Three Moves Ahead 171 - Fun with 3MA

[Rob Zacny]

Tom Chick, SMG Studios designer David Heron, and Jon Shafer join Rob to reflect on their various issues with "fun" and how we relate to games. It's a rambling discussion about what we want from games, how we want to talk about them, and whether enjoyment is possible without fun.

Listen to it here.

[pabosher]

Just started listening to this episode this morning in an incredibly hungover state. I'm sure I'll have more to say when I've finished it, but this is a really great episode so far; possibly one of my favourite 3MAs ever!

[Codicier]

Bit of a slippery topic this one, but its interesting listening to writers & designers attacking it from opposite ends of the spectrum. For use in reviews i think Tom's 100% right that it is often a lazy fall back, but I'm as sure that trying to define fun in a more academic as shorthand for a certain kind of game experience isn't worthwhile.

Think it's a bit of a shame Julian wasn't also around for this panel as I'm pretty sure I remember him quoting Ralph Koster's A Theory of Fun a few times on the GWJ podcast & I think possibly on 3MA itself. Now certainly its not the be all & end of writing on the subject but I would have loved to hear what the guys thought of some of the assertions Koster makes, particularly his attempts to narrow the definition of fun.

Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally.

Aesthetic Appreciation isn't always fun, but it is certainly enjoyable.

Visible reactions are generally physical in nature and related to physical mastery of a problem.

Social status manoeuvres of various sorts are intrinsic to our self image and our standing in a community.

He then goes to clarify a bit by saying

fun is about learning in a context where there is no pressure

.

A interesting thing about this is how it relates to when a game becomes to easy. Often we assume: no pressure = easy, but what this moves the emphasis to not a lack of pressure but a lack of anything new to learn.

To try and apply it to what the guys where saying about simulation games, you could say sims are a type of game where a significant part of many players experience is a Aesthetic Appreciation of the beauty of the model/system behind it.

In the discussion around boardgames there has already been a codifying the language surrounding the sort the experience players have with the whole "Eurogames"(elegant systems) vs "Ameritrash"(fun) debate. Of course those terms are both hugely broad, but I think its interesting that in a medium (boardgames) where the mechanics are seen as in the primacy is seemingly closer to defining different types of enjoyment than video games.

Anyway those are a few initial thoughts looking forward to seeing what a few other people think as everyone digests the episode.

[Jon Shafer]

Really enjoyed being a part of this discussion - thanks to the rest of the panel for a great time! I had no idea where we were going to take things but it turned out well. I lost my train of thought a bit in the early going, so apologies if that part was a bit rough. Few of our conversations at Rabbitcon were done completely sober, so I had to dig a bit to remember our subject matter.

Also, I'm really glad David was a part of the show. I met him at Rabbitcon and he's a super smart guy with a a lot of interesting thoughts on games and the industry as a whole. Hoping Rob invites him back for future episodes!

- Jon

[Donk]

Interesting discussion, I can't agree more with Tom Chick than when he was describing games that are obviously not fun but keep you coming back, I have hundreds of hours in Tony Hawk, racing sims, flight sims and StarCraft only to show minute improvements. All those hours resulted in for example a total of one clean overtake of another human online (

, black car is me) and one clean kill in IL2-Sturmovik online (

), I was nowhere near as good as 90% of those communities but these where huge achievements for me.

Same with StarCraft 2, the matchmaking keeps me coming back, I don't think any RTS on the market today has enough players to match players of even skill almost 2 years after release, even in the lowest tier. I'm still in Bronze and loving it, always even games.

[Codicier]

@Donk my word that Strumovik video is disorientating. Do you think you'd still feel the same way about those achievement's if they happened in a social vacuum? I know personally for some reason beating a tough player feels more satisfying than beating a equally tough AI.

[Donk]

@Donk my word that Strumovik video is disorientating. Do you think you'd still feel the same way about those achievement's if they happened in a social vacuum? I know personally for some reason beating a tough player feels more satisfying than beating a equally tough AI.

I can imagine it being disorienting, especially since the final blow is dealt right as I stall out and the plane does a good tumble.

I would not have been there in the first place if I had been in a social vacuum so it's hard to quantify but I put in a lot of hours to be able to score a kill and it was a huge rush when I finally made it so yes I probably would have felt the same way. I was also pretty much alone in my endeavor, none of my friends played the game, YouTube and Facebook didn't exist yet and the only place that would have cared would have been the IL2 forums but a single kill wouldn't have made a big splash there.

[Cosmonaut Zero]

I think the comment that Diablo 3 lacks mutually exclusive decisions while Diablo 2 has them is off-base. You make precisely the same kind of decisions and each one is tighter and more meaningful because each individual choice you make has a huge impact on your abilities. The only difference is the time scale at which you're able to make those choices and change your mind. My Witch Doctor can never have the AoE poision tank pet and the short duration but super powerful tank pet available at the same time. I can never have access to more than six abilities at a time. The only difference is you can change your mind and experiment contemporaneously. Diablo 2 is more punitive if you make a bad choice, but that doesn't mean you aren't making the choices at all in Diablo 3.

[Codicier]

@cosmonautzero

I think what they were pushing at was something along the line that when in D3 you customize your skill set to the challenge at hand it changes your character in relation to the world.

Where as in D2 your choices changed the way you as a player interacted with the world because you were forced to take on some problems with sub-optimal tools rather than always having the optimal tools to chose from.

I personally like a lot about D3 but as i approach lvl 60 on my monk i'm having less and less fun, every time i bump into a new pack i just pick a new skill set and hell mode starts feeling like normal mode.

