Bungie gave an interesting take to this in regards to Halo. They called it “primal games”. Games like tag, hide and seek,…that have existed since forever and is ingrained in our subconscious. Which is probably why their shooter feels familar, it’s literally just tag and hide and seek.
I played Nosferatu as my very first run knowing it would be harder but also because I knew it would force stealth, and I love stealth games. It definitely caused some great moments.
I use your videos as mental reset after work, your voice and the way you explain everything are very calming for me. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, as always!
My definition of fun when asked: "an experience you remember fondly and are eager to repeat." You're right Tim, it can't be defined specifically, only felt on an individual level.
I love when a developer allows for free form "create your own fun" but I also love when the fun is sign posted. Im by no means a unique snowflake but I love so many different types of games specifically for the different types of fun they provide. I love a Tim Cain game for it allowing me to figure out a problem 7 different ways, but i also enjoy power fisting a brotherhood of steel paladin off the mass fusion building in Fallout 4. The most fun ive ever had was playing Overcooked with my wife desperately trying to complete orders for a 3 star rating. I was cry laughing while she was panicking trying to chop tomatoes while the stovetop was on fire. But I want to Thank you Tim for sharing your particular brand of fun with us, one could argue we wouldn't have elements of the immersive sim genre without your pioneering efforts. 😄
For me fun is when I'm so engrossed in the game that I lose track of time. I look up and it's 4 or 5 hours later and it felt like only 30 minutes had passed.
I never understood people who think singleplayer games need to be balanced. It's objectively really damaging to play a low intelligence character in Fallout, but it's also one of the most praised aspects of the game, and something fans will claim everyone should try at least once. It's far more important to make sure your "bad" character builds are still worth playing than to make sure everything is equally good.
Balance should be used in a singleplayer to make it more fun. Going overboard on balance can detract from fun. For example all weapons deal the same dps. Enemies level with you to the letter so you never get to feel powerful. But at the same time having to little balance will detract from the fun. For example you get a spell that insta kills anything and has little to no limits in use. As soon as the player gets the spell some players will be bored etc.
@@fredrik3880 The instant death spell in Arcanum is fun. Id also point out not all fun is combat, some people want an easy option for combat so they can focus on the fun in the rest of the game.
Balanced doesn't mean everything is equally good but it is also about meaning. The last part you said is what i call a part of balancing, that you make everything worthwhile in a way. Arcanum is a good example, almost 3/4 of the guns are useless because you get better guns way earlier and way cheaper. There are so many cool looking guns that are trash be cause their stat are not balanced. You could get a fine Revolver early in the game before Tarant and it is already one of the best guns in the game. Also many weapon melee weapon are totally useless because you can create balanced sword in the first town and you are set for most of the game. Balancing is just not about equally good no matter your skill choice but about give items meaning. If you finish a quest to a get schematics for a cool machine gun in the late game then it should also shred. If it is not the case it is not balanced and also not fun.
@@fredrik3880 Absolutely, most games are still best when there's some challenge. But even then, there's still some kind of fun in turning your character into a living god for the last little bit of the game, like in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, a game that ends with giving the player an absurdly powerful weapon and letting you rip through the last mission as a sort of victory lap. Depends what the developers are going for, like with all design decisions, but I think as a general rule, you shouldn't focus much development time on balance. No reason to make every character build equally viable, every gun feel equally useful or make all enemies equally challenging to fight. Fun should always be the #1 priority.
@@darq7000 To me, balancing means ensuring viability, when I say every build has to be worthwhile, that's more of a design question. You could make a build worthwhile by making it very powerful, which is a balancing thing, or you could make it viable by being a novel and different experience that makes subsequent playthroughs mechanically interesting even when you've learned all the mechanics of one build. Like playing a mage vs playing a thief in something like Oblivion. The thief is by far the strongest option, being able to take out most enemies in a single stealth critical or just walk right by the ones you don't need to fight. But a mage is still absolutely worth playing because of spell crafting and the more dynamic, decision based playstyle. Not at all balanced, but designed differently enough to where they don't need to be. That's what I mean when I say SP games don't need balancing.
As long as a game has a good story or branching quests, (like Fallout New Vegas) then i'm having fun. I don't care about bad graphics or gameplay, because you can usually fix those things, but you cannot fix a story or the writing.
The Loot Cave incident with Destiny 1 really shook my perspective on fun and the responsibility of designers to advocate for players. I knew players that quit Destiny after they patched out the Loot Cave bug, because "the game wasn't fun anymore." My mind was blown. The human brain is extremely susceptible to conditioning, Designers have to be really careful with what kind of in-game behaviors they incentivize through their mechanics. Fun =/= Addicting.
One of the reasons it's hard to define fun, is that there are two kinds. One is about being playful, improvising, with funny and/or surprising things happening. Another one more serious, and is about being in the zone, slowly mastering something or wrecking your brain with a problem which seems just outside of reach. I indeed consider both to be "fun", but I can tell that the feeling is not exactly the same. One is child-like-fun, the other is challenge-fun.
I love games that mix both like playing Halo 1,2,3 back in the day. You can go try hard or see who can get the silliest kills or most sticks or funny moves
Extremely subjective. Some people are entertained by anything that plays and/or looks well enough. Some look for that x factor in a game and when they find it they enjoy that game even if it has flaws or a slow pacing.
@@renaighI find Deus Ex Human Revolution or Mass Effect a lot more fun than the current RPG darling Cyberpunk. They don't have the fancy animations or flashy(by modern standards) set pieces, but I enjoyed talking to the characters on my ship in ME a lot more because I found the story a million times more interesting.
@@avatarname0008 yeah, as much as I enjoy Jensen, that game is disappointing, the story unfinished, and overall lacking ambition. Major step down from the OG. For all of 77s flaws it had a realized identity and was capable of sincerity.
@@cdubsb3831 it's got a solid hook and some interesting characters but alot of the story is fuzzy except for the initial hook and the ending cyberpunks I recall most of the main quest and a decent chunk of side content
It's not fun vs realism, it's that realism facilitates fun. The real world is deeper and allows more creativity than a video game that only offers one proscribed form of fun which may not suit the player's taste. The more realistic the game is, the more opportunities the players have to go off on their own and find something to amuse themselves with.
Realism in games is strictly unfun. Realism takes so much to actualize that by the time you have a "real" experience for your virtual game, it was all wasted effort. No one wants to play that game. Pick a different word. Realism is the wrong word for the concept(s) that people actually want in their game.
Pretty often, when developers (sincerely) say things along the lines of "we tried to make the game we've always wanted to play", there's a good amount of fun to be found in the game in question. Sometimes, in those cases, the execution is lacking for any possible reason. But you can still see the potential and the "love" put into the final product. And, to a degree, maybe with some conscious effort on your part, you can pretend not to see what's bad and have considerable amounts of fun yourself while playing. Are those the cases when a game problems become somewhat "charming", to a degree? Thanks for your videos!
Balance testing should be a division at any game company. Have your most high IQ gamers doing this. The challenge to the balance tester: its all about exploiting the system to see if you can break it and prove it's bad. If you can do that you often have the solution to nerf the class that can abuse the broken system. A lot of game companies that make fighting games often patch and patch their fighting games over time thanks to knowledge gained from high level tournaments in competitive play. Balance testing is important for multiplayer but not so much for single player games. In single player games majority are happy if they can just complete the main quest in the game. If they can't there is always difficulty sliders and other things you can do to pass through the bad balance. (it's why as much as I hate changing the difficulty if I encounter a difficulty spike; because it feels like I am cheating, I rely on it if I am not having fun and just want to progress a story)
@@UToobUsername01 I love when single player games have unbalanced and "broken" OP stuff. It can create a sort of choose your own difficulty (In the original Pokemon, choosing charmander as your starter was essentially the hard mode, squirtle normal mode, bulbasaur easy mode) and it can also lead to very fun and silly OP stuff like Morrowind's intelligence potions stacking and allowing you to create increasingly better intelligence potions
@@cleverman383Yes exploits are fun but if reviewers punish you for it then it can hurt your reputation. For single player I can feel like "I made the right choice in how to be overpowered" and feel like that is part of the game. Like choosing the best weapon in megaman to fight the right boss with it to kill them faster. (it's knowledge of the lore outside the intended game universe - like knowing the cave where the best monsters exist to farming experience points - it can be the reward for exploring a lot)
@@UToobUsername01 Here's an interesting quote from the lead developer of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom about no longer treating exploits as flaws when designing their games: "When you think about people... cheating is fun! [laughs] They like it! Finding that shortcut is enjoyable. People will look for an easy way to do something if they can avoid struggling. We want to make sure that is something that stayed in this game. When thinking of games in the past that we've worked on, where there was a puzzle to solve and only one answer, that's kind of the past way of developing games. Now, I'm happy that we've arrived at this method where we're giving people lots of options, and there are many answers to a single problem, and all of them can potentially be correct. I feel happy that we've arrived at this type of development style."
