This week’s lecture was by Nigel Kershaw. Nigel is a game designer who is currently working on Broken Sword series for mobile platforms. He has great experience in an industry he has worked in for 25 years, working on numerous games. The main subject of this week’s talk was about what a game designer does. A job that is often misunderstood by people from outside of the games industry. Nigel went on to explain that a designers job is to create something that has interactive unlike movies which are a passive experience. Nigel believes that games hold more in common with activities such as football and card games due to their interactivity. A problem with this is that most things can be described as interactive so a game must have different traits; Participation, Structure, emotional involvement, engagement and flow. Most importantly a game designer must create something that is “FUN”. An article on brianwill.net entitled what is fun describes how “the definition of fun gets hung up on the distinction between fun and entertainment”. Brian believes that fun can be generated by different emotions and that plenty of passive experiences have been described as fun. Brian also believes that games push a multitude of different emotions which is what makes them more engaging than a passive experience. This directly contradicts what Nigel believes in that fun can be sourced from both passive and interactive mediums (Will 2012). Raph Koster has a similar theory of what fun is, in his book entitled ‘Theory of Fun’. He believes that fun is source of enjoyment. The source of enjoyment can range from physical stimuli, aesthetic appreciation or direct chemical manipulation. Raph Koster hits on a different point and digs deeper into the point of what is fun and why games are fun and how they become boring. He believes that fun arises from mastery and comprehension of games and the act of solving the game. What Raph is saying is that learning is what makes games fun. An example of this is noughts and crosses as a new player to the game it provides a challenge but an adult will pick up the pattern very quickly. Once the pattern is mastered the game will become boring and trivial as you are no longer learning and the brain is no longer being stimulated. (Raph, 2012) An article on Nils Blog takes a more direct approach and a clear guide on what games have to consist of to be called a game. The article also gives a list of traits a game must have to be fun. The author believes that for games to be called fun it must have goals that are worth the journey, the journey must not be frustrating; the journey needs to keep the players mind busy. It is touch on upon in the article that if a game is frustrating the player is not going to think that the journey is worth making (Nils Blog 2011).
In conclusion to this week’s talk is that there are many theory’s on what a game is and what a games has to do to be fun. A common theme is that most of these people believe that there are differences between other forms of media and games. They believe that a game has more depth than other mediums. ms of media and games. They believe that a game has more depth than other mediums. Will, B. (2012). “What is Fun” [online] Available at: http://brianwill.net/blog/2012/02/ [Accessed 02/02/14] Nils Blog. (2012). “What Games Are” [Online] Available at: http://nilsmmoblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/what-games-are.html [Accessed 02/02/14] Raph, K. (2012) “Theory of Fun”. Scottsdale: Paraglyth Press Inc. P40. Will, B. (2012). “What is Fun” [online] Available at: http://brianwill.net/blog/2012/02/ [Accessed 02/02/14]
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