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《游戏设计理论》书引:游戏是独立价值体系

发布时间:2011-08-10 23:37:08 Tags:,,,

作者:Raph Koster

至今为止,我一直在谈论形式上的游戏设计——抽象模拟。但我们极少在游戏中看到真正的抽象模拟。人们往往用一些虚构成分装饰游戏系统。设计师把能使玩家联想到现实世界的图画穿插到系统中。就以西洋棋为例——这是一款关于陷阱和军事活动的抽象棋盘游戏。游戏的舞台就是一个菱形网格的棋盘。当我们在玩西洋棋游戏时说“king me”,我们就为游戏增加了一种微妙的幻想氛围——似乎我们转眼回到了封建的中世纪。西洋棋子上通常带有一个王冠样的雕饰。

西洋棋与数学课上的应用题类似。虚构成分主要起到两个作用:一是它训练你透过现象看本质的能力(透过字面意思看到根本的数学问题),二是训练你识别潜伏着数学问题的现实情形。

游戏一般也更接近应用题。大多数游戏都不会完全脱离虚构成分。这与围棋或西洋棋类似——都具有一定程度的误导,但同时利用一些隐喻让玩家知晓游戏的进程走向。

当游戏的隐喻非常有趣时,玩家基本上会忽视其背后所指代的含义。西洋棋子都有独一无二的名称,使之与其他棋子相区别,但从数学上讲,名称根本就不重要。我们可以叫普通的棋子鸡仔,叫戴王冠的棋子狼头,游戏本身是不会因此发生任何改变的。

游戏正是通过向我们传达这样的寓意,促进我们对游戏的理解。因为游戏是关于教授根本的模式,所以可以训练玩家忽略包装模式的虚构成分。

游戏很大程度上是关于透过变化看潜在模式,因此游戏玩家非常擅长看透虚构成分(from gamasutra)

游戏很大程度上是关于透过变化看潜在模式,因此游戏玩家非常擅长看透虚构成分(from gamasutra)

1976年,一家名为Exidy的公司发行了历史上第一款电子游戏。这款游戏《Deathrace》的暴力主题引起了公众的关注,最终撤出市场。《Deathrace》的原型来自电影《Deathrace2000》。游戏的内容可以概括为“开车辗路人得分”。

从机制上说,《Deathrace》就是抓取在屏幕上的移动物品,这与其他游戏并没有什么区别。放到今天,你再看这款游戏,粗糙的像素化图形和小图标似的人物,肯定会让你倍感震惊。毕竟,数之不尽的游戏当中充斥着血腥狂欢的面画,这款老游戏与其他新兴游戏相比,看起来是如此奇特古朴。

我想,关于在媒体中添加暴力元素是否合宜的辩论不会结束。许多证据都表明,媒体对我们的行为确有影响。如果我们没有受到媒体的影响,我们也不会这么努力地把它当成教学工具了。但证据同样表明,媒体并不是心灵控制器(当然不是,否则我们会表现得像小学时看的童话书里的人一样了)。

然而,当玩家看待这个问题时,他们的眼神总是困惑迷茫。所以,他们为自己心爱的游戏辩护时,居然喊出了史上最弄巧成拙的战斗口号:“这只是个游戏!”

紧随而来的校园枪声和前老兵对第一人称射击游戏的“谋杀模拟器”控诉,这场辩论显然没有多少分量。不同意将游戏描述为对孩子有害的学者们往往召开学术大讨论。但大多数人只是把这些大讨论当成从象牙塔中脱离大众的空洞理论。

但是,游戏玩家的怀疑有非常充分的理由作支撑。

记着,游戏训练我们看清根本的数学模式。我可以把《Deathrace》描述为一个关于在二维运动场所里拣东西的游戏,这个事实证明,游戏的“外表”基本上与游戏的内容无关。随着你对游戏的了解更加深入,你更有可能抛开细枝末节,直达游戏的真正核心。这就好比音乐迷可以忽略不同拉丁音乐的歌词内容,根据旋律断定哪首歌是昆比亚舞曲,哪首是马利内舞曲,哪首是萨尔萨舞曲。