@@cleverman383For open ended games he is correct but some critics feel like linear experiences cause you to become a better or stronger person for enduring pain. I will give you one example that rings true for hardcore gamers: the very first big monster you fight in Monster Hunter Tri. It was a Great Jaggi. Many people may try it the first time and fail at it because the weapon they have is too weak to end its life quickly. But the struggle of trying to beat the time limit forces you to concentrate and focus hard on not missing it, making sure you have good sense of timing and studying its movement pattern so you can predict where it will go before it goes there. This shaves some precious seconds off the time it takes to beat it but when you finally do succeed at it you feel really good for accomplishing this task. Nintendo is correct we need more multiple solutions for single problems, ..but you cannot deny the critics of cheasy (cheap and easy) methods to win are right too. Yes two things can be true. The world is more complex than we like to think. If I am fighting a boss and let us say there is only 1 way to beat it because he has NO weaknesses, and you have to figure it out, then won't you feel joy when you finally do that? (as opposed to exploits?) In many RPGs the end of game boss is equivalent to fighting God himself. So you should fear the enemy enough that it causes you to try everything you can think of to win and only feel satisfied until you did it. If you make that end of game boss too easy the reviewers will say it was anti-climactic or something and feel like you made bad design choices. Thankfully we live in a time where you can have your cake and eat it. The "new game plus" modes in today's games could be considered the new "exploit" because you are essentially a demi-god amoung normal people returning to the world you were once a weak person in. In new game plus you are bad ass from the start and everyone around you is cannon fodder for entertainment. (it is a whole different game when you play the castlevania titles on the nintendo DS because it turns into a arcadey action game to speed run and not a RPG-grinding game where struggling to survive is part of the experience of being low stats and working your grey matter to beat things with limited resources and lifebar)
Fun is hard to define because it's a largely emotional experience, but one of my favorite quotes from a youtuber is, "nothing hits like guessing right in a children's game".
Thank you for the last couple of videos. You are going for the really hard stuff now 😁 Just like defining an RPG, I find fun particularly difficult to define and reason about. Every person seems to have their own definition of it (I mean look at the comments 😂) which is why I had a lot of trouble understanding when people state fun as a goal or property they want their game/design to have. Unfortunately unless you can define a metric that is measurable and not extremely subjective, designing for fun is, at least to me, a lost cause. Now you can define all sorts of metrics for other properties you might want your game to have (e.g. balance, difficulty etc) and measure those and based on those claim whether you are successful but using an ill-defined and often conflicting measure as a guideline... tough. Anyhow, I like how you sidestep that landmine with your definition though 😊 Have a great day Tim! Thanks again for the video!
The difficulty with balance discussions is that it tends to be "balance yes/no" as opposed to balance as *instrumental* goal. Balance between options are necessary for choices to be meaningful (if the choice is functional) - but that's an instrumental thing. Balance in the general sense of "all options should be equally good" is just obviously not a desirable goal in single player games if you want to have an interesting decision space!
I can understand why some devs want to force players to play in certain way but I also understand that devs need to trust players to find fun in their games. That's why in my games which features upgrade system, I don't code any balancer to balance the upgrades. If players want to be too strong, too weak or balanced against enemies, it's their choice.
I've heard a few different definitions, such as "mid-term, sustained happiness". I think it's cool how different perspectives on fun reflect their experience! I define fun as the intersection between happiness and engagement. Whether it's games, movies, sports, or books, if you're happy and engaged, you're almost certainly having some sort of fun.
I think this is a fair video. I love Fallout. Sometimes I like to play with mods that make it super hardcore survival. Maybe I make it a zombie apocalypse. Maybe one day I just use cheat terminal for infinite everything, god mode, invincible power armor and wreaking havoc on the wasteland. Sometimes I’m a moral character, other times I’m beyond evil. Fun changes moment to moment. Thats why having options is great.
I love when games offer options for everything (i know its harder to play test), but it gives me the option to experience the game how I live to have fun with games
I think a good definition of fun is "the realization of expectation". What that expectation is is obviously highly subjective, but the ability to think of something you want to do and then be able to actually make it happen is at the core of enjoying something. By comparison it's highly frustrating to try to do something only to discover that it's not possible to achieve. So when it comes to making videogames creating fun is all about nurturing an expectation in the player and then constructing a way to achieve it within the game. Look at something traditional like a basic combat system. You present the player with opponents that try to defeat them, creating the expectation that they will be able to conquer this challenge, and then give them skills and tools to help them achieve that expectation. Ofc that's very simplistic on its own, so many players won't find it very satisfying, but then you add a ton of layers on top like satisfying sounds and graphics, interesting combat dynamics etc etc and you end up creating this complex web of expectations that the player gets to realize and enjoy.
@@WhoIsJohnGalttSo in other words, a value is something that when you achieve makes you happy. now compare this with the original: _"Happiness is the state of consciousness that proceeds from the achievement of one’s values."_ can you see the inherent problem?
@@fixpontt no. A value is something that you’ve first identified as a positive to your life. THEN. After consciously knowing it and you achieve it. You feel happiness. If you climb Mount Everest and don’t first identify it as a value to do so. Would you feel happiness at the top of it? You can not have value without recognizing it as a value first
@0:58 That is great Tim. Sandbox zombie survival indie games like Project Zomboid allow to create your own gaming experience using mods. You could create an OP character for a speedrun. Besides, fun is such an universal concept, you can lump anything into the category. The ultra masochist gamers love games that are punishing and that is fun in their mind. There are people who whine about the slightest imbalance and call it "broken" because balance is fun to them. @4:16 That is even better, Tim, there are really people out there to whom the perceived intend of the lead developer is gospel and those "filthy" speedrunners just "cheat" their way to the end. 😆 That is like saying that olympic cyclist are cheaters because they don't run the distance. There are TAS speed runs, there are 0% completion speedruns, there are glitchless speedruns and who says that it doesn't take mad skillz to pull off extremely complicated glitch exploits to save a few seconds?
If you put your own words into universal formula it will sound like this, Fun = the amount of ways of interaction that the enities in the game give you. Combat, classes, skills, exploration, npcs interactions, ways of playthrough literaly anything can be weighted on the amount of freedom it gives to the player. In specific situations like combat you also optimize for specific metrics like adrenaline per second / reaction speed for example.
I think for non-competitive and non-puzzle games, the key is immersion. When you're playing a game, you aren't actually doing whatever it is that's happening on the screen but instead watching a screen and pressing buttons on a keyboard, controller or interacting with some other medium to make those things happen. The more the game can immerse you, the less aware you are of that fact. How do you keep players immersed? I think GabeN made a great point in this video ruclips.net/video/MGpFEv1-mAo/видео.html. The more conisistently and satisfyingly the game acknowledges and responds to your actions, the more immersed you'll be and fun you'll have. I think the recent success of Helldivers 2 has highlighted this. Most players didn't get invested because of a great narrative, grind or competition, but because of how fun it is to dive onto a planet and shoot things in the game, because of the feedback the game gives you. I think the Stanley Parable is another great example. It's gameplay is quite shallow, it's all about the writing, but if the player sees the opportunity to do something in that game, chances are they can do it and the game will acknowledge them if they do it and respond accordingly. I think that's why people ask for realism, even though realism isn't necessarily fun, because usually things that increas immersion can be thought of as realistic, e.g., NPCs getting upset if you steal from them, becoming friendlier if you help them, appropriately acknowledging whatever great feats you accomplished, not everyone instantly knowing where you are if one person spots you etc.
Even in single player games, it feels bad to "hold myself back" and play in a certain way to make the game more fun. It feels more natural and better if the game mechanics make the most fun way to play the most optimized way to play.
