For our next meeting the topic will be “What is Fun” presented by Michael C. Neel.  We will be back to normal this month and have an open discussion / lab time after the presentation.

Related news: Michael will also be giving a talk this Friday on Fundraising with Kickstarter.  The talk is not specific to video game Kickstarters, but Michael has been spending month watching video game projects on Kickstarter and will have some advice if there is interest.  If you are planning on attending, please RSVP here.

Sunday at the Technology Cooperative will be a Game Programming with Python session.  This is a introductory level group, no prior programing experience required.  The group will focus on basics and lead to running the games on a Raspberry PI.  Open to all, but if you know someone (of any age) that has been looking at getting started writing games this is the group for them.

What is Fun?

As game designers we spend a great deal of effort laying out levels, creating a consistent art style, and telling a story.  As game developers we focus on smooth gameplay, intuitive controls, and building tools.  We rely on play testing to tell us if the game is fun or not.  While play testing is essential, wouldn’t it be easier if we could design and develop fun?

Before we can create fun, we must understand what fun is.  What are the emotions experienced when the player has fun?  Why is something frustrating to one person fun to someone else?  Most importantly, can we as game designers and developers create fun on command?

This talk will look into the reasons we play games, and how we experience fun.  We will break down the components to fun and see how to use them in our game designs.  Finally, we will look at how players express fun, common complaints in games, and ways to address them.