What is fun?

[Easy E]

You guys are illustrating my point.  A designer can not design a universally fun game, because no one has the same idea of what fun is. 

Therefore, as a designer you should instead lean into your design goals.  FUN can never be a design goal.

[Elbows]

Hmmm, I'd argue against that point though.  Fun can absolutely be a design goal - if you're designing something for yourself (and perhaps like-minded friends).  Universally fun? I'd argue no.  A game "you find fun", absolutely.

If you have the same players...surely some of your games are simply more fun than others, yes?  I assume plenty of us here have PC games as well, and you surely find some are more enjoyable than others even if you're playing with the same group of people.

I'd argue that the players are not the sole source of fun - but they can band-aid a boring game.  I've played plenty of boring games with good friends...and while the social aspect is excellent, the actual enjoyment of the game is middling-to-poor...and it's only acceptable because of the people.

When I am with the same group of good friends and someone says "Hey, why don't we play X?" and it's met with a collection of groans...surely that game is less fun than the others?

[Easy E]

Of course! 

I also argue in the piece that you will build your design goals based on what your POV of FUN is. 

For example, I really like in game decision making.  Therefore, a game with a lot of meaningful decisions with consequences becomes a design goal.  The Design Goal is NOT make the game FUN, but something I think leads to FUN.

     

[Elbows]

I think it's also worth noting that we're talking as...relatively small-time game designers.  I design games as a hobby, with my interests first - and if people like it, they can buy it as well.  My goal is literally: have fun.  Profit (if any) is a distant secondary consideration.  I'm not writing historically accurate/authentic simulations.

I think a major corporation or money-making effort will be based on profit first --- and how do you generate profit?  Applying mechanics/mechanisms/components which "most" people find enjoyable, in the genre.

Fun, by defintion, is simply something that brings you joy.  As we can see in the thread here - everyone is different, but there are absolutely market leading trends (if we're assuming people buy a product because they enjoy it, generally).

[Belligerentparrot]

I've probably already spent my 2 pence in this thread, but

those gretchin exploded into my (death) star terminator squad from that Shock Attack Gun, nearly wiping them to a man,

sparked a couple of further thoughts.

First, Shokk Attak guns ruled. Some of the Ork randomness in the early 90s I found tediously annoying, but Shokk Attak guns were genuinely (for me) great fun. From a strictly rules point, we're just talking about a potentially effective weapon with a low chance of realising that potential. It was the fluff that made the rule fun, the ludicrous description of how the weapon worked and - especially, for me - the bloody outstanding Paul Bonner illustrations of all those cute eager little snots running into the gun. Yeah, those little cuties just took out your super-human warrior by shitting in his helmet!

Rules aren't of themselves fun. Fluff can make them fun, along with how players use them.

But I also wonder if we might draw a distinction between game rules and the particular rules governing a scenario. When it comes to designing scenarios, some conception of fun does seem much more of a design goal in itself.

[Jemima Fawr]

To crush your enemies.
See them run before you.
And hear the lamentations of their women.
That is fun.

[Harry Faversham]

What is fun?
Any game wot doesn't make yer brayn hurt!

 

[Daeothar]

Thinking about this topic sparked another thought just now:

We're talking about games here and as per definition, they should be fun!

Game
1. any form of play or way of playing; amusement; recreation; sport; frolic; play.
2. a. any specific contest, engagement, amusement, computer simulation, or sport involving physical or mental competition under specific rules, as football, chess, or war games

Source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com

So I'd like to argue that the argument that games are not designed to be fun in and of themselves is not correct. The type of game we're talking about here (miniature tabletop wargames) are first and foremost designed, distributed and sold to entertain and have fun; they're for our amusement.

When mentioning something more serious, sometimes also referred to as games, we're referring to (military) simulations, possibly on the tabletop. Those are not first and foremost for entertainment purposes, but to simulate conflict in order to learn from them in the context of (military) education.

'Our' games can be used that way (and no doubt have been), but their true purpose is to entertain. In other words: to have fun with them.

So tabletop miniature games are inherently intended to be fun. However, no matter the intention, if one or more of the participants is behaving in such a way that it stops being fun, the game has lost its original purpose.

What causes a game to be less or no fun is as subjective as what makes a game fun: personal preference and experience mostly, but there are of course many more reasons.

As has been posed multiple times here, games are created with a certain idea of how it should play and be enjoyable for the players. However, there are as many opinions about what makes a fun game as there are people playing.

Which is why it's great that there are so many games out there, and there should be something out there for everyone. Just don't take playing a wargame too seriously, or you'll squeeze all the fun out of it.

+++

Slightly off tangent maybe, but one thing that has always made me chuckle is an RPG boxed set I have (think D&D 1st ed caliber) that proudly states on the box: 'Professional Edition'. And I've always wondered how playing a pen and paper roleplaying game could actually be a career choice

[ithoriel]

Slightly off tangent maybe, but one thing that has always made me chuckle is an RPG boxed set I have (think D&D 1st ed caliber) that proudly states on the box: 'Professional Edition'. And I've always wondered how playing a pen and paper roleplaying game could actually be a career choice

These days? Stream your games through things like Twitch.tv. There are lots of weirder things being streamed IMHO!

[Daeothar]

These days? Stream your games through things like Twitch.tv. There are lots of weirder things being streamed IMHO!

Trudat, but I've had this box since the eighties, so the question was a relevant one for the first couple of decades at least 

[Belligerentparrot]

Maybe they meant that this was the first release the designers thought would make them enough to make games full time? "We're professionals now, this is the professional edition". 

[Elbows]

Damn, I need to start releasing "Professional" editions 

[Easy E]

I think the highest I could achieve is Pro-Am Edition.   

[Elbows]

"Grassroots" perhaps?  I mean, if we go by the "Pro-Painted" garbage we see on eBay...we're all professionals by comparison.

[DaveCrow]

What is fun?  Depends a bit on my mood I guess.

I used to play a lot of Skaven in WHFB. I lost. A *LOT*! But I had a lot of fun with them. I did things like field a huge, 100 models strong maybe unit of Skaven slaves that I would fling into the teeth of Dwarfish artillery batteries secure in the knowledge that even though my lowly rats were unlikely to score a single kill, it was mathematically impossible to inflict enough casualties on them to force a break test before the end of the last turn. The Skaven wonder weapons that were usually more of a threat to me than to my oponent. Using sacrificial Doom-wheels to draw his heavy hitters away from the troops I expected to do the actual fighting. For me the Skaven epitomized the advice to "choose an army you'll have fun playing with, even when you lose."

I play a lot of skirmish games, historical and not. For me much of the fun comes from Hollywood Action Movie effects on the tabletop. They may be nominally historical, but I am not a button counter.

I have dived deep down the research rabbit hole. I researched every thing I could find on Late Bronze Age warfare and history for a Trojan War game and discovered that a lot Ancients rules really don't model it well.  I settled on "Homeric Hack" which gave a great feel for battle as described by Homer blended with what historical research seemed to show.

May Sudan British wear red coats, because don't Colonial British wear red coats? Just watch the movies.  I even painted a unit of Post Office Rifles.  I know what proper Sudan uniforms look like, and that the PO Rifles never really saw combat.  I don't care, red coats are more fun for me.

I still cringe at the Vikings vs Samurai matchups of tournament Ancients.