I feel the struggle to define fun. For me it goes beyond what mechanics are fun, but also on a philosophical level whether some of the things that we consider to be "fun" should actually be reclassified in some way. I feel like it's such an overloaded term. Fun can be something entertaining that brings friends together. Fun can be a word that is used to justify compulsion/addiction. Fun can be something you get a thrill out of but regret spending time on later, fun can be something you talk about and have fond memories of years later. And which one of these are "fun"? All of them? Some of them? Are there firm lines? Do the lines move based on an individual, or the situations that a person finds themselves in at the moment? As a fellow game developer, thinking about this too deeply can sometimes send me to a dark place, where I start to question whether various experiences in my life were ever actually "fun" at all, or whether it was something more similar to "compulsion with a dopamine hit." I feel like we need more words to describe the situations for which we currently use the word "fun," because some uses of "fun" are positive and some of them are downright depressing.
6:22 My biggest gripe with most quest markers is blocking option to the fast travel spots without finding a sweet spot. Death Stranding has a refreshing map / quest tracking. Fast track lists for active quests would make life easier.
I always separate game design from play design, the former is more formal and about structure and progression, but the latter is where the magic if fun happen
As a player, one reason why I like solo roguelikes is that they absolve the designer of having to balance the game perfectly. Even if some strategy is broken, you usually can't guarantee you'll get it every run so meta strategies aren't 100% reliable and that kind of makes everything work for me. Player's who only want to play 1 way can still win sometimes, and players who like to figure out builds may have a lot of systems to grok which is fun to me.
I Feel like an answer that says fun is what the game director intends is a little bit like, it puts the real answer somewhere else down the line. perhaps exploring all the different kinds of fun, that you can find, I especially like the topic of fun being at the intersection of simple rules' emergent fun'.I Think that, Fun is like the Divergence of Possibilities. And I Think that system mechanics stack already existing mechanics that diverge possibilities, and stack new divergence ontop of existing divergence. A simple example is how in Fallout, The combat unfolds in an unpredictable way, which creates divergence of possibilities of an encounter. And the system mechanics of having multiple maps and areas create a second stacked layer of fun.
Something that has been on my mind again recently is that I've heard some people equate fun to the flow state. To a degree it makes sense, given to enter flow you need to be meeting a challenge just outside of your current skill set, with immediate feedback. A lot of games hit those marks. But there are other times where I would say I am having fun, but am completely aware that I am currently in the activity. Maybe not fun per se, but an experience I really enjoy is getting chills while listening to music. I guess fun's relationship with joy might have some nuance?
my partner is always complaining about the absence of "cheat codes" in modern games because having cheat codes is fun. also, about single-player balance, a great example is from software games. those games are seen as being super difficult and challenging but astute critics know that you can make the game significantly easier based on your character build; in elden ring, this is most apparent where the game highlights the use of summonable followers that attack for you. and so you have this environment where you can choose, say, a ranged magic user and you grind up to max level to blast through all the bosses. or you can go a super tryhard route and try to beat the game with just a greatsword and your own reflexes. to me, this sort of creativity is the bread and butter of games, and it's hard imo to achieve this level of player expression while also making sure things are "balanced"
Hi Tim, I would love an episode where you dissect the term ‘Action RPG’. It seems to me like there are a lot of games today that label themselves under this genre but it isn’t clearly defined, as an action RPG seems like it can be any action adventure game that has a skill tree or what some people dub ‘RPG elements’. Games that call themselves action RPGs like the Witcher or Cyberpunk I think are missing one of the key elements that makes an RPG, meaningful choice and consequences. Just an idea for a future video, really been enjoying your content!
Any default option a dev makes is the dev saying 'this is what I think is fun' or what they think the majority of players will find fun. Players who say they need a quest marker are not reasonable, unless its in a singleplayer game AND an option AND as long as its off by default AND not designed around having quest markers. Those players just dont find real exploring and adventuring fun, simple as that. There are games out there that have quest markers go play those. We need more games that werent designed around the handicaps of maps, quest markers, quest logs, etc. Agreed on the last minute about fun. Too hard to define completely. Hella good stab at fun.
While at DigiPen, we had a game design class where we had to write a paper on what is fun in a game. One thing I recall happening is if a student wrote down features of the game they were docked points. As I recall, the teacher described that you can have two games with those same features, and one may be fun and the other is not. At times it could seem a futile task to write what is fun, but I think it is because it emotional and transient, and writing it from that angle rather than a definitive scientific angle was the point of the exercise in writing the paper. If I recall correctly I wrote my paper on the GBA version of Eye of the Beholder, which I got a B on.
I think there can be many different ways to have fun, and might even go as far as to suggest some people are drawn more to certain types of fun than others, for whatever reasons. I feel it's why there are so many different genres and subgenres to begin with. Some say they like balancing, some say they don't, I really have mixed feelings on it because it really depends on the specific game, what it promises and what I happen to be looking for. Kirby games? Generally easygoing and very relaxing for when I just want to turn my brain off, so it's not a huge deal if there's some OP feature usually. but then again, forgotten Land, the latest game in the series, actually challenged me a bit, especially towards the end of what is often considered "post-game content" these days, and still managed to have a blast playing it. That's another way in which to do difficulty, in saving really tough stuff til last or after the actual story is over, and goes a long way to making things feel a bit more "fair" - which I'd argue is a very important component to anyone designing games that are meant to be tough. I can enjoy many of Fromsoft's games, but have found myself liking Armored Core 6 far more than Elden Ring just for some differences in their design choices, feeling the latter just has far more nonsense I'm not willing to deal with. Then there's the curated experience versus the more freeform stuff, and while I don't think it's exactly a binary switch, I think many people fall more on one side or the other of the spectrum. Depending on the game, I find myself leaning more on the side of player agency, but there are many instances wherein more closed off stuff can present interesting scenarios depending on how tight knit a system of mechanics is, and all too often some devs take the sandbox approach of mindlessly scattering things without a second thought as to how they all go together, which is really unfortunate. I think one big example would be comparing the newer Zelda titles to, say, Sonic Frontiers. It seemed to take inspiration from those, but only really gleamed the surface without really understanding anything beyond looking pretty.
I keep it simple: Fun is a subjective since of enjoyment. If it feels good its fun. If someone says its fun, its fun for them (unless they are lying for some reason). Deciding for the player the "right" way to play to have "fun" is a major gripe I have with the new Doom games.
The way to solve the "Johnny One spell" problem is allow him to hire mercenaries that are good at all the stuff he is bad at to come with him on the journey to fight the fire elemental. If it's a surprise ambush encounter with fire elemental there is always the possibility to flee and fleeing is a type of skill. IT's the plan-before-it-happens skill. Think of the ninja: when he does his mission to sneak around he can throw a smokebomb to make it hard to see him and he can flee really quickly because he travels light. That is what Johnny One Spell must think about. "Do I have my teleport out of danger scrolls in my pouch before I enter this dungeon?" If not, I better do some shopping. And if I don't have money I better grind those fetch quests to buy a stock of the scrolls. And if the dungeon ONLY has fire elemental enemies in it, I should not hesitate to abandon a mission I am not skilled for." (you find out this with "detect enemy" spell, or just using sneaking skill to scout before you engage any enemy - it's what the hobbits basically do in Lord of the Rings because they can't fight everything) All the solution should be in the players mind before they go on the journey. IF you go on journeys with no plan you SHOULD die because fantasy RPG is all about discovering lands that are mysterious and possibly unchartered so you can be ambushed at any time. Not knowing this is like going into dangerous neighborhood without a gun to protect you just in case mugger tries to mug you. Johhny One Spell can still beat the game, he just needs to know how to flee better. Every RPG has the option to not engage certain enemy. (unless its JRPG where they tend to force you into boss fight) I think that may be why I like Western style role playing over the JRPG ones. The JRPG ones however do consider balance in games which is why they are popular. (you are expected to face your demon and conquer it with knowledge of the system and correct execution of plans to gain victory. But even low-skilled players can still win by simply grinding stats long enough to outclass the enemy which means you can still see the ending if you are patient by taking the longer-but-more-boring way around)
I think that people have a hard time defining fun because it is an overbroad term that covers a variety of disparate, subjective pleasurable experiences. Just off the top of my head I would say that you can break it down into satisfaction, exhilaration and connection. Going even further connection can be interpersonal, thematic and environmental. A game or any experience is often thought of fun if it just nails one of these qualities, and if it gets many of them with a broad portion of the populace, you have a run away success.
Hi Tim, thank you for an excellent video. I'd love to hear further about this topic, so my follow-up question to you is: How do you, as the person responsible for fun/game director/lead designer, communicate to and get your team on-board with what you consider being fun? Appreciate your videos, a great way for me to focus a lot of loose thoughts from work :)
For what is worth, a small list of games that have entertained me the most: - Deus Ex (2000) - Dark Souls 1/2/3 / Elden Ring - Minecraft - The Witcher 3 (alongside the books) - Wonderboy / Monsterland (arcades)
Deus Ex was way ahead of its time. I played it for the first time somewhere around 2015 and was amazed by the gameplay it allowed that modern 2015 games didn't even enable.