碾行人、杀人、打恐怖分子和吃豆子都只是游戏的背景设定,是游戏为了传授真正的核心模式而借用的方便隐喻。从核心机制上看,《Deathrace》并没有教你去开车碾行人,《吃豆人》也没有告诉你要吃豆子要怕幽灵。

当然,这也不能掩盖血腥的事实,《Deathrace》确实涉及把行人碾死、压成墓牌的内容。不可否认,这多少应受到谴责。对游戏来说,碾死人算不得太棒的背景或设定,但这也不是游戏的本质所在。

学会一分为二地看待问题,对理解游戏非常重要,稍后我还会继续谈这点。现在,我们可以说,在游戏中,人们最不理解的部分是形式上的抽象系统、数学的部分、最本质的部分。抨击游戏的其他方面很可能错失核心要点——游戏要提升档次,需要改进的是其本身的形式方面。

他们看到能量球(from gamasutra)

他们看到能量球(from gamasutra)

唉,可惜我们都不关注这一点。

移植故事是一种最普遍的游戏开发模式。但大多数电子游戏开发商取了故事(通常是很平庸的故事),丢了游戏关卡。因此,游戏过程就仿佛是玩家为了看到小说的下一页内容而去完成填字游戏。

总的来说,玩家不会因为故事而玩游戏。玩游戏是一种脑力训练的过程,填充游戏的剧情充其量只能是脑力训练的配菜。一方面,几乎不可能由真正的作家来操刀游戏剧情,游戏写手的文学素养通常也就在高中水平上下。

另一方面,因为游戏不外乎力量、控制和其他简单的东西,所以故事的内容基本上也就限定在这些方面。这意味着,故事就是一种力量幻想的产物——普遍认为这是相当幼稚的。

在大多数电子游戏中,剧情的目的和上文提到的西洋棋中的“king”一样——给游戏增加一点感性色彩,但游戏的核心是不变的。

记着,我有写作背景,所以游戏剧情的肤浅真让我恼火。剧情本应得到更好的待遇。

故事、场景和情节不过是大脑完成挑战后的小点心,有时候,这种小点心就是为了弥补游戏原本的平庸之处(from gamasutra)

故事、场景和情节不过是大脑完成挑战后的小点心,有时候,这种小点心就是为了弥补游戏原本的平庸之处(from gamasutra)

游戏不是故事,不过仍然值得做一下对比:

游戏倾向于经验性训练;故事属于间接性训练。

游戏擅长客体化;故事擅长移情共感。

游戏往往是关于数值化、归纳和分类;故事主要是关于模糊、深化和制造微妙差别。

游戏是外向型的——关于人们的行动;故事(优秀的故事)是内向型的——关于人们的情绪和想法。

无论是游戏还是故事,当二者品质优秀时,你可以重复地玩和看,达到温故知新的效果。我们会说我们已经精通某款游戏了,但是我们从来没不说充分掌握一个好故事。

故事是我们主要的训练工具,我想没有人会对此提出异议。但是,说玩游戏只是另一种训练工具,是远程第三方的课堂,有人就可能反对了。尽管游戏的诞生早于故事(游戏邦注:动物也会玩游戏,而写故事要有语言),故事所取得的艺术成就远高于游戏,应该也不会有很多人会站出来反对这个论点。

那么,故事就更优越了?我们经常说想做出一款让玩家哭的游戏。在交互式科幻小说冒电脑游戏《随落星球》中,机器人Floyd为你而牺牲自己。但玩家无法阻止悲剧的发生,所以这是不能攻克的挑战——这部分剧情是出现在过场动画里,根本不是游戏的一部分。所以说,游戏让玩家感动到泪崩其实是骗人的?

在与掌握相关的情绪方面,游戏表现更出众(虽然故事也可能做到)。但是,从游戏中引出感动效果可能不是正确的比较方向——一个更好的问题大概是,故事能像游戏那么有趣么?

