Servo's thread (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=930) got me thinking, "What's not fun in a game?" or "What detracts from the fun of a game?".

I often wonder why many of the most successful games of all time are simple. Simple to learn, simple to play, and usually simple to win. Is it because they are just mind numbingly fun, or is it because they are fun and - this is the big AND - are there so few negative influences that the game is only fun.

One last observation. When I've noticed a person talking about a game they enjoy, they talk about how fun it is. When they don't enjoy it, they talk about all the things they dislike - which are always the things that take away from the fun of the game, such as long level load times, compatibility and stability issues, difficult controls, etc.

Michael Sikora
Guardian Light Studios (http://www.guardianlightstudios.com)

Edit, corrected brutal spelling in subject, but it won't change on the topics board! :rolleyes:

One man's tedium is another man's fun.

Some people think cost accounting is fun.

And so on. It's hard to know what any given person is going to find fun or not.

I would say that things to avoid are:

* Trying to please *everyone*. If your game is a game about baking cakes, keep the focus on baking cakes. Don't add non-cake-related violence or whatever just to "bring in the FPS crowd". Figure out what your game is about and focus on that.

Hmm. Actually...I'll stop there. Most of my other thoughts seemed covered by that.

"Anything that doesn't add to a work of art, only detracts." Whether games are art or not is beside the point. Anything that doesn't make the game better only makes it worse.

-David

Trial and error (usually) sucks. Trial and error might be an important part of a game where the idea is to get the best possible score on a level/task where the objective is clear. What's not cool is to require the player to completely fail (i.e. die) at least once in order to even see the objective or see the obstacle they need to avoid. Blindsiding the player with instant, unavoidable death is a good way to get them to quit playing. Half-Life did a very good job of avoiding this fun-sapping pitfall by showing you the danger ahead with good visual clues or by sending a hapless NPC into the trap in front of you.

Originally posted by DavidRM
If your game is a game about baking cakes, keep the focus on baking cakes. Don't add non-cake-related violence or whatever just to "bring in the FPS crowd".

I agree with that. Unreal 2 had this problem, among countless others. One level it's a run-n-gun FPS, the next level you're pretty like an engineer planting hardware and defending a base, the next level you're commanding a team and positioning troops like it's an RTS.

("pretty like an engineer? heh. that's supposed to be "pretty much")

For me it's unwieldy or confusing interfaces. If I have to think about what keys to press or what button to click, it breaks the immersion and the fun.

Well, lets see what I can think up here.

Frustration is not fun. Usually, if the person dies twenty seven times before they get past the fourth level, they simply give up. Some people will torture the game disk by throwing it into the microwave on high. So how do you prevent frustration? This is something you have to play through your game, and have others play through as well to find. Essentially, it should be 'fair' at all points. It was mentioned earlier that blind traps were a bad thing, why is this? Because it's not fair and causes frustration. The player should always feel it was their little mistake, and should indeed be their mistake, that they lost.
You can make a game less of a chore in a number of ways. One common one is with cheat codes, some people use cheats as a hidden means of altering the game, others use them as a sort of rewards, something to unlock to be used later. I should not even have to tell you, that you need to be able to accomplish your goal without cheating.
Annother way to decrease frustration is to add difficulty levels, prefferably able to change them at any time. Or at least, at the beggining of a level.
Since puzzle games are popular here, I'll include something used for those. A hint or autosolve feature. Something that shows a clue for the next thing you should do, or even a suggested means of accomplishing the goal.

Repedativity* is not fun. I've marked it with a '*' because that statement is both true and false at the same time. While many games have repedative aspects, ex. Tetris always has to do with rotating and placing falling blocks. So how does tetris keep from getting repedative? Simple, it both has a random element, and speeds up after a point count. This keeps the same playability, while adding a challenge and keeping it from becoming boring because you're doing the same thing over and over.

On a technical aspect, things that hurt the eyes and hurt the ears are not fun. If you need an explaination, I'll be happy to help. Just ask, and I can whip up a quick midi that'll make your ears bleed, and a gif to flash bright red and yellow over and over.

