The 5 Degrees of Fun

Image: lachongzi

Exactly how much fun is it possible for someone have playing a game?

My game design philosophy has always been that games create an Experience.  For the vast majority of games that are made, I would say around 99%, the core experience that companies, student developers, and indie developers are shooting for is for the game to be fun.

But how much fun should we be shooting for?  Is there a way of measuring fun?  Sure, ratings and reviews give us a scale of how  well made a game was, on a 100-point scale.  That’s a very high level of detail.  But what if we aren’t talking about the overall quality of the game, we’re just talking about how fun it is?  If a game has been polished to infinity, if every game design choice was perfect, thePunishment and Reward Systems tuned perfectly, how fun could it possibly be?

This is the ultimate question for every game designer.  It is a very interesting question that not only ask questions of game design, but also of human psychology.  To understand how fun a game can be is to understand how much fun people can have across all their experiences.  And if we look at it from that perspective, I would propose that there are only 5 Degrees of Fun that players can experience at any moment in a game.

How Many Words?

One interesting way to look at the level of depth and breadth of an area of study or emotion is to count the number of words associated with it.  Language does not come from a dictionary; language is created on the fly by people who are trying to describe the world they are experiencing.  We use the words that we know to describe what we understand and what we want to share with others.  But when new experiences commonly occur that can’t manage to be encapsulated by existing words or phrases, new ones tend to be invented.

For example, “Unfriend” was a verb (“I unfriended her on Facebook.”) that didn’t exist until the last couple of years, because it didn’t really make any sense before the age of social networks.  However now many people have experienced being unfriended or unfriending other people — the idea has a place in people’s experiences, and so the word itself was born.

Japanese and Chinese have thousands of words to describe martial arts moves, philosophies, and styles.  French has thousands of words to describe cooking, tasting, and food.  In different areas of expertise, the number of words associated with a subject can be a strong indicator to the variety of experiences people can have with the subject.  And by looking at the words that exist to describe something, we can see the number degree of definition that something can sustain.

The Degrees of Fullness

One interesting example is the subject of eating and fullness.  In some ways you can view your stomach as a kind of measuring cup.  You can put food in by eating, and when it fills up you get full.

You would think then that on its way to being full, your stomach would pass markers like “20% full”, “50% full”, and so on.  But this doesn’t actually happen.  In a study done at Cornell University, participants were sat down in a room and told that they could eat as much soup as they wanted.  While some of the participants had normal bowls of soup and ate until they were full, others had unusual bowls of soup hooked up to tubes that, unbeknown to the diners,  refilled the soup as they ate.  So even after a couple bites, the soup would in reality be just as full as it had been.

So what happened?  You would think that the ones with the refilling bowls would get stuffed and quit eating while the bowl was still full, right?

Actually, the researchers found that the people who had the magical refilling bowls ate substantially more soup than people who had a normal bowl.  However, these participants, who ate up to 73% more soup than the other participants, didn’t notice at all.  They didn’t say that they felt more full or bursting at the seems.  After the meal, both groups actually sounded basically the same.  They were stuffed.

What does this mean?  It means that people generally can’t tell how full they are to the degree you and I would imagine.  And what’s interesting is that this is reflected in the number of words and phrases we have (at least in english) to describe how full we are.  Consider the follow words which represent the degrees of hunger:

• Starving
• Hungry
• Kind of hungry
• Not hungry
• Full
• Stuffed

Of course there are other words, but they essentially align themselves with these measures (“peckish” is the same as “kind of hungry”, “satiated” is the same as “not hungry”).  But essentially, that’s it.  We only have about six degrees of being able to tell how full we are.  Enough to help us get by?  Certainly.  But not exactly the 100 point scale we were imagining.

The Degrees of Fun

So if we agree that the number of words around an experience can reflect the degree to which people can measure themselves, then we can make some interesting observations around playing games and having fun as well.

I have been playing games my whole life, making games for over 10 years, and playtesting games for more than 7 years.  Playtesting is incredibly valuable, where you sit a player down, watch them play your game, reading the emotions on their face and asking them questions.  You watch what they do in the game, and in turn you see what the game does to them.  Do they pur

After doing years of playtests, any developer will tell you that they will begin to see patterns in how players feel.  In my experience, there are only 5 different Degrees of Fun that players can experience and describe having in games:

• Bored
• Frustrated
• Interested
• Satisfied
• Delighted

That’s it.  The names of the Degrees themselves may not be surprising; what’s most surprising is that one of those five words can accurately describe the feeling that players have in any given game in any given situation.  Let’s break these down:

Bored. When players aren’t interested in what they are doing, they don’t understand it, it’s confusing, or just doesn’t strike their fancy, then they are bored.  They are just about to quit playing (unless they have a strong Long Term Incentive to pull them through) unless something changes fast.  If you ask them in the moment of being bored, “Would you like to play this game again?” they would likely respond, “No.”