故事本身就是强大的训练工具,但游戏不是故事(from gamasutra)

故事本身就是强大的训练工具,但游戏不是故事(from gamasutra)

当我们说到乐趣时,我们其实是指不同情绪的群集。出去吃饭有趣,坐过山车有趣,穿新衣有趣,赢乒乓球有趣,看到你讨厌的高中死对头摔进泥潭里也有趣。把这些事情都置于“有趣”的名义之下,可以说是这个词非常模糊用法。

不同的人对这种差异有不同的分类。游戏设计师Marc LeBlanc 曾定义8种类型的“乐趣”:感观愉快、假装、戏剧、阻碍、社会机构、发现、发现自我和表达、放弃。Paul Ekman是一个研究情绪和面部表情的学者,他曾发现几十种不同的情绪——看看吧,一种语言当中居然存在有这么多的含义。Nicole Lazzaro 对人们的游戏行为做了一番研究,她得出关于情绪表达的四个群集的结论:困难的乐趣、容易的乐趣、改变状态和人为因素。这四个群集分别代表玩家的四种面部表情。

我个人的分类和Lazzaro的很相似:

乐趣是从精神上掌握了某问题的行为。

审美不一定是乐趣,但肯定是令人享受的。

本能反应通常在性质上属物质性,且与问题的物质性掌握有关。

各种各样的社会地位演习是我们在群体中的个人形像和地位身份所固有的。

当我们在以上四种行为中取得成功时,我们会感觉良好,但把这些行为像“有趣”一样混合起来,只是使这个词意义全无。所以纵观全书,当我提到“有趣”,我都只指第一种:从精神上掌握问题。被掌握的问题通常是美学的、身体的或社会的,所以“有趣”可以出在任何的这三类背景中。那是因为所有这些都是大脑给予我们成功实践生存策略的反馈机制。

单纯的身体挑战不是“乐趣”。打破个人纪录时产生的胜利之感是乐趣。拉力跑可以让你产生极大的满足感,但你没有解决疑惑(没有脑力或精神消耗)。多亏你的队友,你赢得了一场势均力敌的足球赛,这种满足感肯定远大于前者。

与此类似,对自己来说,自发反应不有趣。你早就进化出这种本能了,所以大脑只奖励在精神挑战的前提下做出的自发反应。只是打打字,你是不会产生快感的,但是,当你一边思考一边打字或者玩打字游戏,你就觉得有趣了。

社交互动通常也很有趣。全人类都参与社会地位的不断演习是一种认知训练,因此本质上来说也算是游戏。人际互动被一种积极的情绪丛围绕。这些情绪丛几乎都是社会地位上升或下降的信号。最引人注目的是:

幸灾乐祸:看到对手失败而产生的沾沾自喜。这从根本上说是贬低。

骄傲:完成重大任务时流露出的优越感。这是向别人证明“我有价值”。

欣慰:当有人在你的指导下成功了,你产生的满足感。这是种族延续的反馈机制。

扬扬得意:向别人炫耀你所指导的人等产生的感觉。这也是向别人展示“我有价值”。

推荐行为:表示与社会地位有关的亲密信号。

支持他人:在人类社会中的一种非常重要的社交信号。

以上感觉大多不错,但不一定就是“有趣”。

我们也享受各种内在本能体验——通常是挑战自我(from gamasutra)

我们也享受各种内在本能体验——通常是挑战自我(from gamasutra)

审美是最有趣的乐趣形式。科幻小说家称之为“sensawunda”(奇迹的感觉)。这是一种敬畏、神秘和和谐。我叫它“惊喜”。与“乐趣”相同,审美与模式有关。不同点在于美学是识别模式,而不是学习新模式。

当我们识别出模式且感到惊奇,我们就产生了“惊喜”感。它是我们看到自由女神像时出现在《人猿星球》结局的时刻。它是神秘小说的难题水落石出的激动时光。它是看到蒙娜丽莎的微笑浮现与我们对她的猜想相联系的时候。它是欣赏美景时想到世界多和谐的瞬间。

为什么美丽的景色会让我们想到世界多和谐?因为这种想法迎合我们的希望,甚至超过你的希望。当某事物非常接近我们理想化的形像时,我们就觉得它是美丽的,还感到一点点小意外。完美组合的剧本,几条线索松散了;画着温馨农家小院的画,颜料剥落了;返回主调的音乐中间丢了全音、最后以半完成的第七小调收尾。它使我们不断追赶新模式。