I'm tempted to say pastels aren't fun, but thats just a personal prefferance. I prefer my world to be a bit less bleached lookin'.

Back on topic, confusion isn't fun. If I stop playing a game for a week, I want to be able to come back and go, 'Find the red bangle? Ok, so thats what I'm doing.' I'm going to refer to a game that has a great way to prevent losing your goals, Neverwinter night. How does this game help you out? The journal. A simple record of your goals, both accomplished and current. NWN isn't the first game to use this, nah. I've seen it in ultima... Nine? And fallout. I believe star craft has a thing in the pause menu to check up on mission objectives. As you can tell, I tend to play RPG's alot, so that brings me into my next oppinion...

Bad characters and badly done plot are not fun. If you are making a game that takes advantage of our amazing ability to tell stories, try to do it properly. Unfortunately what makes characters and stories good or bad is a very broad subject, and it would take me some time to go over it. Just a note though, I personally beleive great characters make the story, and deserve a lot more attention than what most games are offering these days. If you are interested in taking my point to heart, I'm sure you can find a great deal of material on it.. Search up on how to make good characters, select a theme, and create a plot.

It was mentioned that slow load times make it less fun... This is true, mostly because it takes you out of the gaming experiance. If it was a perfect world, it would add suspence. Suspence is created however, by teasing, not holding everything away.

Load time is forgivable when compared to lag and bugs. These can cause a reaction from 'huh...' to someone screaming about purple monkies riding a llama, in an obvious code to keep the young ones from hearing them swear. What is it that causes lag and bugs to lack the fun factor? Well... After a whole of three seconds thought, I've come up with the answer. They just aren't fair. This tends to be especially true in an MMOG, where it's critical that you can match the opponant. If you don't care about the lack of fun they cause, think of this. They are glaring representatives of your flaws. Now you don't want to be that chipped peice of crystal that ends up in the bargain section, do you? Nah, you want to be the sparkly peice thats kept in tip top shape, for all to admire.

A closing note, Guardian has a good point. Although the more obvious thing to make a game fun is factors that add to the fun, you can't ignore the factors that take away from it. Maybe it is obvious to all of you, but to me it's not likely to be an issue untill after I've had everything done.

Well this may just be a personal thing, but I really hate not knowing what to do next. I need goals.

I've seen a lot of games praised for being non-linear or having a wide open world. Personally I typically detest those games. I like to know where I have to go, and what i should be doing. Wandering around randomly sucks. In particular I hate trying to find my way through a maze.

Some puzzle games have this feeling. There are some games where you know what you're trying to solve and you can think about it and solve it, whereas other games feel like you're just trying a bunch of different things to see if you can win. Frozzic suffers a little from that in that you have to try the level several times before you can see the problem. Aargon on the other hand is quite good in this respect. The problem to solve is very clear. Hit all the coins.

The new release Chick-A-Droid I think suffers somewhat from this problem. there's something about the play mechanic which always leads me to wandering around randomly hoping to create a space. Somehow it feels like navigating an ever changing maze rather than solving a problem.

Recently I was playing Aliens vs Predetor 2 - many of the levels have maze like elements to them where I have to find the right little crawlspace to get through. As soon as that happens - boredom sets in. I don't want to search the base, I want to fight aliens and do exciting things. I had to stop playing jedi knight 2 because of this problem. I constantly found myself wandering around levels wondering ... where do I go next?

Originally posted by svero
Well this may just be a personal thing, but I really hate not knowing what to do next. I need goals.

I constantly found myself wandering around levels wondering ... where do I go next?

This is interesting, because my tastes are quite the opposite. I loved the original Metroid and Zelda games on the NES... party of the fun was figuring out what to do next and exploring the world. The latest game in the Metroid series (Metroid Fusion) is completely and utterly linear... it literally has a guy saying "go here, now go here, now do this." I've found this to be extremely annoying when I remember how fun the old game was.

The same thing happened with the newer Zelda games. Why is it that those games sold well and were big hits on the NES, but nowadays Nintendo feels like they have to dumb down their games to hit the target audience? It makes no sense to me.

