Book SummaryA Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Raph Koster

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of A Theory of Fun for Game Design

Humans play a wide variety of games, from basketball and chess to video games and poker. Why are we so enthralled with these games, even when they don’t seem to have an impact on our lives outside the game? Perhaps it’s because they actually do. In A Theory of Fun for Game Design, originally published in 2004, veteran game designer Raph Koster suggests that games scratch an evolutionary itch in our brain: We get pleasure from learning new mental models in a low-stakes environment where it’s safe to play with ideas, roles, and possibilities.

Koster is known for his leading role in developing two popular “massively multiplayer online roleplaying games” (MMORPGs): Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. He’s also a founding member of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, a professional organization within the video game industry. In this guide, we’ll discuss Koster’s ideas about why games are fun, what games teach their players, and how to make a meaningful game.

What Are Games?

At the most basic level, Koster says that games are puzzles designed to teach your brain new patterns. When our brains think about things, it usually seems as though we’re generating new thoughts, when in fact, cognition relies heavily on memory. When you observe something, such as an email notification, a car turning into your lane, or a stranger approaching you with a flyer, your brain matches what you see with your past experiences, predicts what will happen next, and comes up with an appropriate response.

The purpose of this pattern-matching behavior is to conserve your brain’s energy and reach a course of action quickly. This was crucial for our ancestors, whose survival often depended on fast, efficient responses to situations. Therefore, your brain is evolutionarily programmed to enjoy learning patterns. This, Koster suggests, is where games come in—they shake up your brain’s pattern-matching and expand your cognitive toolbox.

Like art, games force you to see things in a new way. Games are clearly not real—you won’t make or lose money playing Monopoly—but they mirror reality by making use of patterns we encounter in the real world. Koster explains that they do so in ways that exclude the noise and chaos of real life, so the patterns of the game are more readily absorbed than those we encounter in messy, everyday interactions. In this way, games teach us things that carry over into the real world, like how to understand yourself, how to interpret other people’s actions, and how to use your imagination to solve problems.

Why Are Games Fun?

Let’s start with a basic definition. Koster writes that on a neurobiological level, “fun” is the boost of [restricted term] we get when we learn something or master a task. [restricted term] is a naturally occurring hormone often described as the “pleasure chemical.” It’s a neurotransmitter that motivates you to seek out pleasurable experiences.

Koster distinguishes “fun” from other types of enjoyment, such as physical pleasure, the aesthetic appreciation of beauty, or the pride you feel for an achievement or a win. Though these aren’t “fun” by his definition, they reinforce fun in a positive feedback loop.

Physical activity can be enjoyable on its own, but when it tips into mastery (like when you break your previous sprint record), your brain interprets it as fun.

Aesthetic enjoyment relies heavily on pattern recognition (like when you identify the melody of a song), so when you spot a pattern you particularly like, it sparks fun as well as appreciation in your brain.

Winning is fun because it signals our social status to others—something else our brains have been programmed to enjoy. According to signaling theory, many choices we make in our lives are unconsciously aimed at presenting our qualifications (as tribespeople and potential mates) to others. Emotionally, this presents itself as the joy you feel when you outperform a rival, when someone you mentor succeeds, or when you brag about something you accomplish. In games, this type of enjoyment makes the competitive aspects of playing fun.

Games Make Learning Fun

As previously stated, we’re evolutionarily programmed to enjoy learning, just like we enjoy food and sex, because those things improve our species’s chances of survival. So in the context of games, fun comes from learning, comprehension, and mastery. Babies instinctively play games like hide-the-object. They are learning patterns, such as how the physics of the world work (hence why they knock over cups gleefully).

Koster argues that games present an environment where you can learn without pressure from consequence and anxiety. In...

A Theory of Fun for Game Design Summary What Are Games?

Games involve thinking, and so a good place to start understanding games is to understand how we think.

On Cognition

When we think about things, it seems as though we’re generating novel thoughts all the time. In reality, cognition mostly uses your memory—your brain pattern-matches what you see with past experiences. It recognizes a situation as “just another one of those.” The purpose of this pattern-matching is to conserve energy. Your brain is evolutionarily programmed to enjoy learning patterns.

The author argues that the value of art is to shake up your brain’s pattern-matching. Art forces you to see things in a new way, rather than what you remember them to be. A poem about a tree forces you to reconsider the ruggedness of bark and whimsey of the leaf.

Noise is any pattern we don’t initially understand. You can, however, learn to find the pattern underneath the chaos. For example, bebop jazz sounds like noise, until you understand the underlying patterns in tempo and musical...

A Theory of Fun for Game Design Summary What Is Fun?

Most people play games to have fun. But what exactly is fun?

On a neurobiological level, fun is a boost of [restricted term] when we learn something or master a task. We are evolutionarily programmed to enjoy learning, just like we enjoy sex, because learning improved our chances of survival.

