Developing a New Major

fun hard to define, no word in any other language, we have lots of words for humorous and enjoyable and playful but hard to sumup fun – “informality, enjoyment, and near-vulgarity that our word ‘fun’ connotes” (p. 71)

the key point – the reason for being – of games is at first look “play” – that’s w hat we do, right -w e play games – but play – like fun – isn’t a useful goal, we’re not sure what about game design leads to good play

instead he says the main point of any game is interactivity – using the computer makes interactivity much easier because computers are good at it – computers also do grahpics, aimation, paly sound and music – which add to games, but those things aren’t the main reason – the schwerpunkt – of games

interactivity is a conversation – each person/entity has to listen, think and consider what’s been heard, and respond andthen the other person does the same thing – back and forth

more interactivity is better than less – because it’s the definition of game and because that fully takes advantabge  of the cmputer

and we need to try out new kinds of interactivity than we have in the past – give the player more to say,more things the computer knows how to listen to

fast pasced action games aren’t really a lot of interaction – just fast paced interaction – a limited set of things they let hte player “say” – move up, down, left, right- interactivity comes from speed not the design

civilization is slow paced but lots more things for hte player to say, game has a complex set of algorithms, slow pace complemented by the rich design

highly interactive games but a strain on the user – remember interactivity is a conversation – a back adn forth – so if player gets to do a lot, they have to keep track of a lot – “as we lose interactivity, we reduce the total quantity of decision -making that hte player must perform. this reduces his owrkload. it also reduces his ability to creatively influence the outcome of hte game. In other words, as we reduce the interactivity of hte game (its gameplay), the player’s degree of participation in teh outcome is diminished and he therefore becomes less involved in the outcome, which becomes more predetermined.” (p. 85)…”Diminishing the interactivity just makes the game less fun faster than it makes the game easier. What we gain in terms of reduced workload we more than make up for in terms of diminished fun.” (p. 87)

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Decision making, Game design, Gameplay, Interactivity