Week 6: Readings

GDW Chapter 11: Fun and Accessibility, Is Your Game Fun? (p341—346)

In this chapter, the author explores the different qualities of which makes a game fun. One of that is the aforementioned challenges that the designer could have in the game. The challenges must be appropriate to the player's skills level, in order to give a satisfying gameplay rather than a boring or a frustrating one. In my opinion, it is not difficult to find a challenge and its objective to give to the game, and it's even something that came up first even before everything else whilst brainstorming the game. However, tuning the difficulty levels of the challenges to be fun to play is something I found to be very difficult to do, as well as time consuming. This is because the only way to find out if the challenges are fun to play, or how they would need fixing, it to do lots and lots of playtesting. In addition, it's also my own inexperience in tuning difficulty levels in games that makes it challenging to me. On the other hand, this also means that it is very possible to me to get better at this through practice and playtests.

Other aspects that were given as examples for creating a fun game is the competition element within a game. Competition is one of types of challenges that could given to the player. With a balanced game, competition can play a very important part in making a game fun. This is because many players are competitive by nature, and when they win, can provide a ver satisfying experiences. When I made the card game Planet Plunder with my group, the playtesters had mentioned that the compeition part has made the game 'fun.' This is because the competition creates communication between other players and allows them to strategize by making their own choices. These qualities were also mentioned in this chapter: the interesting choices (choices with consequences) can contribute to the fun of the game, and the social interaction that can differs depending on how the players decide to create the relationships during the game.

Personally, there are a few aspects mentioned in this chapter I found myself enjoying in a game more than others. These are competition, collection, and living out fantasies. Since competition and a little bit of collection was used in the previous game Planet Plunder, it would be interesting to try making a game that allows the players to live their fantasies in future projects as well.