美产生于我们的期望和现实之间的张力。它只能出现在极端有序的场合中。自然充满极端有序的东西。花床扩张表现了生长的规律。即使是被修剪成整齐的走道,这些花草还是遵循自然的生长规律。不断越过约束的边界。

不幸的是,惊喜不长久。就像在楼梯处邂逅美丽的姑娘,迷人的微笑总是转瞬即逝。否则这也就不是惊喜了——识别不是可以延伸的过程。

远离之前使你产生惊喜之感的事物,之后再次遇见,但时过境迁,惊喜不返。你能再次识别出那种惊喜罢了。但那不是我所谓的“乐趣”,而是其他东西——我们的大脑因为我们识别出来而奖励我们的。这是故事的尾声。故事本身就是学习的乐趣。

人们经常从不算挑战的事情中获得惊喜(from gamasutra)

人们经常从不算挑战的事情中获得惊喜(from gamasutra)

正如我所定义的,乐趣是当我们出于学习目的而学会某种模式时,大脑给予我们的反馈。想像一下,有只篮球队说:“今晚我们就去享受乐趣吧”;另一只队伍说:“我们就是冲着赢来的。”后者更接近比赛而不是练习。乐趣主要是关于练习和学习,不是征服。征服带给我们的是另一种感受,因为我们是冲着目的(如地位或求生)做事。

乐趣是环境的。为什么我们要参与活动的原因大有关系。学校不总是有趣的,因为我们太当它是一回事了——它不是练习,是现实,是成绩、是社会地位、是决定将来你是被人群簇拥包围还是寂寞地独坐在自助餐厅的厨房旁边。

当我们输掉比赛,我们经常说:“好吧,我只是图个乐子。”暗语是,我们并不在乎什么社会地位的损失。因为这只是一种练习形式,可能我们根本就没有全力以赴。

在攀登社会阶梯的过程中,我们得到积极的反馈。我们只是一群部落的野猴子,为了占领树顶,就用粪便互相攻击。但请注意这里的微妙之处:帮助他人(欣慰和扬扬得意)的同时是攀升。拓展知识(乐趣)是攀升。巩固我们的社交网络、建立合作共赢(推荐、配对和感知他人)的社区和家庭也是攀升。

就算只是猴子,那也太好了,至少和一般的动物相比。如果是鲨鱼,除了对吃有反应,还能有什么意义?显然是当猴子要好得多。

说到这里,我想到了一个好例子,就重要性来说,与拥有与四指对立生长的拇指最接近的进化优势恐怕就是享受乐趣了!要不是大脑里的那点化学反应,让我们得以享受学习新事物的乐趣,我们的世界大概就更像鲨鱼和蚂蚁了。

惊喜往往消失得飞快,真正的乐趣来自挑自我的极限(from gamasutra)

惊喜往往消失得飞快,真正的乐趣来自挑自我的极限(from gamasutra)

不少玩家喜欢引用这句:“正处在巅峰状态”。如果你想说得学术一点,你也许可以参考Csikszentmihalyi的“flow”概念(游戏邦注:指以积极、活跃的心情全身心投入到某事中,并从中获得自发的乐趣,甚至兴高采烈,可以简单地认为是一种精神上的最佳状态)。当你把注意力完全集中在某个任务上,你就进入这个状态了。当你处于完全掌控状态时,任何迎面而来的挑战你都应对自如。Lazzaro称之为“困难的乐趣”,在这种状态里,你可能遭受挫折也可能收获凯旋。

“最佳状态”并不时常发生,但当它发生时,那感觉真是太棒了。问题是,将挑战准确地与能力相匹配起来,非常非常地困难。一方面,剧烈运动的大脑可能在任何时候做出很突然的决定,同时把其他挑战都忽略了。另一方面,无论挑战表现出什么,玩家未必就据有相当的理解水平。