It's probably my favorite game of all time. It has its roots in the System Shock series. System Shock 2 with mods to make it feel modern is a very fun game to play, possibly more fun than many AAA games made last year.@@thedavischanger
fun must come above all else; it is the whole point of gaming. removing fun is the biggest mistake devs can make and it is often done by venture capital. don't sell your soul.
Very good but points, but I would really like to hear you expand on pros and cons of balance and ways to balance in single player games. Say, if a game supports a pistol build and pistols are divided into "revolvers" and "semi", and then it turns out the "semi" guns are objectively in every way much stronger and there aren't perks specific to revolvers. Doesn't it take player agency away, forcing them to always think "I would've been stronger if I just equipped that pistol I already have in my inventory instead of this revolver I want and I wouldn't need to change anything else"? Isn't at least a little bit of balancing in single player helpful to bringing more fun to the player? Sorry if you already talked about it but I don't remember this specifically
I played Fallout just yesterday and I found interesting bug. When I attacked the Brotherhood of Steel, trying to get into the locked room on the first floor, I decided I will try my might. I've done it and beat them including Rhombus, but as I progressed on the next floor where my roommate is, there were some locked rooms too. Now these people can see me through walls whenever I get close to the door and activate combat. As soon as I turn it off, combat initiates again, this is a situation where I can't use lockpick so I am locked in eternal combat on this floor. Then I downloaded a Fallout character editor, turned Brotherhood non hostile, lockpicked all doors and continued xD
@@davidburnett5049 Well, it's probably the hardest lock in the game and for a good reason. If you lockpick it or try twice and fail, everyone becomes hostile. There are crates full of weapons and loads of ammo (all kinds even bombs and grenades) and most of the weapons are endgame stuff, also two more power armors. Good if you have a companion mod. Also stuff like motion sensor, stealth boy and such.
I might just start linking this video every time I find yet another inane, boring argument over which Fallout is the best. The best one is the one you had most fun with!
Maybe "engaging" is a better topic? Like, fun is subjective, but if you get something that gives you that itch to continue, grind/learn, rince and repeat, a game that matter for people, that is the trick.
I enjoyed Elden Ring a lot, played through many times, tried to keep medium to far distance, skipping a lot of the learning. Now doing sekiro which makes you play "the right way"; enjoying that too, even though if I could drop in my ER character I'd probably cheese everything. Player choice sometimes leads to bad choices.
I'm playing sekrio for first time right now , I like setting etc but still not sure if it's going to work out for me , quite hard so far and I've only fought minor bosses
Sekiro gives you the tools to solve problems in various different ways, sometimes theres a good choice thats easy, and a bad choice that is hard, and everything in between. People like to go on and on about just parry everything, but that's like playing a piano and only using the B keys.
The original Morrowind (with no add ons) drove me crazy in that regard. No quest marker, and just a vague description of where to go to help a farmer who was plagued by mudcraps. I recall making a big cross on my physical map that came with the game so I never had to blunder blindly around for that again. Their journal idea was good, but the original had no search function and not even a quest index. You just had to leaf through until you found the relevant bit.... Makes for good rants though.
On a serious note, I don't think games should force a certain play style on the user. They should encourage certain play styles using things like rewards and items, while still allowing users to choose their own approach. So you're rewarded for either playing how the dev "wants", or get personal enjoyment for "thinking outside of the box".
One game where it is confirmed that devs tried to make sure players "had fun the right way" is Doom Eternal. And i get where it came from. Doom 2016 invented a type if gameplay and with Eternal they tried to improve on that and make it more deep, more skilled-based with more systems to master and so the game was designed around teaching players to play it right so they could learn to become masters at it. I found out about it because i wanted to know why the game ended up the way it is after i played it. Playing Doom Eternal did not feel like fun to me and i wanted to know how that could happen after Doom 2016 was so much fun. Well, i got my explanation. I never replayed it because life is short and instead of playing one game multiple times until i have fun the way the company wants me to , i rather play multiple different games who happen to be fun on the first playthrought.
"It's a bit, well, like pornography or a perfect turd, I can't quite describe it, but I'll know it when I see it." Well done to those who know what this quote is from.
Not sure if it's been addressed before or if it's an appropriate question but I've seen in a lot of games there tends to exist some stats or mechanics for systems, items, weapons, armor etc., that are often vaguely described (or in same cases are flat out lying to the player). I understand that throwing a bunch of information explaining how a particular stat works to the player can be overwhelming, but at the same time I've lost track of how many times I've tried to optimise for something in particular only to realise it works completely differently to how I thought it functioned. Examples I can give might be whether different stats stack together multiplicatively or additively, or if there's a cap on the amount of things that can stack on top of one another, or if there's even a hard cap on a particular stat meaning any further investment into that stat is effectively pointless - and none of this is communicated to the player! So I suppose my question is to ask why a designer would choose to obscure some information from the player, knowing that they aren't getting the full picture of how a thing works, and how would they approach delivering the necessary amount of information to communicate something as concisely as possible?
Tim, can you talk about having fun at work, like you mentioned before, you tried to work where you were having fun, if you could talk about a little bit on how was work fun for you, would really enlighten me, i am currently a web developer who hates his job, and currently learning game programming, but with all responsabilites of life, including a family to provide, it becomes a heavy burden, thank you
Hi, Tim. Loved your interview Mantis. Do you have a favorite pro wrestling game? Mine is WWF No Mercy on the N64. You vaguely remind me of former WWE referee Tim White. Do you have a Cameo do you know if Leonard does? I appreciate that you want the player to discover their own path(s.) Any view on the yellow paint controversy in vydia games? I don't really remember a game leading me, but I've played through the GTA SD (III to Vice City Stories) era games a few times it's always interesting when I find a new way to beat a mission. Sometimes I find them looking at youtube guides.
Bungie gave an interesting take to this in regards to Halo.
They called it “primal games”. Games like tag, hide and seek,…that have existed since forever and is ingrained in our subconscious. Which is probably why their shooter feels familar, it’s literally just tag and hide and seek.
Best games ever 1,2,3
That's a really interesting take, it could explain why games like Dead by Daylight are so popular.
I played Nosferatu as my very first run knowing it would be harder but also because I knew it would force stealth, and I love stealth games. It definitely caused some great moments.
That’s one of my favorite runs
I use your videos as mental reset after work, your voice and the way you explain everything are very calming for me. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, as always!
Tim is a goddam treasure.
What is Fun?
Baby don’t hurt me
Don’t hurt me
No more ...
Literally opened this video to leave this comment, beat me to it 😂
Same here :)
Baby don't herd me
Don't herd me
no more
(that's more like)
All these chores, all day long, every week..
Is no funn, so please ..
Fomo dont hurt me, don't hurt me
Noo more .. 🤭🤣
I'm not alone 🤣
5:07 - Best "advertising" ever I'm definitely playing it now... recently I have been questioning myself a lot if what I'm playing is "fun".
My definition of fun when asked: "an experience you remember fondly and are eager to repeat." You're right Tim, it can't be defined specifically, only felt on an individual level.
I love when a developer allows for free form "create your own fun" but I also love when the fun is sign posted.
Im by no means a unique snowflake but I love so many different types of games specifically for the different types of fun they provide. I love a Tim Cain game for it allowing me to figure out a problem 7 different ways, but i also enjoy power fisting a brotherhood of steel paladin off the mass fusion building in Fallout 4.
The most fun ive ever had was playing Overcooked with my wife desperately trying to complete orders for a 3 star rating. I was cry laughing while she was panicking trying to chop tomatoes while the stovetop was on fire.
But I want to Thank you Tim for sharing your particular brand of fun with us, one could argue we wouldn't have elements of the immersive sim genre without your pioneering efforts. 😄
For me fun is when I'm so engrossed in the game that I lose track of time. I look up and it's 4 or 5 hours later and it felt like only 30 minutes had passed.
I never understood people who think singleplayer games need to be balanced. It's objectively really damaging to play a low intelligence character in Fallout, but it's also one of the most praised aspects of the game, and something fans will claim everyone should try at least once. It's far more important to make sure your "bad" character builds are still worth playing than to make sure everything is equally good.
Balance should be used in a singleplayer to make it more fun.
Going overboard on balance can detract from fun. For example all weapons deal the same dps. Enemies level with you to the letter so you never get to feel powerful.