Being bored is the absolute bottom of the barrel, the worst place that your game could be in as a Designer.  A boring game is a game that has failed to interest the player.  It’s doesn’t make their life worse, but it doesn’t make their life better either.  Thus we have our first degree of fun.

Frustrated. Next up is frustrated.  When players are actively becoming upset at something, then they are frustrated.  They don’t understand how the game works, they are losing over and over, or they strongly disagree with how the gameplay is going, then players become frustrated.

However, being frustrated is actually better than being bored.  Why?  Because if people are frustrated with your game, then at least they care about it.  Players who don’t care about your game, that just go, “meh…” and move on, they won’t be upset that the UI isn’t working or that the third boss has way too much health.  Bored players don’t want your game to be fun because they aren’t invested.  And so while the first Degree of Fun leaves players ambivalent to your game, the second actually reduces their enjoyment of their life because of the frustration.

Interested. When players are just starting to play a game, exploring something that catches their eye, understand what they goals are and want to continue going, then they are interested.  It may be the Aesthetic Layout of the characters or the fun feeling of the Base Mechanics, but something has pulled the player into the game and beckons them to keep going.  They want to learn, they want to see more, and they want to play more.

You can see this almost any time you see someone playing a game they enjoy.  A Final Fantasy player exploring the world and looking for treasure.  A Call of Duty player searching the map for opponents. These are moments where players are continuing to play the game of their own free will; they aren’t frustrated or bored with the game, they are interested in it, and that interest compels them to continue on through the play experience.

Satisfied. While being interested can last for hours on end, being satisfied is often only a single moment within a play session.  When someone is satisfied with a game, then they have a feeling of accomplishment and a spark of happiness.  They are proud of what they has done, what is happening, or what they know is about to happen.  They would be happy to play the game more.  The game gives them a small degree of joy, which is one of the things that games are the best at.

Satisfaction doesn’t have to always come in the form of game-driven goals.  Of course when a player completes a level of New Super Mario Bros., they are satisfied.  But they are also satisfied when a mayor completes building his empire in Sim City.  When someone beats a high score, saves a comrade, or rolls a 12, then they receive payoff for the time they have invested in the game and enjoy themselves.

Delighted. While a game that satisfies players is often enough of a goal to make a successful game, games that allow players to be Delighted are the ones that find special places in their hearts.  Delighted is not simply “more satisfied”.  Delighted is a distinctly different magical moment, a moment that may only last for a few seconds and occur every few days or weeks.  Delight is the pinnacle of a game experience.  Moments when players are delighted are moments that stay with them their whole lives.

Completing a game and being dazzled by the ending or a plot twist often delights players – the delighted moments from Braid or Bioshock spawned entire forums full of discussions .  Winning a tough match in Starcraft with your friends that you were sure you were going to lose, yelling “Holy cow!  I can’t believe we won!” is a moment of delight.  Watching Kirby inhale an entire bear and laugh out loud at the unbearable cuteness is a moment of delight.  Or coming back to your favorite facebook game to see that your mom has sent you a present, even though you haven’t talked in days — these are moments of delight.  Difficult to engineer?  Most definitely.  But moments of delight are some of the magic of games, and mark the fifth Degree of Fun and enjoyment.

Which Degree does your game reside in?

I should make a note that the 5 Degrees of Fun do not speak at all to the other emotions of playing a game.  Resident Evil makes players frightened, while Shadow of the Colossus gives a sense of wonder. Heavy Rain causes players to think deeply and feel regret, while Forza gets players hearts racing and lifts their emotion up and down.  I do not claim that the 5 Degrees of Fun are a complete vocabulary with which to describe all player experience.  My only claim is that is a sufficient vocabulary to measure the aspect of Fun.

The 5 Degrees of Fun have made the game industry what it is today: an industry of creating fun experiences for millions of players around the world to enjoy apart from, inside, and along with their normal lives.  Creating moments of interest, satisfaction, and delight while avoiding boredom and frustration is what entices players to come back to games again and again.