因为我们成功掌握了迎面而来的模式,所以大脑给予我们受挫的愉悦之情。但如果新模式的最佳状态减弱,那么我们不会受挫,我们会开始觉得无趣。如果新模式的最佳状态加速超过我们的解决能力,我们也不会受挫,因为我们不是在取得进步。

处于最佳状态时,玩家通常会说:“太有趣了。”还没到达最佳状态时,他们可能会说“有趣”(语气没那么强调了)。未处于最佳状态并不排斥乐趣——这只是说,你得到偶尔的少量乐趣,而不是脑内啡的稳定释放。事实上,“最佳状态”也有不“有趣”的时候,比如沉思会引起的相似脑波。

所以乐趣不是“最佳状态”。你可以在数之不尽的活动中找到洋溢,但那些活动都不是乐趣。大多数情况下,我们只把“最佳状态”与征服相关联,学习往往和“最佳状态”没有多少关系。

处于完美的平衡状态时,人们往往对此浑然不觉(from gamasutra)

处于完美的平衡状态时,人们往往对此浑然不觉(from gamasutra)

我再重申一下前面的内容:游戏不是故事。游戏与美和惊喜无关。游戏不是用排挤的手段谋取社会地位。游戏作为一种不可否认的价值存在着,依靠的是其固有的力量。乐趣与在无压力的环境中学习有关,而游戏恰恰与压力的环境挂钩。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Book Excerpt: ‘A Theory Of Game Design’ – What Games Aren’t

by Raph Koster

Until now, I’ve been discussing formal game design – abstract simulations. But we rarely see truly abstract simulations in games. People tend to dress up game systems with some fiction. Designers put artwork on them that is suggestive of some real world context. Take checkers for example – abstractly, it’s a board game about entrapment and forced action, played on a diamond-shaped grid. When we say “king me” in checkers, we’re adding a subtle bit of fiction to the game; suddenly it has acquired feudal overtones and a medieval context. Usually, the pieces have a crown embossed on them.

This is similar to word problems in math class. The fiction serves two purposes: it trains you to see past it to the underlying math problem, and it also trains you to recognize realworld situations where that math problem might be lurking.

Games in general tend to be like word problems. You won’t find many games that are pure unclothed abstractions. Most games have more in common with chess or checkers – they provide some level of misdirection. Usually there are metaphors for what is going on in the game.

While metaphors are fun to play with, players can basically ignore them. The name of the unique checker piece that has made it to the other side is basically irrelevant, mathematically speaking. We could call the regular pieces chickens and the crowned ones wolves and the game would not change one whit.

Games, by the very nature of what they teach, push toward this sort of understanding. Since they are about teaching underlying patterns, they train their players to ignore the fiction that wraps the patterns.

Games are largely about getting people to see past the variations and look instead at the underlying patterns. Because of this, gamers are very good at seeing past fiction.

Back in 1976, a company called Exidy scored a first in video game history: its game Deathrace was taken off the market because of public concerns about the game’s violent nature. Deathrace was loosely based on a movie called Deathrace 2000. The premise involved driving a car to run over pedestrians for points.

Mechanically, Deathrace was the same as any other game that involved catching objects moving around the screen. If you looked at this game today, however, with its crude pixilated graphics and its tiny iconic people, you wouldn’t be particularly shocked. After all, countless other gore-fests have come along that make the game look quaint.

I don’t think debates about the suitability of violence in the media will disappear. Much evidence shows that media have some effect on how we act. If media didn’t have an effect, we wouldn’t spend so much effort on using it as teaching tools. But evidence also shows that media aren’t mind-control devices (of course they aren’t, or else we’d all behave like the people we read about in the children’s stories we read in elementary school).

Gamers, however, have always viewed this issue with some perplexity. When they defend their beloved games, they use one of the most self-defeating rallying cries in history: “It’s only a game!”

In the wake of school shootings and ex-military people decrying first-person shooters as “murder simulators,” this argument doesn’t carry a lot of weight. Academics who disagree with the portrayal of games as damaging to children tend to muster learned arguments about privileged spaces and magic circles. Much of the public dismisses these arguments as coming from an ivory tower.

But there’s a very good reason why the gamers are incredulous.