But at the same time having to little balance will detract from the fun. For example you get a spell that insta kills anything and has little to no limits in use. As soon as the player gets the spell some players will be bored etc.
@@fredrik3880 The instant death spell in Arcanum is fun.
Id also point out not all fun is combat, some people want an easy option for combat so they can focus on the fun in the rest of the game.
Balanced doesn't mean everything is equally good but it is also about meaning. The last part you said is what i call a part of balancing, that you make everything worthwhile in a way. Arcanum is a good example, almost 3/4 of the guns are useless because you get better guns way earlier and way cheaper. There are so many cool looking guns that are trash be cause their stat are not balanced. You could get a fine Revolver early in the game before Tarant and it is already one of the best guns in the game. Also many weapon melee weapon are totally useless because you can create balanced sword in the first town and you are set for most of the game. Balancing is just not about equally good no matter your skill choice but about give items meaning. If you finish a quest to a get schematics for a cool machine gun in the late game then it should also shred. If it is not the case it is not balanced and also not fun.
@@fredrik3880 Absolutely, most games are still best when there's some challenge. But even then, there's still some kind of fun in turning your character into a living god for the last little bit of the game, like in Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, a game that ends with giving the player an absurdly powerful weapon and letting you rip through the last mission as a sort of victory lap. Depends what the developers are going for, like with all design decisions, but I think as a general rule, you shouldn't focus much development time on balance. No reason to make every character build equally viable, every gun feel equally useful or make all enemies equally challenging to fight. Fun should always be the #1 priority.
@@darq7000 To me, balancing means ensuring viability, when I say every build has to be worthwhile, that's more of a design question. You could make a build worthwhile by making it very powerful, which is a balancing thing, or you could make it viable by being a novel and different experience that makes subsequent playthroughs mechanically interesting even when you've learned all the mechanics of one build. Like playing a mage vs playing a thief in something like Oblivion. The thief is by far the strongest option, being able to take out most enemies in a single stealth critical or just walk right by the ones you don't need to fight. But a mage is still absolutely worth playing because of spell crafting and the more dynamic, decision based playstyle. Not at all balanced, but designed differently enough to where they don't need to be. That's what I mean when I say SP games don't need balancing.
Dragons Dogma 2 is a great example of using friction between the game and the player to facilitate what makes exploring its world so much fun.
As long as a game has a good story or branching quests, (like Fallout New Vegas) then i'm having fun. I don't care about bad graphics or gameplay, because you can usually fix those things, but you cannot fix a story or the writing.
The Loot Cave incident with Destiny 1 really shook my perspective on fun and the responsibility of designers to advocate for players. I knew players that quit Destiny after they patched out the Loot Cave bug, because "the game wasn't fun anymore." My mind was blown. The human brain is extremely susceptible to conditioning, Designers have to be really careful with what kind of in-game behaviors they incentivize through their mechanics. Fun =/= Addicting.
You are what I consider fun on a legendary type of level.
I haven't seen this kind of cocksuckery anywhere outside of pornography.
One of the reasons it's hard to define fun, is that there are two kinds. One is about being playful, improvising, with funny and/or surprising things happening. Another one more serious, and is about being in the zone, slowly mastering something or wrecking your brain with a problem which seems just outside of reach. I indeed consider both to be "fun", but I can tell that the feeling is not exactly the same.
One is child-like-fun, the other is challenge-fun.
I love games that mix both like playing Halo 1,2,3 back in the day. You can go try hard or see who can get the silliest kills or most sticks or funny moves
2:46 I really like this point. Sometimes being OP IS fun. And so is building a min-maxed character. It only really matters in multiplayer.
Extremely subjective. Some people are entertained by anything that plays and/or looks well enough. Some look for that x factor in a game and when they find it they enjoy that game even if it has flaws or a slow pacing.
I don't get what pacing has to do with fun, unless you mean slow class-building or character progression in general.
@@renaighI find Deus Ex Human Revolution or Mass Effect a lot more fun than the current RPG darling Cyberpunk. They don't have the fancy animations or flashy(by modern standards) set pieces, but I enjoyed talking to the characters on my ship in ME a lot more because I found the story a million times more interesting.
@@heavyartillery-qm5huyou really like human revolutions story more than cyberpunks?
@@avatarname0008 yeah, as much as I enjoy Jensen, that game is disappointing, the story unfinished, and overall lacking ambition. Major step down from the OG. For all of 77s flaws it had a realized identity and was capable of sincerity.
@@cdubsb3831 it's got a solid hook and some interesting characters but alot of the story is fuzzy except for the initial hook and the ending cyberpunks I recall most of the main quest and a decent chunk of side content
To me "fun" is a hilarius ragdoll fling :D
Love your attitude on single player games. Thank you!!
It's not fun vs realism, it's that realism facilitates fun. The real world is deeper and allows more creativity than a video game that only offers one proscribed form of fun which may not suit the player's taste. The more realistic the game is, the more opportunities the players have to go off on their own and find something to amuse themselves with.
Realism in games is strictly unfun. Realism takes so much to actualize that by the time you have a "real" experience for your virtual game, it was all wasted effort. No one wants to play that game.
Pick a different word. Realism is the wrong word for the concept(s) that people actually want in their game.
What is fun? Baby don't hurt me...
Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, No more 🕺
Baby don't bore me
Pretty often, when developers (sincerely) say things along the lines of
"we tried to make the game we've always wanted to play",
there's a good amount of fun to be found in the game in question.
Sometimes, in those cases, the execution is lacking for any possible reason.
But you can still see the potential and the "love" put into the final product.
And, to a degree, maybe with some conscious effort on your part,
you can pretend not to see what's bad and have considerable amounts of fun yourself while playing.
Are those the cases when a game problems become somewhat "charming", to a degree?
Thanks for your videos!
Balance testing should be a division at any game company. Have your most high IQ gamers doing this. The challenge to the balance tester: its all about exploiting the system to see if you can break it and prove it's bad. If you can do that you often have the solution to nerf the class that can abuse the broken system. A lot of game companies that make fighting games often patch and patch their fighting games over time thanks to knowledge gained from high level tournaments in competitive play. Balance testing is important for multiplayer but not so much for single player games. In single player games majority are happy if they can just complete the main quest in the game. If they can't there is always difficulty sliders and other things you can do to pass through the bad balance. (it's why as much as I hate changing the difficulty if I encounter a difficulty spike; because it feels like I am cheating, I rely on it if I am not having fun and just want to progress a story)
@@UToobUsername01 I love when single player games have unbalanced and "broken" OP stuff. It can create a sort of choose your own difficulty (In the original Pokemon, choosing charmander as your starter was essentially the hard mode, squirtle normal mode, bulbasaur easy mode) and it can also lead to very fun and silly OP stuff like Morrowind's intelligence potions stacking and allowing you to create increasingly better intelligence potions
@@cleverman383Yes exploits are fun but if reviewers punish you for it then it can hurt your reputation. For single player I can feel like "I made the right choice in how to be overpowered" and feel like that is part of the game. Like choosing the best weapon in megaman to fight the right boss with it to kill them faster. (it's knowledge of the lore outside the intended game universe - like knowing the cave where the best monsters exist to farming experience points - it can be the reward for exploring a lot)
@@UToobUsername01
Here's an interesting quote from the lead developer of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom about no longer treating exploits as flaws when designing their games:
"When you think about people... cheating is fun! [laughs] They like it! Finding that shortcut is enjoyable. People will look for an easy way to do something if they can avoid struggling. We want to make sure that is something that stayed in this game. When thinking of games in the past that we've worked on, where there was a puzzle to solve and only one answer, that's kind of the past way of developing games. Now, I'm happy that we've arrived at this method where we're giving people lots of options, and there are many answers to a single problem, and all of them can potentially be correct. I feel happy that we've arrived at this type of development style."
@@cleverman383For open ended games he is correct but some critics feel like linear experiences cause you to become a better or stronger person for enduring pain.
I will give you one example that rings true for hardcore gamers: the very first big monster you fight in Monster Hunter Tri. It was a Great Jaggi. Many people may try it the first time and fail at it because the weapon they have is too weak to end its life quickly. But the struggle of trying to beat the time limit forces you to concentrate and focus hard on not missing it, making sure you have good sense of timing and studying its movement pattern so you can predict where it will go before it goes there. This shaves some precious seconds off the time it takes to beat it but when you finally do succeed at it you feel really good for accomplishing this task.
