%0 Journal Article %1 citeulike:423526 %A Falstein, Noah %D 2004 %J Gamasutra.com %K games mathgamespatterns theory fun design psychology %T Natural Funativity %U http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041110/falstein_pfv.htm %X What makes a game fun? It's a question that seems central to the process of making good games. But it's an elusive and subjective question. The dictionary defines 'fun' as a source of amusement or enjoyment, but that's not very helpful. And yet somehow, for years we have been creating games without really understanding why we human beings find some activities to be fun and others boring, pointless or worse. It's not too surprising, since humans have also been creating art for at least 30,000 years and we're still arguing about how to define it. To paraphrase the old saying, we may not be able to describe fun, but we know it when we have it. But game designers are an inquisitive lot, and in recent years there has finally been some significant progress in getting close to the answer of just what fun is all about. When LucasArts Entertainment Company was still known as Lucasfilm Games, our boss was Steve Arnold, who had been drawn into the games industry at Atari after years as a child psychologist. This made him uniquely qualified not only to understand the audience for our games, but also to manage and motivate a bunch of young game developers. One of the first things he would ask us when we presented a new game concept was: "What is the Funativity Quotient?" It was a question that encouraged us to think about just what aspects of the idea would make it fun, and I was always intrigued by the implication that fun could be categorized, defined, perhaps even measured. But how do we get at the underlying roots of fun?

@article{citeulike:423526, abstract = {What makes a game fun? It's a question that seems central to the process of making good games. But it's an elusive and subjective question. The dictionary defines 'fun' as a source of amusement or enjoyment, but that's not very helpful. And yet somehow, for years we have been creating games without really understanding why we human beings find some activities to be fun and others boring, pointless or worse. It's not too surprising, since humans have also been creating art for at least 30,000 years and we're still arguing about how to define it. To paraphrase the old saying, we may not be able to describe fun, but we know it when we have it. But game designers are an inquisitive lot, and in recent years there has finally been some significant progress in getting close to the answer of just what fun is all about. When LucasArts Entertainment Company was still known as Lucasfilm Games, our boss was Steve Arnold, who had been drawn into the games industry at Atari after years as a child psychologist. This made him uniquely qualified not only to understand the audience for our games, but also to manage and motivate a bunch of young game developers. One of the first things he would ask us when we presented a new game concept was: "What is the Funativity Quotient?" It was a question that encouraged us to think about just what aspects of the idea would make it fun, and I was always intrigued by the implication that fun could be categorized, defined, perhaps even measured. But how do we get at the underlying roots of fun?}, added-at = {2006-06-05T02:47:21.000+0200}, author = {Falstein, Noah}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/22d7e278c376ec974a0507a7208e4d389/yish}, citeulike-article-id = {423526}, interhash = {778aa7daa3a35aae64925920d1ed9e4e}, intrahash = {2d7e278c376ec974a0507a7208e4d389}, journal = {Gamasutra.com}, keywords = {games mathgamespatterns theory fun design psychology}, month = {November}, priority = {2}, timestamp = {2006-06-05T02:47:21.000+0200}, title = {Natural Funativity}, url = {http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041110/falstein_pfv.htm}, year = 2004 }