Theory of Fun for Game Design

Faces may be the best example. How many times have you seen faces in wood grain, in the patterns in plaster walls, or in the smudges on the sidewalk? A surprisingly large part of the human brain is devoted to seeing faces — when we look at a person’s face, a huge amount of brainpower is expended in interpreting it. When we’re not looking at someone

The second level of the brain is really slow. It’s integrative, associative, and intuitive.

The brain is actively hiding the real world from us.

The brain doesn’t like to do more work than it has to. That’s why it chunks in the first place. That’s why we have the term “sensory overload,”* as an opposite to “sensory deprivation.”

Given that we’re basically hierarchical and strongly tribal primates,* it’s not surprising that so many of the basic lessons taught by our early childhood play are about power and status. Think about how important these lessons still are within society, regardless of your particular culture. Games almost always teach us tools for being the top monk

Fun is just another word for learning.* Games teach you how aspects of reality work, how to understand yourself, how to understand the actions of others, and how to imagine.

As we age, we think that things are more serious and that we must leave frivolous things behind.

It’s worth asking ourselves what skills are more commonly needed today. Games should be evolving towards teaching us those skills.

The world is full of systems that we can choose to approach as games, and by approaching them that way, we make them into games. Games are puzzles to solve, just like everything else we encounter in life. They are on the same order as learning to drive a car, play the mandolin,

Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun. In other words, with games, learning is the drug.*