Nintendo is correct we need more multiple solutions for single problems, ..but you cannot deny the critics of cheasy (cheap and easy) methods to win are right too. Yes two things can be true. The world is more complex than we like to think. If I am fighting a boss and let us say there is only 1 way to beat it because he has NO weaknesses, and you have to figure it out, then won't you feel joy when you finally do that? (as opposed to exploits?) In many RPGs the end of game boss is equivalent to fighting God himself. So you should fear the enemy enough that it causes you to try everything you can think of to win and only feel satisfied until you did it. If you make that end of game boss too easy the reviewers will say it was anti-climactic or something and feel like you made bad design choices.
Thankfully we live in a time where you can have your cake and eat it. The "new game plus" modes in today's games could be considered the new "exploit" because you are essentially a demi-god amoung normal people returning to the world you were once a weak person in. In new game plus you are bad ass from the start and everyone around you is cannon fodder for entertainment. (it is a whole different game when you play the castlevania titles on the nintendo DS because it turns into a arcadey action game to speed run and not a RPG-grinding game where struggling to survive is part of the experience of being low stats and working your grey matter to beat things with limited resources and lifebar)
Fun is hard to define because it's a largely emotional experience, but one of my favorite quotes from a youtuber is, "nothing hits like guessing right in a children's game".
Thank you for the last couple of videos. You are going for the really hard stuff now 😁
Just like defining an RPG, I find fun particularly difficult to define and reason about. Every person seems to have their own definition of it (I mean look at the comments 😂) which is why I had a lot of trouble understanding when people state fun as a goal or property they want their game/design to have.
Unfortunately unless you can define a metric that is measurable and not extremely subjective, designing for fun is, at least to me, a lost cause. Now you can define all sorts of metrics for other properties you might want your game to have (e.g. balance, difficulty etc) and measure those and based on those claim whether you are successful but using an ill-defined and often conflicting measure as a guideline... tough.
Anyhow, I like how you sidestep that landmine with your definition though 😊
Have a great day Tim! Thanks again for the video!
The difficulty with balance discussions is that it tends to be "balance yes/no" as opposed to balance as *instrumental* goal. Balance between options are necessary for choices to be meaningful (if the choice is functional) - but that's an instrumental thing. Balance in the general sense of "all options should be equally good" is just obviously not a desirable goal in single player games if you want to have an interesting decision space!
I can only imagine a director looking for advice and tim just saying "whatever a director thinks is fun"
I can understand why some devs want to force players to play in certain way but I also understand that devs need to trust players to find fun in their games. That's why in my games which features upgrade system, I don't code any balancer to balance the upgrades. If players want to be too strong, too weak or balanced against enemies, it's their choice.
I've heard a few different definitions, such as "mid-term, sustained happiness". I think it's cool how different perspectives on fun reflect their experience!
I define fun as the intersection between happiness and engagement.
Whether it's games, movies, sports, or books, if you're happy and engaged, you're almost certainly having some sort of fun.
I think this is a fair video. I love Fallout. Sometimes I like to play with mods that make it super hardcore survival. Maybe I make it a zombie apocalypse. Maybe one day I just use cheat terminal for infinite everything, god mode, invincible power armor and wreaking havoc on the wasteland. Sometimes I’m a moral character, other times I’m beyond evil. Fun changes moment to moment. Thats why having options is great.
In my opinion a fun game is a sequence of interesting decisions
Okay, I haven't even watched the video, but the Title is very captivating. I'm ready to sit in and learn something
I love when games offer options for everything (i know its harder to play test), but it gives me the option to experience the game how I live to have fun with games
I think a good definition of fun is "the realization of expectation". What that expectation is is obviously highly subjective, but the ability to think of something you want to do and then be able to actually make it happen is at the core of enjoying something. By comparison it's highly frustrating to try to do something only to discover that it's not possible to achieve.
So when it comes to making videogames creating fun is all about nurturing an expectation in the player and then constructing a way to achieve it within the game. Look at something traditional like a basic combat system. You present the player with opponents that try to defeat them, creating the expectation that they will be able to conquer this challenge, and then give them skills and tools to help them achieve that expectation. Ofc that's very simplistic on its own, so many players won't find it very satisfying, but then you add a ton of layers on top like satisfying sounds and graphics, interesting combat dynamics etc etc and you end up creating this complex web of expectations that the player gets to realize and enjoy.
1:39 Ouch. This issue describes D&D 5th edition really well. Spellcasters are great at everything, including combat roles like DPS and tanking.
Happiness is the state of consciousness that proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.
I’m not sure what “fun” is but I’m gonna try and find out
and what is _"one’s value"_ ? or what is _"value"_ in general?
@@fixpontt “ones value” is anything that person sees as a value. And then achieves it.
And “value” is anything you identity as a benefit to your life
@@WhoIsJohnGalttSo in other words, a value is something that when you achieve makes you happy.
now compare this with the original:
_"Happiness is the state of consciousness that proceeds from the achievement of one’s values."_
can you see the inherent problem?
@@fixpontt no. A value is something that you’ve first identified as a positive to your life. THEN. After consciously knowing it and you achieve it. You feel happiness.
If you climb Mount Everest and don’t first identify it as a value to do so. Would you feel happiness at the top of it?
You can not have value without recognizing it as a value first
@0:58 That is great Tim. Sandbox zombie survival indie games like Project Zomboid allow to create your own gaming experience using mods. You could create an OP character for a speedrun. Besides, fun is such an universal concept, you can lump anything into the category. The ultra masochist gamers love games that are punishing and that is fun in their mind. There are people who whine about the slightest imbalance and call it "broken" because balance is fun to them.
@4:16 That is even better, Tim, there are really people out there to whom the perceived intend of the lead developer is gospel and those "filthy" speedrunners just "cheat" their way to the end. 😆 That is like saying that olympic cyclist are cheaters because they don't run the distance. There are TAS speed runs, there are 0% completion speedruns, there are glitchless speedruns and who says that it doesn't take mad skillz to pull off extremely complicated glitch exploits to save a few seconds?
If you put your own words into universal formula it will sound like this, Fun = the amount of ways of interaction that the enities in the game give you. Combat, classes, skills, exploration, npcs interactions, ways of playthrough literaly anything can be weighted on the amount of freedom it gives to the player.
In specific situations like combat you also optimize for specific metrics like adrenaline per second / reaction speed for example.
I think for non-competitive and non-puzzle games, the key is immersion. When you're playing a game, you aren't actually doing whatever it is that's happening on the screen but instead watching a screen and pressing buttons on a keyboard, controller or interacting with some other medium to make those things happen. The more the game can immerse you, the less aware you are of that fact.
How do you keep players immersed? I think GabeN made a great point in this video ruclips.net/video/MGpFEv1-mAo/видео.html. The more conisistently and satisfyingly the game acknowledges and responds to your actions, the more immersed you'll be and fun you'll have. I think the recent success of Helldivers 2 has highlighted this. Most players didn't get invested because of a great narrative, grind or competition, but because of how fun it is to dive onto a planet and shoot things in the game, because of the feedback the game gives you. I think the Stanley Parable is another great example. It's gameplay is quite shallow, it's all about the writing, but if the player sees the opportunity to do something in that game, chances are they can do it and the game will acknowledge them if they do it and respond accordingly.
I think that's why people ask for realism, even though realism isn't necessarily fun, because usually things that increas immersion can be thought of as realistic, e.g., NPCs getting upset if you steal from them, becoming friendlier if you help them, appropriately acknowledging whatever great feats you accomplished, not everyone instantly knowing where you are if one person spots you etc.
TL;DR -- "Fun is like pornography. Let me explain..."
Even in single player games, it feels bad to "hold myself back" and play in a certain way to make the game more fun.
It feels more natural and better if the game mechanics make the most fun way to play the most optimized way to play.
I feel the struggle to define fun. For me it goes beyond what mechanics are fun, but also on a philosophical level whether some of the things that we consider to be "fun" should actually be reclassified in some way.
I feel like it's such an overloaded term. Fun can be something entertaining that brings friends together. Fun can be a word that is used to justify compulsion/addiction. Fun can be something you get a thrill out of but regret spending time on later, fun can be something you talk about and have fond memories of years later. And which one of these are "fun"? All of them? Some of them? Are there firm lines? Do the lines move based on an individual, or the situations that a person finds themselves in at the moment?
As a fellow game developer, thinking about this too deeply can sometimes send me to a dark place, where I start to question whether various experiences in my life were ever actually "fun" at all, or whether it was something more similar to "compulsion with a dopamine hit."