This is why gamers are dismissive of the ethical implications of games – they don’t see “get a blowjob from a hooker, then run her over.”

Remember, games train us to see underlying mathematical patterns. The fact that I can describe Deathrace as being a game about picking up objects on a two-dimensional playing field is evidence that its “dressing” is largely irrelevant to what the game is about at its core. As you get more into a game, you’ll most likely cut to the chase and examine the true underpinnings of the game, just as a music aficionado can cut past the lyrical content of different types of Latin music and determine whether a given song is a cumbia or a marinera or a salsa.

Running over pedestrians, killing people, fighting terrorists, and eating dots while running from ghosts are all just stage settings, convenient metaphors for what a game is actually teaching. Deathrace does not teach you to run over pedestrians any more than Pac-Man teaches you to eat dots and be scared of ghosts.

None of this is to minimize the fact that Deathrace does involve running over pedestrians and squishing them into little tombstone icons. That’s there, for sure, and it’s kind of reprehensible. It’s not a great setting or staging for the game, but it’s also not what the game is really about.

Learning to see that division is important to our understanding of games, and I’ll touch on it at greater length later. For now, suffice it to say that the part of games that is least understood is the formal abstract system portion of it, the mathematical part of it, the chunky part of it. Attacks on other aspects of games are likely to miss the key point – at their core games need to develop this formal aspect of themselves in order to improve.

They see a power-up.

Alas, that isn’t what we tend to focus on.

The commonest route these days for developing games involves grafting a story onto them. But most video game developers take a (usually mediocre) story and put little game obstacles all through it. It’s as if we are requiring the player to solve a crossword puzzle in order to turn the page to get more of the novel.

By and large, people don’t play games because of the stories. The stories that wrap the games are usually side dishes for the brain. For one thing, it’s damn rare to see a game story written by an actual writer. As a result, they are usually around the high-school level of literary sophistication at best.

For another, since the games are generally about power, control, and those other primitive things, the stories tend to be so as well. This means they tend to be power fantasies. That’s generally considered to be a pretty juvenile sort of story.

The stories in most video games serve the same purpose as calling the über-checker a “king.” It adds interesting shading to the game but the game at its core is unchanged.

Remember – my background is as a writer, so this actually pisses me off. Story deserves better treatment than that.

Story, setting, and backplot in games are nothing more than an attempt to give a side dish to the brain while it completes its challenges – sometimes, the hope is that it makes up for an otherwise unremarkable game.

Games are not stories. It is interesting to make the comparison, though:

Games tend to be experiential teaching. Stories teach vicariously.

Games are good at objectification. Stories are good at empathy.

Games tend to quantize, reduce, and classify. Stories tend to blur, deepen, and make subtle distinctions.

Games are external – they are about people’s actions. Stories (good ones, anyway) are internal – they are about people’s emotions and thoughts.
In both cases, when they are good, you can come back to them repeatedly and keep learning something new. But we never speak of fully mastering a good story.

I don’t think anyone would quarrel with the notion that stories are one of our chief teaching tools. They might quarrel with the notion that play is the other and that mere lecturing runs a distant third. I also don’t think that many would quarrel with the notion that stories have achieved far greater artistic heights than games have, despite the fact that play probably predates story (after all, even animals play, whereas stories require some form of language).

Are stories superior? We often speak of wanting to make a game that makes players cry. The classic example is the text adventure game Planetfall, where Floyd the robot sacrifices himself for you. But it happens outside of player control, so it isn’t a ch啥allenge to overcome. It’s grafted on, not part of the game. What does it say about games that the peak emotional moment usually cited actually involves cheating?

Games do better at emotions that relate to mastery. Stories can get these too, however. Getting emotional effects out of games may be the wrong approach – perhaps a better question is whether stories can be fun in the way games can.

Stories are a powerful teaching tool in their own right, but games are not stories.

When we speak of enjoyment, we actually mean a constellation of different feelings. Having a nice dinner out can be fun. Riding a roller coaster can be fun. Trying on new clothes can be fun. Winning at table tennis can be fun. Watching your hated high school rival trip and fall in a puddle of mud can be fun. Lumping all of these under “fun” is a rather horribly vague use of the term.

