A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster

Author:Raph Koster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: COMPUTERS / Programming / Games
ISBN: 9781449363161
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Published: 2013-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

Mere entertainment becomes art when the communicative element in the work is either novel or exceptionally well done. It really is that simple. The work has the power to alter how people perceive the world around them. And it’s hard to imagine a medium more powerful in that regard than video games, where you are presented with a virtual world that reacts to your choices.

“Well done” and “novel” mean, basically, craft. You can have well-crafted entertainment that fails to reach the level of art. The upper reaches of art are usually subtler achievements. They are works that you can return to again and again, and still learn something new from. The analogy for a game would be one you can replay over and over again, and still discover new things.

Since games are closed formal systems, that might mean that games can never be art in that sense. But I don’t think so. I think that means that we just need to decide what we want to say with a given game—something big, something complex, something open to interpretation, something where there is no single right answer—and then make sure that when the player interacts with it, she can come to it again and reveal whole new aspects to the challenge presented.

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