason, Cookie Clicker came to my mind reading this, and it seems to contradict all of these points > and it was a REALLY popular game too > but I actually really like these as these points match many games that I enjoy playing like Slay the Spire > By the way, the game "Duskers", that I made my game review on, had failed at all of these ... have you tried Duskers? ## Chapter 8 - The Problem with People Self-generating challenges, games like Go > have you played the boardgame Go? it is sooo good and increadibly deep > like the author says, it has self-generating challenges, it has incredible amount of strategy > It out of all games, I think it influenced my life the most (but this is not the place to write all the life lessons it gave me) > If you have some spare time, you should try it (it is also called Baduk in Korean and Weiqi in Chineese) to make games self-refreshing: Emergent behavior, storytelling, Placing players head-to-head, Using players to generate content > Using players to generate content - terraria did an amazing job with this, delivering an amazing game that is > still being updated and the community is delivering their own content > another great example is StarSector (try it, it's good) > On the contrary, what Bathesda did seems pretty shitty, expecting the community to their stuff for them for free ... feeling of make-believe mastery "Games need to encourage you to move on" "newcomers can’t get into them—the barrier to entry is too high" > I feel like this exact thing happened in starcraft, the skill flaoor is just waay too high so this amazing game is just left to die > It's also the fault of Blizzard for not taking care of it better, it had such a massive player base, and look at it now ;w; ## Chapter 9 - Games in Context Grid of activities in gaming > the deconstructive row is interesting, as it still is about the game, but not inside of it Talking about art and what it is > this section is pretty annoying, I really don't care about philosophical discussions of what games or art is .. Talking about music talking about Impressionism > this is the worst chapter so far, not a bit interesting, it's like the author tried to put just one more chapter in to inrease the page count ## Chapter 10 - The Ethics of Entertainment Delivery is important, not just mechanics. There is hierarchy in game desing teams. Something about dancing ... Finally starts talking about the ethics. Says these complaints are misguided. Says we should be responsible with what we say make as media. The problem is when gameplay is good, and content is offensive. ## Chapter 11 - Where Games Should Go "Many of the things that I have discussed in this book, such as theories of cognition, understanding of gender, learning styles, chaos theory, graph theory, and literary criticism, are fairly recent developments in human history" > he did not discuss them, he just mentioned these things, there is nothing about graph theory, except saying it is used to solve some games.. "Right now, most games are about violence. They are about power." > tell that to the trucking simulator or Minecraft or Factorio or Stardew Valley or ... you get the point. > Also I looked on steam front page and saw Last Train Home with 85% positive, congratulations! > Ok I looked it up and it says that "Originally published: November 6, 2004". > I guess it makes sense that he says these weird things like "Practically any form of entertainment is about sex and violence" > like he only ever played Doom and I don't know what else his whole life. Talking about games not being mature as medium, .. nothing really interesting to write notes of. ## Chapter 12 - Taking Their Rightful Place "Games do need to acknowledge their influence over our patterns of thought." > THis remind me of the whole lootbox thing and microtransactions, > Games seen as business to just take over peoples minds and wallets "Games do need to wrestle with issues of social responsibility" > Do they really? Why do they need to do that? > I play games to take rest from exhaustive day, not to think about someone's trashy social responsibilities He wants there to be no distinction between art and entertainment. > Why is he so interested in art? I couldn't care less about some painting or music or orchestra, > he compares it with art and tries to say games should be more like art, but .. why? He concludes this chapter by saying he contributes to society. I will not raed the epilogue, by it's title, it's again some stories about the author's grandpa and I really don't want to read that again .. # Feelings about this book The book reads more like a collection of interesting concepts and thoughts around game design. I'm not saying it's bad, and maybe I'm just used to different books but I would rate this 6/10 Above average, but not life-changing. I think this book should try to either be more of a story telling or more information giving, and not try to mix them together, but that is my preference.