[andrewdoull]

Jon, ignore Tom. brogue is far better a roguelike than Diablo III on hardcore. And it's free.

[Michael]

Jon, ignore Tom. brogue is far better a roguelike than Diablo III on hardcore. And it's free.

I enjoy Brogue quite a bit. It's a very accessible, very well-made roguelike with some great touches added to the standard ASCII interface. Rather than bogging the player down with classes and skills right away it allows them to progress naturally as their play style and item pickups evolve what they're good at. It's a great alternative to some of the more beastly roguelikes.

My personal favorites are Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup (which has both a console and tiles version, free as in speech and beer), and Dungeons of Dredmor (graphics only, so cheap it might as well be free). Of course, there are also the Big Roguelikes such as Nethack, Unnethack, and the Angband variants. DC:SS is the one that really grabbed me.

I could go on about Roguelikes... maybe we need a thread for that. Brogue was a great suggestion, and I just wanted to expand on it and let people know that there's a lot out there!

[andrewdoull]

I could go on about Roguelikes... maybe we need a thread for that. Brogue was a great suggestion, and I just wanted to expand on it and let people know that there's a lot out there!

I asked on the TMA episode threads a couple of times whether roguelikes would be a worthy topic. The argument could be made they're a great single unit strategy game, plus Troy is a big fan of DC:SS. Since I got no response, I started a roguelike podcast instead...

[robc]

Another fun episode with THA. Being the agreeable sort that I am, I agree with Tom and Jon about the use of the term fun, but more so with Jon. I concede that the word fun is easy to use as a crutch. Positive comments are much more difficult to come up with than negative ones because when you hit an aspect of a game that isn't done well, it jars the player out of the moment. Play is disrupted and the illusion of the game world broken. A great game makes you forget to sit up and take notice of what it is doing well. When you are done, you know you were having fun but it takes a lot of effort to verbalize why. I do think it is relevant for a reviewer to state whether they found the game fun. After reading many articles from the same reviewer, the reader can start to get a feel for how alike their preferences are with the reviewer. There are certain people I read that if they state a game is fun I am more likely to investigate that game. Of course it is most helpful when the reviewer supports their position with details, both the positive and the negative. The reader knows that your negative may be their positive.

Different game journalists scratch different itches - I probably enjoy reading articles by Tom and Bruce more than any other writers. When I read a Conquest of Elysium article by Tom, he convinces me that its a great game. He breathes such life into the narrative that I have to stop and remind myself that I actually played the game and found it merely decent. He can make any game sound great (at least ones he enjoys). I have to remind myself of this when I read his articles so I don't go buy My Pretty Pony when Tom gets into my head and turns it into a great game. I feel I get a better picture of whether I'll like a game with Rob Z's reviews and enjoy his wit. Troy gets me to think about games in different ways. Jon's design articles inspire me to think a little bit and join in in the analysis. Ok, I got off topic.

Rob Z hit on something when he switched his vote for a good game that may not be fun. There are different reasons a game may be 'fun' - engrossing story, interesting choices and mechanics, etc., but playing a game to be challenged can be rewarding without being fun in the same floofy way that blasting something with a fireball is. There are games I've felt agitated after playing - but the reward was in conquering some obstacle that made the experience worth while. It is easy to pin the term fun on any game that you are glad you played, but the term fun doesn't have high fidelity. It doesn't convey the reason.

One last thing...

On paper Paradox grand strategy games are great. I don't know how many reviews I have read about them where I am convinced the game is for me. For some reason in practice they just don't hit the spot. I enjoyed EU3, but only tinkered with Hearts of Iron, Victoria 1&2, Crusader Kings 1&2, etc. I want to love those game, but they either seem like too much work without the reward (Vicky) or I just can't find compelling reasons to enjoy their mechanics (CK2). I am really disappointed I can't get into CK2 when the general consensus is that it is very good. I find the mechanics pretty dull - marriages, wars, educating kids - but the concept of the game is pretty cool. Someone please make me like it.

[Gormongous]

One last thing...

On paper Paradox grand strategy games are great. I don't know how many reviews I have read about them where I am convinced the game is for me. For some reason in practice they just don't hit the spot. I enjoyed EU3, but only tinkered with Hearts of Iron, Victoria 1&2, Crusader Kings 1&2, etc. I want to love those game, but they either seem like too much work without the reward (Vicky) or I just can't find compelling reasons to enjoy their mechanics (CK2). I am really disappointed I can't get into CK2 when the general consensus is that it is very good. I find the mechanics pretty dull - marriages, wars, educating kids - but the concept of the game is pretty cool. Someone please make me like it.

I probably would have had something glib to say in defense of Crusader Kings 2 a week or so ago, but I've recently become convinced that a deep love of medieval history is necessary to enjoy the game. Usually that's not a problem, because if strategy gamers don't start with a passion for the past, the available titles out there will instill them with it in short order, but Crusader Kings 2 suffers especially in that without knowledge of the period and awareness of counter-factual situations, it's just The Sims 3 with vastly reduced interactivity.

I became aware of this playing the Game of Thrones mod that was just released a little while ago. I have never found anything more boring than the endless wars of faceless nobles over arbitrary geography that this mod orchestrates. It even incited a half-serious argument with a colleague where I tried to use it as anecdotal evidence of how important the papacy was to the civilization of medieval Europe, considering that its absence in the mod leeched all the color out of the game for me.

So I don't know. I'm studying for my doctoral exams right now, and I can tell you there's nothing more thrilling than reading about a certain historical figure and then seeing him at work in your game. It's a joy that never dies, and probably the best advice I have to offer.