Originally posted by Pyabo
This is interesting, because my tastes are quite the opposite. I loved the original Metroid and Zelda games on the NES... party of the fun was figuring out what to do next and exploring the world. The latest game in the Metroid series (Metroid Fusion) is completely and utterly linear... it literally has a guy saying "go here, now go here, now do this." I've found this to be extremely annoying when I remember how fun the old game was.

The same thing happened with the newer Zelda games. Why is it that those games sold well and were big hits on the NES, but nowadays Nintendo feels like they have to dumb down their games to hit the target audience? It makes no sense to me.

Well I should note that I don't really like linearity. It's not that I want one long corridor with a bunch of monsters to shoot and a single door at the end. Obviously that's no good either. I like a little freedom, but I also like that freedom in the context of some clearer goal. Like a door up on a 2nd floor which I have to get to but I don't know the way to the door is ok. But a bunch of metal corridors with no door or nothing and me wandering is bad.

I think ideally I like some linearity, but I want it to be disguised. I want to some extent to be told go here and do this but not to realize that it's happening.

This is exactly what I love about fallout 1. It feels like you have a lot of freedome. You get to move around on your own, go to towns, try to steal from people, bust up a drug lord, or help him out, or alternatively, ignore him alltogether. There are only a few things in the whole game you have to do. Everything else is, although usually centered around those things, mostly optional and done to your style. If you want to see a game that does the whole non-liniar thing right, thats the game to look at.

Originally posted by svero
Well this may just be a personal thing, but I really hate not knowing what to do next. I need goals.


I also fall into that category. Many games are realistic in that you can travel through an entire city. In an MMORPG this might be fun. In an action game, it doesn’t make sense.

Originally posted by svero
I had to stop playing Jedi knight 2 because of this problem. I constantly found myself wandering around levels wondering ... where do I go next?

I'm glad I'm not the only one :) I had to print out a walk through just so I could figure out where I was supposed to go next. The game could have been action game of the year, if it had focused on the action...

Michael Sikora
Guardian Light Studios (http://www.guardianlightstudios.com)

In many open games the goal is "to explore". That is a very valid goal in itself, as long as exploring is fun and doesn't get repetitive. There was this excellent game "Moonfall" in the late eighties, early nineties. When all the games at the time featured "65536" galaxies (16 bit random seeds..) that were almost perfeclyt identical and dead boring to explore, Moonfall featured only a single small moon. But boy was it full of action. I once heard a quote by Jukka which sums it up quite well (paraphrased):

It is not how big you imagine the sandbox to be, it is the amount of sand that counts.

Another similar game with the same kind of conceptual intensity "Starglider 2".

It should go without saying that menus aren't fun. It *should* go without saying but I keep seeing products that bury their game under bloated, unwieldy menus. A certain Space Invaders clone I recently played required 4 (!) mouse clicks in order to start the game and another 4 to get back to the main menu once the game was over. All this pointless interface navigation doesn't add to the game and there were a number of user comments on the download site that echoed my frustration. The player should never be more than 2 mouse clicks away from a game.

O man, i really cant see the point of these discussions.

Is the question really 'So what exactly doesnt/does make a game fun' or 'what do you guys like/hate about games'

Does anybody here really expect to come out of this conversation with an answer for the original question? No way!!
If it was answerable, we would all be millionares.

I disagree & agree with just about every point put forward.
If one player hates a game becuase it takes 100 attempts to pass a level, some other hardcore loonie will love it because of the challange.
One player likes goals, another doesnt. One player likes to roam, another likes a set route.

There is NO answer to these types of question.

So I ask again, what 'exactly' are we expecting to get out of this topic?? ... It just seems another excuse for us each to proudly annouce what we like/dislike as individuals, rather than actually come up with any solid truths.

Why not just ask : 'what do YOU think makes games fun/not fun' ?

Like Bongpig said, there no answer to such question...!!!
Different people have different tastes, or, like the latins used to say "De gustibus non est disputandum" :D

FOR ME: I like RPG/Strategygames. I am used to play with complex interfaces. A simple interface often make me think the game is too easy or not too complex, like a rpg/strategy/simulation game should be.

I recently played Rise of Nations, and despite its complex interface, it provides a lot of hints and help during the game, making the learning process really easy.

