a nice ted talk about game design and how to make games fun.
What is Fun?
Thu, 07/26/2012 - 11:41
Fri, 07/27/2012 - 02:59
#1
Thanks for the video link
Thanks for the video link.
I've seen many TED talks and they are brilliant and this one gave me more inspiration towards my old games which my friends etc. called "boring" :)
Sun, 07/29/2012 - 11:36
#2
verrrry interesting....
The best thing I got out of this was the list of 'DO'S'. It turns out that VIOLATING one or more of these rules can produce a game that is IMMENSELY fun!
NO KILLING PLAYERS - BANG! violates this and is one of the funnest games out there.
REDUCE DOWNTIME - downtime [sometimes up to an hour for each player PER TURN] is what board wargames are all about. They've been selling well for 50+ years and still going strong.
You get my point. One of my games is NOTHING BUT luck - yet everywhere I have taken it [and to all the folks who have bought copies - and then demanded an expansion so they could have MORE players join the fun!], the fun factor is what drives the game play, even though I am 'violating 2 of the rules.
- all 'strategy' for each player is the same
- luck rules everything
Yet we're getting ready to put this title into KICKSTARTER and have high hopes for it. Why? Because it's FUN! ;-)
An interesting dynamic - I'll bet you guys could come up with games that violate one or more of these principles, yet are generally considered FUN by the gaming community. BTW - I would agree that following this list will probably produce a better EUROGAME, following ALL of them will not automatically make it fun. Violating at least one has proven to produce to produce wildly popular ["fun"] games as I mentioned by the two examples above. [you may refer to this as 'Chester's Corollary' if you wish]. Here is the entire list:
- NO KILLING PLAYERS
- REDUCE DOWNTIME
- BALANCE STRATEGIES
- REDUCE LUCK
- PROMOTE INTERACTIONS
- INTEGRATE THE THEME
Sun, 07/29/2012 - 11:41
#3
I'd say more, "Wargames have
I'd say more, "Wargames have been successful despite the downtime." - Players are pushing more and more for designs where the turns are interlaced - but overall yeah, for every great truth, its opposite is another!
Mon, 07/30/2012 - 17:32
#5
Games like Bang! and Werewolf
Games like Bang! and Werewolf are games that allow player elimination cause even when you're not playing they are fun to watch and over soon anyway. No one wants to play a war game where you get eliminated or a 2 hour euro game when you have to sit around for another hour.
James
Tue, 07/31/2012 - 22:47
#6
I look at fun as something
I look at fun as something that I would pay to do, as opposed to being paid to do it. I'm sure plenty of people find Puerto Rico or Power Grid "fun," but you'd have to pay me a bunch of money to play either one, but there's about 100 games that were fun enought that I paid to be able to have a copy of my very own.
Wed, 08/01/2012 - 01:12
#7
RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON
I look at fun as something that I would pay to do, as opposed to being paid to do it... there's about 100 games that were fun enought that I paid to be able to have a copy of my very own.
Excellent observation, TL! I hadn't thought about it that way before, but you are absolutely correct. It's another way of saying, 'customers vote with their wallets'.
Thanks for contributing!
Bang gets away with player elimination by being a short game. By the time you’re eliminated the game is probably half or more the way through.
And when it comes to war games one of the best new comers, Conflict of Hero’s, has improved the genre by reducing down time opening war games to a wider audience.
We all have different tolerances to player elimination, luck, etc.. What I think they are saying is you should be aware of these potential flaws because they can ruin or lessen the fun factor of a game.