Thoughts on fun...

For all ages

What is fun?

It's funny, most of my blog posts begin with a similar question and now I'm talking about something unique and relative to any person on the planet. Fun is not something that can necessarily be quantified or understood on the same level by everyone. What may be fun for one person might not necessarily be fun for someone else. With a plethora of definitions and explanations by psychologists and theorists of every shape and size, fun has a lot to do with every man, woman and child's personal emotions and attachment to a recreational activity or social interaction.

Enough with the formalities then, what about fun in terms of jokes or gags?

The joke's on you

You may have heard of the common phrase "Oh, I was just having a bit of fun is all!" The saying is synonymous with apologetic smiles and practical jokes ended on a bad note. So this brings up the idea that not all fun is relatable on every spectrum. Carefree and light-hearted people often take gags and jokes well, while others don't seem to have as much fun at another's expense. Here's something to keep in mind throughout this discussion, not everyone will perceive fun the way you or I do. People were made different and hence we all react the way we see fit and what comes naturally.

In today's world, it is common to turn on the TV and watch someone or the other "poking fun" at someone else. Television shows like MadTV and SNL are famous for such antics, often disgracing celebrities and politicians in the process of making people laugh for a living. The media is heavily populated with ideas of fun and entertainment to amuse the masses. So what about the fun in games? How does fun play into the design of games for entertainment? Is it necessary for games to sustain an element of fun? Who decides what is fun and what isn't? Let's take a closer look a fun in games. 

I'm board of games

For decades, the challenge of overcoming obstacles has been moving games forward and redefining fun for generations of people. Deciphering patterns, studying methods and figuring out brain-teasing puzzles has been the goal of board games and, in many cases, the winning conditions for any kind of fun in a game. I've always believed that fun comes out of being able to escape from reality and enter a world where the sky is your limit and your imagination is set to run free. When an obstacle is presented, tools are given to overcome it, so games must be built to help us problem solve. Overcoming mounting odds often increases dopamine levels in our brain, which we relate to the concept of having fun. Knowing that our reward is fun, we continue to push ourselves and try our best making challenges in board games our own way of having fun.

Nicole Lazzaro's 4 types of fun help define engagement within games and why human enjoy playing games on an individual and often social level. 

The four types of fun:

• Hard Fun: This fun is associated with challenges and the player's ability to master patterns and overcome obstacles for rewards of personal accomplishment. An Italian word, Fiero, is used in relation to hard fun. Fiero translates to pride in triumph over adversity. 

• Easy Fun: This type of fun focuses on the curiosity of players by introducing exploration, role playing and story-telling. It enhances a player's experience by taking him/her out of their regular lives and immersing them in rich new content that has yet to be discovered and unraveled. 

• Serious Fun: This fun is all about gaining valuable skills that may be applied to real life situations. Often the player feels a certain excitement from the thrill of learning practical skills.

• People Fun: The most interactive of the 4 types of fun, People Fun has to do with social activity between peers and team work when playing games. This type of fun is the reason friends hang out with one another and choose to spend time in a group of like-minded individuals. 

Therefore, the more you play, the more you learn and the more you gain in the long run. Children are encouraged to play at a young age to learn about the world, to explore, interact, be challenges, overcome their challenges and learn life lessons. This is a summary of what Mrs. Lazzaro was trying to explain through her description and classification of fun. 

Albert Einstein once said, "Play is the highest form of research." I believe that Einstein was trying to get at the fact that nothing is truly learned or understood until it is put into play in our lives. We learn when we have fun and we have fun by engaging our senses and stimulating our brains. For this reason, some games, often referred to as 'Infinite Games' are made and played with the purposeful intention to "keep playing" (James P. Carse).

Survival of the fittest

An interesting topic was brought up in discussion about what cavemen did to survive and how their activities, all these years later, are now considered to be fun in our eyes. The idea that the basic human primitive needs to acquire territory, hunt and gather, collect and supply, are still alive today in the games we play and in what we consider to be fun. So then maybe this concept of fun comes from a native need to survive. Maybe the challenge of learning, adapting and discovering has become a form of entertainment and perhaps the way we begin to see our daily activities as primitive in our understanding of survival. What I'm getting at here is that we have become so accustomed to having all we need within our reach that we have forgotten how our ancestors used to do it. This prospect of struggling to survive peaks our interest maybe even on a subconscious level. 

During the prehistoric age, men would fight for land, food and women. The survival of the fittest was a reality understood and realized by our ancestors. But are we so different today? A lot of us perceive fun to be conquering another on a playing field whether real or metaphoric. Competition is a major form of fun, even after all these years. Thinking about it makes me realize that perhaps our perception of what is fun hasn't really changed much from what our ancestors considered it to be. We learn patterns which we apply to our everyday lives on a subconscious level and we feed our curiosity through the prospect of exploration and education.

But if we've been given a pre-determined understanding of what fun really is, then how do we know we're having fun and how abstract can fun get?

 

Art Games

The purpose of an art game is to explore an idea or a concept in a unique and interesting manner. Every game is left up to the interpretation of the player and usually there are no rules except for those the player decides. So are art games fun?

Art games might not be considered by most as fun, but if they manage to provoke thought within an individual and maybe help them see more than simple frustrating gameplay then they have fulfilled their purpose. Sometimes, art games are created to express the creator's feelings or attitude towards certain concepts or institutions. Take 'The Marriage' by Rod Humble, for example, while bluntly open for interpretation, many people begin to see similarities within the gameplay and how the game elements react with one another. This could be dependent on an individual's marital status or even their  cultural background. Since fun is relative then, some might consider 'The Marriage' to be fun. There is a certain amusement that comes out of self-discovery and exploring ideas beyond the norm. The beauty of art and the interpretation that comes with it, may be considered by many to be 'Easy Fun' one step away from 'People Fun' which comes with exploring art in the form of an experience that may be shared with others. 

Conclusion

Fun comes in many shapes and forms and is different for every individual on Earth. What may make a game fun for one person, may make the same game challenging for another or frustrating for someone else. Some people enjoy the thrill of learning, while others find fun in interpretation and discovery. Whatever your definition of fun, at the end of the day it makes us who we are and helps us grow as we learn and apply ourselves in all aspects of our lives.