So why are games fun? Fun from games comes from learning, comprehension, and mastery.

Learning in games is different from learning in reality. Games present an environment where you can learn and have no pressure from consequence. As a result, games can be unpredictable without causing the player anxiety.

• In normal life, where there are real consequences, we like predictability. We like the legal system, pasteurized milk, and lightning rods.
• We like unpredictability only when it’s confined within an enclosure of predictability, like games on a tabletop or TV shows on a television.

Humans are natural learners. Babies instinctively play games like hide-the-object. They are learning patterns, such as how the physics of the world work (hence why they knock over cups gleefully).

But somewhere in adulthood, society starts to stigmatize games as frivolous. This is a...

A Theory of Fun for Game Design Summary What Games Actually Teach

So games are fun because they teach patterns. But what are these patterns? The author offers these:

• Calculation of odds, prediction of events
  • This applies to any game involving probability, such as games where you roll a dice, Monopoly, dominoes, and card games.
• Social power and status
  • Playing “house” with a group of kids is about jockeying for social status.
  • Games involving force projection and territory control, like chess or Starcraft, are about social status as well.
• Spacial relationships— examining the environment
  • In these games, you understand how the environment reacts to change, so that you can exercise power over it.
  • This is true of Super Mario, chess, and sports games.
• Memory—recall and manage complex chains of information
  • Counting cards in blackjack
• Visceral responses
  • This includes shooting games, where you aim, shoot, and move in response to what’s on screen
• Teamwork
  • This is true of games as wide-ranging from basketball to Counter-Strike.

These are universally helpful patterns to learn and have been helpful in evolutionary history. Consider how useful teamwork, memory, and...

Shortform Exercise: What Does Your Game Teach?

Think about what a game you’re developing, or your favorite game, teaches.

What is the core lesson that your game teaches? What skill are you better at that can apply to real life?

A Theory of Fun for Game Design Summary On Game Mechanics

Games are composed of building blocks, or “ludemes.” Examples of ludemes include:

• Preparation
  • Before facing a challenge, the game has you make choices that affect your odds of success.
  • Without this, a game relies on chance.
• Sense of space
  • The landscape of relationships between objects or players
• A solid core mechanic
  • This is the intrinsically interesting rule set or puzzle to solve. It often involves estimating probability, matching, balancing, or classifying.
  • Example: moving a piece in chess
• A range of challenges
  • This is content in the game, rather than the abstract rules of the game. The content operates within the rules and does not change the rules.
  • Example: enemies in a game that progressively get more difficult, but all behave according to the rules of the game
• A range of abilities
  • Many games reveal your abilities over time, until at the end you have many possible strategies to choose from.
  • Higher difficulty levels may require utilizing multiple abilities at once.
• Skill required in using the abilities
  • Bad execution by the player can cause failure in the challenge. ...

A Theory of Fun for Game Design Summary Different Games are Fun for Different People

People with different natural strengths will gravitate toward puzzles they can solve.

This is why some people prefer sports over Scrabble.

Matching by Intelligence Type

One model of how people vary in their capabilities is the different types of intelligences. These include:

• Linguistic
• Logical-mathematical
• Bodily-kinesthetic
• Spatial
• Musical
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal

People with strengths in a particular intelligence tend to enjoy games that cater to that intelligence.

Matching to Personality

People may play games that match their personalities. For example, social people play games that interact with others, such as Farmville. People who enjoy aggregating resources and building up abilities may enjoy role-playing games.

Differences Between Genders

Research shows that genders differ in their preferences and strengths, and this suggests they may also enjoy different games.

Note that the differences between genders are shown in population averages. Variations between individuals are greater than the variations between population—even if men show a stronger trait than women on average, there are plenty of women who show...

A Theory of Fun for Game Design Summary The Dressing on Games

We’ve talked so far about games in abstraction—what they teach, a game’s building blocks, and why they’re enjoyable.

Many games, however, are more than just abstract rules—there is more “window dressing” on them. Games may feature characters, a story, and images.

Games use these fictional metaphors to add variations to an underlying game. However, the metaphor is often ignored by players to focus on the underlying pattern.

• For example, checkers has a metaphor of royalty: there is a “king me” move, and the pieces have crowns.
• But games are largely about getting people to see past the superficial variations to understand the underlying patterns. Hence the author says, “gamers are good at seeing past fiction.”

The best test of a game’s fun is playing with no graphics, music, sound, or story. If this is fun, then all the dressing will amplify the fun. If it’s not fun, then no amount of dressing will make it fun.

This is why gamers disagree with criticism of games as teaching bad values or having gratuitous violence. In the game Grand Theft Auto, gamers don’t see the action as “run over a prostitute,” they see “get a powerup.”

But the author argues that the...