charlequin said:
Did you mean games?
"Fun" is used as a technical term by Raph Koster in discussing how games produce engagement from the player, in his book
A Theory of Fun. Under that definition, an engaging game is
by definition fun; the fun is what produces the engagement. I think you could name basically any game that's ever been meaningfully praised and held up as a good game and it would be fun by this definition.
And again, if you mean "fun" in the superficial sense, your question is already answered because there are already many games that offer a subtle experience that isn't "summer popcorn movie fun" but which is engaging, entertaining, and possibly even a little bit enlightening. Either way, the answer is obvious: we'll never be "ready" for games that aren't fun in the first sense, and we already have games that aren't "fun" in the second.
That's why "fun" is a terrible choice, and why you need to figure out a better word if you want to still have this conversation. But then, your OP expresses itself terribly, which is why so few people in this thread are respecting your position: you've failed to use precise language to explicate your position, and as a result you don't look like you have anything useful to say.
Interesting post, it's quite useful to understand all the meanings given to the word
fun in the english language, that is not my mother language, but i would really like to learn it.
The best translation of
fun for me, as an italian, could be "
divertente".
Koster gives us an important insight on the complexity of the concept of fun, a complexity we should all be able to comprehend, but i would like to throw some meat into the discussion.Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
1) Thinking that a popular, common way of using a the term, doesn't exist or is superficial while compared to a more complex definition and so should be rejected, is a common clichè.
It is quite common in social sciences (Anthropology, Oral History, etc) to understand that a word has its meaning in the way it's used by everyone too, and one should not diss it as superficial but rather try understand it, always.
For example,
Fun nowadays is clearly commonly used with just a meaning of what one could describe as a light entertaining enjoyement, and rejecting this notion leaves outside of its meaning an historical, cultural dimension that can't be left out.
To imply that a popular usage is superficial is naive, because the point is that one should understand the meaning rather then criticize the way it was used - expecially when we're in a videogames discussion forum, not an aula magna.
More about this later in the post.
2)A way to develope this discussion could be making this crosscultural reference: Our word,
divertire, comes from the latin
divertere,
diversus - means "to take another direction", " to drive something in another direction". As a subsequent figure, it implies a distraction, and it was commonly used since to describe something providing distraction from something painful, stressful and\or from molesting thoughts.
There is, historically, a path that sees this term describing a way of being, a way of feeling, that to an extent could be called as a meaningful engagement between two relating parts and how your state is getting changed by this relationship, but actually
divertente still earns it's own specific territory by creating a meaning opposed to other state of being that could be described the same way (or like you said, "engaging, entertaining, and possibly even a little bit enlightening").For example, it's when used in contrast to something painful.
And when i suffered from something painful, i was still engagend in a meaningful way, but again, it was not entertaining or distracting from something painful, quite the opposite, i was dragged in by something painful.
Saying that fun is what produces the engagement is restrictive on the complexity of the experience. It's the complex amount of feelings that let you kwow that the experience is worth, not all enjoyable, is what produces engagement - that the changes that happen in you are still a priority that you constantly accept and prolong instead of separating yourself from the cause of them. Are we still sure that fun, even with Koster definition, is appropriate?
We're talking about kids crying out loud for days cause their Tamagotchi died.
But then again, probably Koster define Fun in that way because videogames, for him, are, first and last,
games.
IT IS acceptable then to use the word fun just with a meaning only of being an extremely light enjoyement and that's why, in Koster's book, Will Wright uses it this way:
Theory and Fun in such close proximity instinctively makes me a bit uncomfortable. Theories are dry and academic things, found in thick books at the back of the library, whereas fun is light, energetic, playful and well fun.
Actually Will Wright is one of the great designers that even clearly demonstrated how the range of feelings that a videogame can let you experience goest beyond enjoyement: they can provide unique feelings like, for example, the sense of guilt.
