How do you create "Fun"?
So what makes a game "more fun" than another? Or what makes a game "fun" for one player or "boring" for another. What's "fun" all about anyway. And how can I make my own game more "fun?"

I got a wonderful experience in 1994 to really ponder those questions. I'd just graduated from college with a computer science degree from BYU, with a family of two-with-one-on-the-way. My wife, ever the ultra-supportive person in my wife, decided to let me shoot for my 'dream shot' for a job before settling with something to pay the bills. My dream job, of course, was to make video games for a living.

I had a few little game projects I'd tinkered with while in school, and I spent a bit of time in-between trying to get interviews with local game companies polishing them up and making them more resemble "complete" games. I'd had a 3D tank game with networking capability which absolutely SUCKED, but proved I could write code to rasterize polygons (in the days when all 3D had to be done in software - this was an era where DOOM 1 was the hot new thing) and do some kind of network coding. I had a dumb little fighting game I'd put together with art from a friend (who had included a Homer Simpson looking guy as one of the combatants). I had an early-early-prototype of a game that I probably shouldn't have shown that was a world domination type strategy game that bore more in common with the board game "Supremacy" than the popular computer game "Civilization" of the time.

And then I had this little action-adventure-arcade style game with a cyberpunk theme that kinda combined the action of the classic games "Shamus" and "Berzerk" with a sci-fi 'computer hacking' theme, a storyline, equipment upgrades, and a whole bunch more. It was the game I was most proud of. But it was still just a demo - there wasn't much finished. But it was playable enough that you could see where I was going with the thing.

I managed to score an interview at a local game development company, and had the chance to interview with the president of the company himself. I showed him my demos - embarassing by today's standards, or even by 1994's standards. The one he focused on was my cybperpunk action / adventure / whatever type game. I guess he saw some glimmer there. But only a glimmer. It was far from complete.

So he asked me if I would be willing to spend some more time on it and come back and talk to him for a second interview in a week. I answered, "Sure." After all, I was probably just gonna be working on the game during the week anyway. Well, that and playing some games, too. He said, "I want you to see what you can do in ONE WEEK to make the game 'fun'."

"Okay," I answered. "What are you looking for? More levels showing where I'm going, or more of the storyline, some of the other enemies and weapons I've got planned, or what?"

He shook his head. "I want to see what YOU come up with. You do what you can to make this game 'fun'."

Wow. I went home that afternoon in a daze. It sounded like the interview had gone well, but now I had a week to make my demo "fun." What would it take? What was "fun" anyway? I didn't know and hadn't really thought about it. I mean, sure, I "knew it when I saw it." But I'd not really ever thought in a deep sense as to the core of what made a game more fun or less fun than another. I wasn't sure what this game company president really wanted to see.

I ended up spending much of the afternoon playing games. I picked my favorite, most "fun" games. At the time, one of my favorite games (and my wife's favorite) was a classic from Epic Megagames called "Epic Pinball." It was simple and delightful. We owned the whole series (it was a shareware title) of pinball games. And it even had a "cyberpunk" style level, of a similar theme to my game (pictured). So I played, critiqued, and wondered.

I think I really 'studied' these games more than I ever had before. I pondered the nature of "fun." What were the common ingredients of "fun" games? And of what I learned, what could I then use to add to my little game to make it "fun" and win me the game development job with less than a week of development time?

I couldn't just sit and think the whole week - I had a lot of work to get done, but I was under pressure to get the RIGHT work done. What I didn't realize at the time was that this was the same exercise the professional game designers have to do all the time. It's not about designing the "dream" game, or making it the "coolest game ever." It's not about wish fulfillment or cramming every cool idea you can think of into your favorite game. It's about calculating the biggest "bang for the buck" with limited resources and correctly estimating what it will take to achieve it. It's about understanding risks and payoff, estimating the effort involved, and deciding on the plan of action to make the best game possible within your constraints.

I can't remember everything that went into my improved demo. I do know that it wasn't all game-play. Some of it was 'flash' to make it sexier (and thus more compelling to play). Some of it was improved rewards (such as storyline or graphics) for successful play. Some of it was adding more levels and AI, to show off the variety and new strategies and tricks th eplayer had to learn and master. And a lot was tightening up and polishing what I already had.

I assume the effort was a success. When I came in for the second interview, they made me an offer. The company president also said he didn't want my efforts to go to waste, and that had contacts with some second-tier shareware publishers (remember that term, "Shareware?") that would be interested in my game if I were to finish it.

I didn't actually end up taking him up on either effort. The following day I had an interview with another Utah videogame company - "SingleTrac" was its name, and it had some fresh funding from Sony and was ready to apply the considerable expertise of its key people in the field of 3D graphics to the videogame industry. They also offered me a job, based partly on the strength of my little game demos... including the game I'd spent the week "making fun."

I never finished the game, though I have had some temptation to re-write it for modern machines using all I know now to make it better than it had ever been. I found the demo lying on a 3 1/2" floppy disc the other day - still playable (using DOSBOX) and with complete (largely useless, now) source code. I played the game, and found myself really wondering WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN NEXT. I was sucked into the little demo in a small way, and for the life of me I can't recall everywhere I was eventually going to take the thing. But hey, I guess that's yet more evidence that I succeeded in some small little way on the quest to create fun.

So even though I never finished the game or even accepted the job offer that came from my efforts on it, it was a very valuable experience and a week well spent. I just went through a similar experience over the last couple of weeks, with enough free time for a change to really focus some effort on games in development and Rampant Games. I'm a bit more jaded now than I was twelve years ago, but it's still a great learning experience.

I still can't tell you definitively the complete recipe for creating fun, though. I can make some suggestions, and there are guys out there that I know who could provide much more educated and experienced information than I can. But sometimes it's not the knowledge itself, but the process of discovery that is so important.

Labels: Game Design, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:33 PM (Permalink)