I feel like we need more words to describe the situations for which we currently use the word "fun," because some uses of "fun" are positive and some of them are downright depressing.
6:22 My biggest gripe with most quest markers is blocking option to the fast travel spots without finding a sweet spot. Death Stranding has a refreshing map / quest tracking. Fast track lists for active quests would make life easier.
I always separate game design from play design, the former is more formal and about structure and progression, but the latter is where the magic if fun happen
Tim is now my no. 1 guild to making good games.
As a player, one reason why I like solo roguelikes is that they absolve the designer of having to balance the game perfectly. Even if some strategy is broken, you usually can't guarantee you'll get it every run so meta strategies aren't 100% reliable and that kind of makes everything work for me. Player's who only want to play 1 way can still win sometimes, and players who like to figure out builds may have a lot of systems to grok which is fun to me.
I Feel like an answer that says fun is what the game director intends is a little bit like, it puts the real answer somewhere else down the line. perhaps exploring all the different kinds of fun, that you can find, I especially like the topic of fun being at the intersection of simple rules' emergent fun'.I Think that, Fun is like the Divergence of Possibilities. And I Think that system mechanics stack already existing mechanics that diverge possibilities, and stack new divergence ontop of existing divergence. A simple example is how in Fallout, The combat unfolds in an unpredictable way, which creates divergence of possibilities of an encounter. And the system mechanics of having multiple maps and areas create a second stacked layer of fun.
For me, the definition of fun is when you are wasting your time and you don't care or don't notice/feel you are
the video description, LOL you aren't failing, definitions are HARD. Especially such a vague one at that.
Something that has been on my mind again recently is that I've heard some people equate fun to the flow state. To a degree it makes sense, given to enter flow you need to be meeting a challenge just outside of your current skill set, with immediate feedback. A lot of games hit those marks. But there are other times where I would say I am having fun, but am completely aware that I am currently in the activity. Maybe not fun per se, but an experience I really enjoy is getting chills while listening to music. I guess fun's relationship with joy might have some nuance?
Another way to achive consensus is to dublicate the quest giver information on the quest spot, solve the quest on spot where you find it.
"Fun" is subjective. So as long as the overall balance is harmonized, I think it's fine to have something out of wack every now and then.
my partner is always complaining about the absence of "cheat codes" in modern games because having cheat codes is fun.
also, about single-player balance, a great example is from software games. those games are seen as being super difficult and challenging but astute critics know that you can make the game significantly easier based on your character build; in elden ring, this is most apparent where the game highlights the use of summonable followers that attack for you.
and so you have this environment where you can choose, say, a ranged magic user and you grind up to max level to blast through all the bosses. or you can go a super tryhard route and try to beat the game with just a greatsword and your own reflexes. to me, this sort of creativity is the bread and butter of games, and it's hard imo to achieve this level of player expression while also making sure things are "balanced"
I wish he talked about fun vs cost of developement, but I guess that could be another big topic
Fun is when the nice chemicals tickle my brain.
Ahh but sometimes the chemicals attack my brain or my brain is attacking the chemicals and that's no fun
@@avatarname0008 those are the bad chemicals. I'm talkin' about Dopamine my brotha. Get that in yer system.
Hi Tim, I would love an episode where you dissect the term ‘Action RPG’. It seems to me like there are a lot of games today that label themselves under this genre but it isn’t clearly defined, as an action RPG seems like it can be any action adventure game that has a skill tree or what some people dub ‘RPG elements’. Games that call themselves action RPGs like the Witcher or Cyberpunk I think are missing one of the key elements that makes an RPG, meaningful choice and consequences. Just an idea for a future video, really been enjoying your content!
Any default option a dev makes is the dev saying 'this is what I think is fun' or what they think the majority of players will find fun.
Players who say they need a quest marker are not reasonable, unless its in a singleplayer game AND an option AND as long as its off by default AND not designed around having quest markers. Those players just dont find real exploring and adventuring fun, simple as that. There are games out there that have quest markers go play those. We need more games that werent designed around the handicaps of maps, quest markers, quest logs, etc.
Agreed on the last minute about fun. Too hard to define completely. Hella good stab at fun.
While at DigiPen, we had a game design class where we had to write a paper on what is fun in a game. One thing I recall happening is if a student wrote down features of the game they were docked points. As I recall, the teacher described that you can have two games with those same features, and one may be fun and the other is not. At times it could seem a futile task to write what is fun, but I think it is because it emotional and transient, and writing it from that angle rather than a definitive scientific angle was the point of the exercise in writing the paper.
If I recall correctly I wrote my paper on the GBA version of Eye of the Beholder, which I got a B on.
On an almost regular basis, i happen to play games made by DigiPen students. Can you work be found on steam as well?
I think there can be many different ways to have fun, and might even go as far as to suggest some people are drawn more to certain types of fun than others, for whatever reasons. I feel it's why there are so many different genres and subgenres to begin with.
Some say they like balancing, some say they don't, I really have mixed feelings on it because it really depends on the specific game, what it promises and what I happen to be looking for. Kirby games? Generally easygoing and very relaxing for when I just want to turn my brain off, so it's not a huge deal if there's some OP feature usually. but then again, forgotten Land, the latest game in the series, actually challenged me a bit, especially towards the end of what is often considered "post-game content" these days, and still managed to have a blast playing it. That's another way in which to do difficulty, in saving really tough stuff til last or after the actual story is over, and goes a long way to making things feel a bit more "fair" - which I'd argue is a very important component to anyone designing games that are meant to be tough. I can enjoy many of Fromsoft's games, but have found myself liking Armored Core 6 far more than Elden Ring just for some differences in their design choices, feeling the latter just has far more nonsense I'm not willing to deal with.
Then there's the curated experience versus the more freeform stuff, and while I don't think it's exactly a binary switch, I think many people fall more on one side or the other of the spectrum. Depending on the game, I find myself leaning more on the side of player agency, but there are many instances wherein more closed off stuff can present interesting scenarios depending on how tight knit a system of mechanics is, and all too often some devs take the sandbox approach of mindlessly scattering things without a second thought as to how they all go together, which is really unfortunate. I think one big example would be comparing the newer Zelda titles to, say, Sonic Frontiers. It seemed to take inspiration from those, but only really gleamed the surface without really understanding anything beyond looking pretty.
Thanks Tim, great video
Fun is whatever I enjoy, and whatever you don't. :D
Megumin mindset (putting all the sp’s in one spell)
What is fun? Baby don't bore me. Don't bore me. No more...
I keep it simple: Fun is a subjective since of enjoyment. If it feels good its fun. If someone says its fun, its fun for them (unless they are lying for some reason).
Deciding for the player the "right" way to play to have "fun" is a major gripe I have with the new Doom games.
Fun is what I experience when I beat Fallout with Str 1, Ag 1, no weapons allowed.
Or at least I assume it WILL be fun when I accomplish it.
Oh, Fun. I thought this was going to be about those Singapore noodles. You know, Fun.
I find games that have a well thought out concept the most fun. I don't care if the game relies on dozens of community patches.
The way to solve the "Johnny One spell" problem is allow him to hire mercenaries that are good at all the stuff he is bad at to come with him on the journey to fight the fire elemental. If it's a surprise ambush encounter with fire elemental there is always the possibility to flee and fleeing is a type of skill. IT's the plan-before-it-happens skill. Think of the ninja: when he does his mission to sneak around he can throw a smokebomb to make it hard to see him and he can flee really quickly because he travels light. That is what Johnny One Spell must think about. "Do I have my teleport out of danger scrolls in my pouch before I enter this dungeon?" If not, I better do some shopping. And if I don't have money I better grind those fetch quests to buy a stock of the scrolls. And if the dungeon ONLY has fire elemental enemies in it, I should not hesitate to abandon a mission I am not skilled for." (you find out this with "detect enemy" spell, or just using sneaking skill to scout before you engage any enemy - it's what the hobbits basically do in Lord of the Rings because they can't fight everything)
All the solution should be in the players mind before they go on the journey. IF you go on journeys with no plan you SHOULD die because fantasy RPG is all about discovering lands that are mysterious and possibly unchartered so you can be ambushed at any time. Not knowing this is like going into dangerous neighborhood without a gun to protect you just in case mugger tries to mug you.