Different people have classified this differently. Game designer Marc LeBlanc has defined eight types of fun: sense-pleasure, make-believe, drama, obstacle, social framework, discovery, self-discovery and expression, and surrender. Paul Ekman, a researcher on emotions and facial expressions, has identified literally dozens of different emotions – it’s interesting to see how many of them only exist in one language but not in others. Nicole Lazzaro did some studies watching people play games, and she arrived at four clusters of emotion represented by the facial expressions of the players: hard fun, easy fun, altered states, and the people factor.

My personal breakdown would look a lot like Lazzaro’s:

* Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally.

* Aesthetic appreciation isn’t always fun, but it’s certainly enjoyable.

* Visceral reactions are generally physical in nature and relate to physical mastery of a problem.

* Social status maneuvers of various sorts are intrinsic to our self-image and our standing in a community.

All of these things make us feel good when we’re successful at them, but lumping them all together as “fun” just renders the word meaningless. So throughout this book, when I have referred to “fun,” I’ve meant only the first one: mentally mastering problems. Often, the problems mastered are aesthetic, physical, or social, so fun can appear in any of those settings. That’s because all of these are feedback mechanisms the brain gives us for successfully exercising survival tactics.

Of course, learning patterns is not the only thing that is entertaining. Humans enjoy primate dominance games, for example. You could argue that jockeying for status is also a challenge, of course.

Physical challenges alone aren’t fun. The feeling of triumph when you break a personal record is. Endurance running can be immensely satisfying but you have not solved a puzzle. It is not the same high as when you win a well-fought game of soccer thanks to your teamwork.

Similarly, autonomic responses aren’t fun in and of themselves. You have them developed already, so the brain only rewards you for doing them in the context of a mental challenge. You don’t get a high from just typing, you get it from typing while pondering what to say, or from typing during a typing game.

Social interactions of all sorts are often enjoyable as well. The constant maneuvering for social status that all humans engage in is a cognitive exercise and therefore essentially a game. There is a constellation of positive emotions surrounding interpersonal interactions. Almost all of them are signals of either pushing someone else down, or pushing yourself up, on the social ladder. Some of the most notable include:

* Schadenfreude, the gloating feeling you get when a rival fails at something. This is, in essence, a put down.

* Fiero, the expression of triumph when you have achieved a significant task (pumping your fist, for example). This is a signal to others that you are valuable.

* Naches, the feeling you get when someone you mentor succeeds. This is a clear feedback mechanism for tribal continuance.

* Kvell, the emotion you feel when bragging about someone you mentor. This is also a signal that you are valuable.

* Grooming behaviors, a signal of intimacy often representing relative social status.

* Feeding other people, which is a very important social signal in human societies.

A lot of these feel good, but they aren’t necessarily “fun.”

We also enjoy visceral experiences of various sorts – these are often challenges to ourselves.

Aesthetic appreciation is the most interesting form of enjoyment. Science fiction writers call it “sensawunda.” It’s awe, it’s mystery, it’s harmony. I call it delight. Aesthetic appreciation, like fun, is about patterns. The difference is that aesthetics is about recognizing patterns, not learning new ones.

Delight strikes when we recognize patterns but are surprised by them. It’s the moment at the end of Planet of the Apes when we see the Statue of Liberty. It’s the thrill at the end of the mystery novel when everything falls into place. It’s looking at the Mona Lisa and seeing that smile hovering at the edge of known expressions and matching it to our hypothesis of what she’s thinking. It’s seeing a beautiful landscape and thinking all is right in the world.

Why does a beautiful landscape make us feel that way? Because it meets our expectations, and exceeds them. We find things beautiful when they are very close to our idealized image of what they should be but with an additional surprising wrinkle. A perfectly closed off plot, with just a couple of loose threads. A picture of a farmhouse, but the paint is peeling. Music that comes back to the tonic note and then drops a whole step further to end on an unresolved minor seventh. It sends us chasing off after new patterns.

