Resolutions for 2022: To mix learning with fun

Here’s why and how…

Dhamelia & Dalvi’s (2021) paper presented at the ISAGA conference 2021 at Indore, India is a good beginning for my exploration in fun. They begin with the irrefutable statement that fun is a fundamental driver of games. Fun is a spontaneous product of random interactions and therefore, a social and contextual outcome. The process of fun restructures reality and presents it with unexpected new meaning that surprises the receiver.

They cite Fincham (2016) who explains fun as an emotional experience enjoyed more in the presence of others than when alone. Fun is a spontaneous reaction to contextual events and maybe, in defiance of social norms and conventions. The impact of fun grows with successive repetitions or re-enactments.

Fun is an emotion. Lazzaro’s (2003) player satisfaction model perceives the emotions of anger, frustration, curiosity, excitement and amusement as different kinds of fun. If you look deeper, you may see emotions in these states, i.e. as inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes.

Bateman’s (2014) player satisfaction models include players’ interactions in fun roles and areas and their need for entertainment from scenarios and other sources. The fun experiences emerge from their excitement, amusement and other emotions through engagement, combat and attention in the game.

Students of 11-12 years age like games that challenge them, amaze them with stories and fantastic scenarios and allow them to play freely without any adult or other supervision or prohibitions (Butler, 2016). They would certainly have been put off by serious games. Is it true that only adults, not children, like serious games? Should we also conclude that adults like serious games only because they lack fun? Do adults abhor fun? Without fun, will children avoid serious games?

In commercial game development, the goal of game design is to create processes that produce player satisfaction (Bateman, 2016) without any intent to generate learning. A player satisfaction model of traits has openness to imagination, endurance for frustration and confusion, and preferences for fear and time pressure. Uncertainty and mystery (indeterminate) are critical features that enhance the players’ interest in the game. Play is a mental (fluid, chaotic?) state as compared to the game which is a goal-driven (more precise?) activity. It has social, thrill and curiosity as general motives, functional motives such as victory, problem-solving, luck and acquisitions, and representative motives such as narratives, horror and agency – all ingredients of fun.

What kind of fun can be found on social media like Twitter and Instagram? How does the fun from Netflix differ from the one in Spotify or Audible? How do we assess the fun in reading Carry on Jeeves and Three Men in a Boat or watching Jungle Book or Sherlock Holmes? Where is the fun in fantasies like Rapunzel, Count Dracula and Superman? Between Jerry Lewis, Charlie Chaplin and The Three Stooges, which is more fun and why?

Fun has so many socio-cultural, emotional and semantic connotations that a simple theory and a generic definition of fun evade us. For example, how do we distinguish from similar expressions like comedy, humour, satisfaction, happiness and laughter? Does absurdity, incredulity, discovery and ridiculousness affect fun?

Can we embed serious games with fun? Should or shouldn’t we?

We need a quantum theory of fun as a simple construct of a small number of variables, some antecedents, some forces, and others, outputs. The simplest description of fun I know comes from Raph Koster (2013) as the product of mastery experiences, comprehension and solving puzzles (not merely problems) which, as everyone knows, produces learning.

We need a lot more fun in games than we have or use today.

Seriously.