Johhny One Spell can still beat the game, he just needs to know how to flee better. Every RPG has the option to not engage certain enemy. (unless its JRPG where they tend to force you into boss fight) I think that may be why I like Western style role playing over the JRPG ones. The JRPG ones however do consider balance in games which is why they are popular. (you are expected to face your demon and conquer it with knowledge of the system and correct execution of plans to gain victory. But even low-skilled players can still win by simply grinding stats long enough to outclass the enemy which means you can still see the ending if you are patient by taking the longer-but-more-boring way around)
I think that people have a hard time defining fun because it is an overbroad term that covers a variety of disparate, subjective pleasurable experiences. Just off the top of my head I would say that you can break it down into satisfaction, exhilaration and connection. Going even further connection can be interpersonal, thematic and environmental. A game or any experience is often thought of fun if it just nails one of these qualities, and if it gets many of them with a broad portion of the populace, you have a run away success.
Hi Tim, thank you for an excellent video. I'd love to hear further about this topic, so my follow-up question to you is: How do you, as the person responsible for fun/game director/lead designer, communicate to and get your team on-board with what you consider being fun?
Appreciate your videos, a great way for me to focus a lot of loose thoughts from work :)
Ayoo Tim! Have a great day! Love your videos!
For what is worth, a small list of games that have entertained me the most:
- Deus Ex (2000)
- Dark Souls 1/2/3 / Elden Ring
- Minecraft
- The Witcher 3 (alongside the books)
- Wonderboy / Monsterland (arcades)
Deus Ex was way ahead of its time. I played it for the first time somewhere around 2015 and was amazed by the gameplay it allowed that modern 2015 games didn't even enable.
It's probably my favorite game of all time. It has its roots in the System Shock series. System Shock 2 with mods to make it feel modern is a very fun game to play, possibly more fun than many AAA games made last year.@@thedavischanger
Loving these daily vids while they last 🙂.
fun must come above all else; it is the whole point of gaming. removing fun is the biggest mistake devs can make and it is often done by venture capital. don't sell your soul.
This person gets it
Very good but points, but I would really like to hear you expand on pros and cons of balance and ways to balance in single player games.
Say, if a game supports a pistol build and pistols are divided into "revolvers" and "semi", and then it turns out the "semi" guns are objectively in every way much stronger and there aren't perks specific to revolvers. Doesn't it take player agency away, forcing them to always think "I would've been stronger if I just equipped that pistol I already have in my inventory instead of this revolver I want and I wouldn't need to change anything else"? Isn't at least a little bit of balancing in single player helpful to bringing more fun to the player?
Sorry if you already talked about it but I don't remember this specifically
And here's me wanting to chat to npcs for quests like everquest
I think fun is the desire to do something without the promise of reward or threat of punishment.
I played Fallout just yesterday and I found interesting bug. When I attacked the Brotherhood of Steel, trying to get into the locked room on the first floor, I decided I will try my might. I've done it and beat them including Rhombus, but as I progressed on the next floor where my roommate is, there were some locked rooms too. Now these people can see me through walls whenever I get close to the door and activate combat. As soon as I turn it off, combat initiates again, this is a situation where I can't use lockpick so I am locked in eternal combat on this floor.
Then I downloaded a Fallout character editor, turned Brotherhood non hostile, lockpicked all doors and continued xD
What was in there? Just normal stuff im guessing
@@davidburnett5049 Well, it's probably the hardest lock in the game and for a good reason. If you lockpick it or try twice and fail, everyone becomes hostile. There are crates full of weapons and loads of ammo (all kinds even bombs and grenades) and most of the weapons are endgame stuff, also two more power armors. Good if you have a companion mod. Also stuff like motion sensor, stealth boy and such.
@@FluffySylveonBoi Thank you. I remember wondering back in the late 90s
I might just start linking this video every time I find yet another inane, boring argument over which Fallout is the best. The best one is the one you had most fun with!
Maybe "engaging" is a better topic? Like, fun is subjective, but if you get something that gives you that itch to continue, grind/learn, rince and repeat, a game that matter for people, that is the trick.
"Nope, play this way! This is the only fun!" It just sounds so absurd when you put it like that, how could any creator ever force a player to do that.
Fun that work for the mass market: instant gratification. Fun that works for long term players: delayed gratification.
I enjoyed Elden Ring a lot, played through many times, tried to keep medium to far distance, skipping a lot of the learning. Now doing sekiro which makes you play "the right way"; enjoying that too, even though if I could drop in my ER character I'd probably cheese everything. Player choice sometimes leads to bad choices.
I'm playing sekrio for first time right now , I like setting etc but still not sure if it's going to work out for me , quite hard so far and I've only fought minor bosses
Sekiro gives you the tools to solve problems in various different ways, sometimes theres a good choice thats easy, and a bad choice that is hard, and everything in between.
People like to go on and on about just parry everything, but that's like playing a piano and only using the B keys.
@@ChernobylComedyAndWings true, although it's a narrower set of tools than Elden Ring.
@@PatGunn You're comparing an RPG to an action game.
@@ChernobylComedyAndWings as it so happens, the host of this channel did a good video on what makes an rpg
The original Morrowind (with no add ons) drove me crazy in that regard.
No quest marker, and just a vague description of where to go to help a farmer who was plagued by mudcraps. I recall making a big cross on my physical map that came with the game so I never had to blunder blindly around for that again.
Their journal idea was good, but the original had no search function and not even a quest index. You just had to leaf through until you found the relevant bit....
Makes for good rants though.
If a game somehow makes me wanna play it , it’s kinda fun.
Fun things are fun
On a serious note, I don't think games should force a certain play style on the user. They should encourage certain play styles using things like rewards and items, while still allowing users to choose their own approach.
So you're rewarded for either playing how the dev "wants", or get personal enjoyment for "thinking outside of the box".
One game where it is confirmed that devs tried to make sure players "had fun the right way" is Doom Eternal. And i get where it came from. Doom 2016 invented a type if gameplay and with Eternal they tried to improve on that and make it more deep, more skilled-based with more systems to master and so the game was designed around teaching players to play it right so they could learn to become masters at it.
I found out about it because i wanted to know why the game ended up the way it is after i played it. Playing Doom Eternal did not feel like fun to me and i wanted to know how that could happen after Doom 2016 was so much fun. Well, i got my explanation.
I never replayed it because life is short and instead of playing one game multiple times until i have fun the way the company wants me to , i rather play multiple different games who happen to be fun on the first playthrought.
"It's a bit, well, like pornography or a perfect turd, I can't quite describe it, but I'll know it when I see it."
Well done to those who know what this quote is from.
Fun is my plasma rifle with a speech of 300, me on the other hand, maybe, maybe 20. 😂
Not sure if it's been addressed before or if it's an appropriate question but I've seen in a lot of games there tends to exist some stats or mechanics for systems, items, weapons, armor etc., that are often vaguely described (or in same cases are flat out lying to the player). I understand that throwing a bunch of information explaining how a particular stat works to the player can be overwhelming, but at the same time I've lost track of how many times I've tried to optimise for something in particular only to realise it works completely differently to how I thought it functioned.
Examples I can give might be whether different stats stack together multiplicatively or additively, or if there's a cap on the amount of things that can stack on top of one another, or if there's even a hard cap on a particular stat meaning any further investment into that stat is effectively pointless - and none of this is communicated to the player!
So I suppose my question is to ask why a designer would choose to obscure some information from the player, knowing that they aren't getting the full picture of how a thing works, and how would they approach delivering the necessary amount of information to communicate something as concisely as possible?
Well, that was fun.
"What is fun?"
I can answer that, but I don't think you'll like my answer. "Fun" is a word.
Timothy, you should write a book.
You, Tim.
7:36 a must for me.
Tim, can you talk about having fun at work, like you mentioned before, you tried to work where you were having fun, if you could talk about a little bit on how was work fun for you, would really enlighten me, i am currently a web developer who hates his job, and currently learning game programming, but with all responsabilites of life, including a family to provide, it becomes a heavy burden, thank you
Hi, Tim. Loved your interview Mantis.
Do you have a favorite pro wrestling game? Mine is WWF No Mercy on the N64. You vaguely remind me of former WWE referee Tim White.
Do you have a Cameo do you know if Leonard does?
I appreciate that you want the player to discover their own path(s.)
Any view on the yellow paint controversy in vydia games?
I don't really remember a game leading me, but I've played through the GTA SD (III to Vice City Stories) era games a few times it's always interesting when I find a new way to beat a mission. Sometimes I find them looking at youtube guides.
Quest markers? When I first played RPGs I had to write stuff down and draw out maps on graph paper.
How about fun vs balance in mutiplayer games?
johnny onespell is just a warlock
That is why Dark Souls stays fun...you can be a naked character with a club and wood plank shield or a tank covered in armor and still have fun....