IN GENERAL:There are a lot of answers, but none is "absolutely" true.

I like game with atmosphere - I don't care much about atmosphere

I like complex plot - I cannot stand reading all that dialogue text!

I like freedom of movement - I want clear goals

I like point'n'click interface - I prefer to control the game with keyboard/joystick

Final fantasy 7 combat scenes are cool! - Why they put all those annoying scenes in middle of the combat?

I like 3D games - I like 2D games

Maybe the only true answer is: make a game which CAN be liked from the most number of people out there. So you'll be able to sell more copies!

How? If I'd know, I won't tell you for sure... hehe ;)

I thought the theory of games was reasonably well understood?
That is, they are about creating a simplified system which the brain can practise learning, creating a kind of meditative state which is generally perceived as pleasant?

There's an infinite number of simple systems operating on different parts of the brain that can be combined to make things fun, and just as many ways of breaking them accidentally so they're not fun. The most important bit is a positive feedback loop where activating the system produces a feedback that reinforces the system.

Cas :)

Still disagree Jack! ;)

If we take the chicken route, and only stick with the game idea we know do well as MOST people like them, then wheres the inovation?

If we all re-hash the same tried and tested fun-ish ideas over and over, then wheres the inovation the 'indie' scene is supposed to be known for?

Blah sells, so make a blah clone. If we're not carfull, we end up losing all the FUN from actually making the game, in an attempt to make it FUN for the public to play.... which is also not acceptable.

Cas, asking 'what the brain enjoys' is much easier to answer (as you have) then the question of 'what exactly must we feed into the brain to produce these feelings of fun'

When we are having fun, nearly all of us are going through similar chemical madness in our heads .... but the tools/systems used to trigger these states still varies massively from person to person.

Some people manage to get into meditative states by cutting themselves with razors ( to make an extreme point! ).

The state we hope to achieve is the same from person to person ... its the system we use that can be so different.

Damn it ... why am i still posting!!?? ... this topic sucks!! ;)

If we take the chicken route, and only stick with the game idea we know do well as MOST people like them, then wheres the inovation?

Yes I agree!

I was answering from a "make a living or make money" point of view.

Of course the best way would be to innovate: but it is really hard and can be risky. So at the beginning would be better to stock up some cash, then invest in something different.

My first game won't be much innovative, but with the next ones I'll try to...!

You'll never make a philosopher, Bongy... take another few tokes and have another think about it all :)

Cas :)

Most of these thoughts will be from console RPG's. What ruins games most for me is when it does not respect my time. Excessive random battles, long cut-scenes that can't be skipped, situations that require pointless leveling up to beat a boss. A recent example for me is Arc the Lad 4. A lot of fun but now I'm at the final boss. From the last save point to the boss takes so long that each try is about 30-60 minutes. It looks like I need to level up a bit then try a few more times to finally win. Sorry, I'm not going to waste the time. Though as BongPig says, players are different, some people enjoy the mind-numbing process of level 99ing their characters. I guess to boil it down what's not fun is FILLER material. Metal Gear Solid is very short - but there is no filler material. Most games have extra time wasters just to make the game longer such as fetch the foozle in rpg's, generic uninspired filler levels in fps's.

Jack

Cas, I took your advice..... now im even more confused! :confused:

BongPig: I tried to keep my response to this thread "generally useful". Dunno if you agree with my assessment in that post, but I agree with your earlier post: Personal likes and dislikes are always going to be highly specific, and so don't provide much of value in the general sense.

There hasn't been a lot of real "critiquing" applied to computer games. Most reviews are simple subjective essays describing what the reviewer liked and disliked in 500 words or less. Most movie, music, and book reviews follow the same pattern. People like to pontificate and opine. Such is life.

The way to provide a meaningful critique is to go beyond what you liked or disliked, and discover *why* you liked it or disliked it, and then seeing if that is a general principle, or just a specific instance. And even then, you can't stop with the first "why" you come up with. You have to think it through and see if there is another reason lurking behind the first.

Something we should all do more often, I think: Know why we like what we like instead of just accepting it at face value.

-David