There’s been a few posts on the topic of fun around the blogosphere in the last few days, mainly over at Nils and O. I thought that I would add my own comments to this topic seeing as my pronouncements are of such weighty validity.
To me, fun boils down to spontaneity versus planning. I’m sure you’ve all had the experience where you bump into someone that you know on the street, you go to a bar for a drink, someone else joins you and before you know it you’re all having the time of your lives, ending with you vomiting into a dumpster at 3am. If you try and plan or engineer that same situation, by calling up the same people beforehand and steering all of you to the very same bar, it just won’t be the same. Even if you tell everyone that they are going to have a really good time, they won’t. At least, not as much as the spontaneous version.
The reason for this is that the spontaneous version is an adventure. You don’t know what’s going to happen next. So with the curiosity of what could eventuate, you stick around, go with the flow, and end up having an awesome time. That is until the dumpster incident. And because every single person there has their curiosity enabled, collectively you are all able to come up with an amazing time. It’s not enough for one person to be feeling this way; everyone needs to have the same adventurous urge.
Which is why the blatant use of game companies telling their customers that they WILL HAVE FUN NOW WHEN THEY DO THIS THING BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN, is absolutely doomed to failure. You might just possibly succeed once. But that will be it. If you place players on a railroad where they have no real chance to enable their own sense of curiosity and adventure as they see fit then you are merely giving them a bunch of flashy lights on a magical carpet ride over which they have no real fundamental control. They are a passenger.
Which is why many of us gravitated to MMOs’ in the first place. It was the opportunity to decide things for ourselves as opposed to playing on a scripted journey which had been the hallmark to date for any number of single player RPG video games. While early WoW was not a complete freedom-fest, it did manage to strike a nice balance between having to follow a certain path but being free to experiment within it. And just like bumping into someone in the street and going for a drink you could do the same thing in WoW and end up on an unplanned adventure that would lead you on a journey that was rich in its own type of rewards. Which is fun. Pressing the LFG button and waiting for your group to form and then going and running the dungeon is the same as calling up your friends and trying to have that same experience that you had in the bar again. It won’t work because it’s not as fun. You might still have some fun, but your curiosity won’t be enabled and you will find that one person will make an excuse and leave and the group will quickly dwindle as everyone cites their responsibilities that they must follow or they will be behind or in trouble or whatever. People tend not to make excuses when they are having fun, when their curiosity is enabled.
If a game designer of a single player RPG is focusing on fun then they are probably on the right track, because you only play those games once. If the designer of an MMO is focusing on fun then they have surely lost their way.
The Noisy Rogue 
August 26, 2011 at 9:35 am
I wouldn’t go so far to say the fun boils down to what you describe. But it certainly plays a role. Thanks for the post.
August 26, 2011 at 9:19 pm
I like this. I think you do a good job vocalizing some issues with narrowing experiences in online games in relation to fun. I’d have to agree with Nils in saying that I don’t think this makes up the entirety of what fun is though.
I like particularly the bar analogy. The spontaneous adventure is something you tell stories about, especially at future bar meetings. But it’s difficult to gear yourself entirely for those sorts of things. As you can tell, gamers are starting to expect LFG style systems these days. Anything else feels like a step backward. Almost seems like we are heading towards more anti-social systems in our games, rather than social.
August 27, 2011 at 12:51 am
Oh I completely agree that this is not the template for fun; that’s why I linked Nils and Osterus at the beginning, and their own takes on the matter. I just wanted to add something to the mix that I thought hadn’t been mentioned yet.
I think that players have been conditioned to expect LFG systems as par for the course. So hopefully someone with a brain will just have to condition them to expect something else.
August 28, 2011 at 5:04 am
Interesting. Made a crazy amount of sense, but I didnt understand your conclusion really. What were you trying to say? Maybe cos I am sh*tfaced reading during AV weekend waiting for my queue. Who knows? You think LFG is a bad Idea cos it takes the spontinatity out of doing random shit? The BG queues are similar Idea and I have to say I am having a whale of a time wandered about in the AV getting ganked and pwning people.
August 28, 2011 at 10:33 am
Hey shitfaced gerbil,
I don’t know if the LFG and battleground queues are a good comparison as you need minimum of 20 players for a BG from two different factions. That’s something that isn’t easy to pull together, although the Tarren Mill and Southshore battles in early years were pretty cool.
September 3, 2011 at 12:44 am
That is an interesting addition to the discussion. I truly think many of us have very different ways of using the term ‘fun’ which makes it a little tricky to follow each other’s thoughts at times. however, your posts adds another layer to what I’ve read lately and kinda echoes my own belief that developers must not try and define the fun for us – but rather give us room to define it for ourselves. for the same reason I do not exactly appreciate players telling each other what’s fun or not – although my personal views on this are rather clear (to me).
September 3, 2011 at 1:03 am
“… that developers must not try and define the fun for us – but rather give us room to define it for ourselves.”
Well put. There have been numerous instances in the past of players taking an aspect of a game that the developers hadn’t even considered was fun or entertaining and running with it in a completely new direction. This is an advantage to developers as essentially the players are paying to help make the game better. By pre-defining all aspects in the game of what is fun or entertaining, developers not only limit their players, they limit themselves.