Re: [pygame] What is fun? WAS The Giant - 'cool project I'm working on now' - thread.

["Patrick Mullen" <saluk64007@xxxxxxxxx>]

Even extremely repetitive games can be fun, so that's not certainly
the best measure of fun, although I think in general, more variety is
better.  But many games arrive at their variety simply because they're
simplistic design allows for it.  Puzzle games and online fps are some
examples.  When it comes down to it, most fps is simply lining up a
target in the center of the screen and pressing the fire button.  Most
games are more complex than this these days, but I still go back and
play doom every once in a while, where it's NOT more complicated than
this - and what do you know, after all these years, it's still fun.
Even replaying the same levels over again.  But I'll tell you, I'll
bet no runthrough of a level goes exactly the same way twice - even
moreso when playing against other players.  So the variety comes not
because new gameplay is added, but the gameplay itself can vary, and
quite widely too.

This is where many rpg or adventure games fail also.  They may have
really great story, or leveling up might be fun, but if you play
through it again it is generally so rigid you get pretty much the same
experience.  And if you talk about your experience with someone else,
one person may know a better strategy for tackling a boss, or have a
higher level party, or solved one puzzle much faster or earlier in the
game than another player; but on the whole these two experiences are
nearly the same.  More open rpgs like fallout don't have this problem.

Then again, it can still be a lot of fun to follow along a great story
at your own pace, and feel like you are in control of it.  So you
can't judge fun by this metric either.  As far as story goes, I think
that the more freedom you give the player, the less story really
matters, and the more restricted the gameplay is, the more story
matters.  I play a lot of adventure games, but if the story stinks I
will turn it off.  If the puzzles really challenge me in a good way, I
may perservere, but I would not consider it a good game.  Whereas, if
I play, say, Call of Duty 4, I could care less why this group of
people are the bad guys, just tell me who is bad and let me kill them.

Different sorts of games really have a different metric for what is
fun.  It really depends on what kind of response you are going for.
Game design is a medium for communication - if whatever feeling it was
you try to convey through a game gets across, then I would say it was
a success.  Hopefully, that message is fun and rewarding for people to
experience, but that's not the only criteria either.