Beauty is found in the tension between our expectation and the reality. It is only found in settings of extreme order. Nature is full of extremely ordered things. The flowerbed bursting its boundaries is expressing the order of growth, the order of how living things stretch beyond their boundaries, even as it is in tension with the order of the well-manicured walkway.

Delight, unfortunately, doesn’t last. It’s like the smile from a beautiful stranger in a stairwell – it’s fleeting. It cannot be otherwise – recognition is not an extended process.

You can regain delight by staying away from the object that caused it previously, then returning. You’ll get that recognition again. But it’s not quite what I would call fun. It’s something else – our brains rewarding us for having learned well. It is the epilogue to the story. The story itself is the fun of learning.

Last, people often take DELIGHT in things that are not challenges.

Fun, as I define it, is the feedback the brain gives us when we are absorbing patterns for learning purposes. Consider the basketball team that says, “We went out there to have fun tonight,” versus the one that says, “We went out there to win.” The latter team is approaching the game as no longer being practice. Fun is primarily about practicing and learning, not about exercising mastery. Exercising mastery will give us some other feeling, because we are doing it for a reason, such as status enhancement or survival.

The lesson here is that fun is contextual. The reasons why we are engaging in an activity matter a lot. School is not usually all that fun because we take it seriously – it’s not practice, it’s for real, and your grades and social standing and clothing determine whether you are in the in-crowd or whether you sit at the table close to the cafeteria kitchen.

It’s very telling that when we lose a competition, we often say, “Well, I was just doing it for fun.” The implication is that we are shrugging off the implicit loss of social status inherent in a loss. Since it was merely a form of practice, perhaps we didn’t put forth our best effort.

We get positive feedback for climbing the social ladder. We’re just tribal monkeys throwing feces at each other in order to own the top of the tree. But notice some of the subtleties there: climbing it while helping others (naches and kvell). Climbing it while pushing the boundaries of our knowledge (fun). Climbing it while strengthening our social networks, building communities and families that work together to improve everyone’s lot (grooming, pairing, and feeding others).

As monkeys go, that’s pretty darn good. In the general run of animals, it’s amazing. It’s a lot better than being a shark that only gets feedback for eating.

I think there’s a good case to be made that having fun is a key evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance. Without that little chemical twist in our brains that makes us enjoy learning new things, we might be more like the sharks and ants of the world.

But delight tends to wear thin very quickly. Real fun comes from challenges that are always at the margin of our ability.

So how does it feel? Well, the moment a lot of players like to cite is “being in the zone.” If you get academic about it, you might reference Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow.” This is the state you enter when you are experiencing absolute concentration on a task. When you’re in absolute control, the challenges that come at you are met precisely by your skills. Lazzaro called this “hard fun,” and it’s the state from which you are most likely to emerge feeling either frustration or triumph.

Flow doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it feels pretty darn wonderful. The problem is that precisely matching challenges to capability is incredibly hard. For one thing, the brain is churning away and might make a cognitive leap at any moment, rendering the rest of the challenge trivial. For another, whatever is presenting the challenges doesn’t necessarily have any sense of the level of understanding possessed by the player.

As we succeed in mastering patterns thrown at us, the brain gives us little jolts of pleasure. But if the flow of new patterns slows, then we won’t get the jolts and we’ll start to feel boredom. If the flow of new patterns increases beyond our ability to resolve them, we won’t get the jolts either because we’re not making progress.

When there’s flow, players usually say afterward, “That was a lot of fun.” When there isn’t flow, they might say “that was fun” somewhat less emphatically. The absence of flow doesn’t preclude fun – it just means that instead of a steady drip-drip-drip of endorphins, you’re getting occasional bits. And in fact, there can be flow that isn’t fun – meditation induces similar brain waves, for example.

So fun isn’t flow. You can find flow in countless activities, but they aren’t all fun. Most of the cases where we typically cite flow relate to exercising mastery, not learning.

To recap the preceding pages: Games aren’t stories. Games aren’t about beauty or delight. Games aren’t about jockeying for social status. They stand, in their own right, as something incredibly valuable. Fun is about learning in a context where there is no pressure, and that is why games matter.(source:gamasutra


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