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What is Fun? A Game Design Introduction

48K views · Oct 31, 2025 · Gaming

Indie Game Clinic

52K subscribers

Comments · 212

@IndieGameClinic · 1 day ago · pinned
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@mwilson5449 · 11 months ago
"He didn't call them fun, because he was a French intellectual and therefore didn't know the meaning of the word" - Jesus Christ, LOL. Shots fired.
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@galev3955 · 10 months ago
'After all all indie games are secretly about depression'. God, that hit haaaard!😂
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@protobeing3999 · 11 months ago
"however we all know that indie games are all secretly about depression" lolololollololooll Yes
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@couchx8809 · 10 months ago
being able to identify all the ingredients in a dish and how they deliver a particular flavor combo is WAY more useful than stopping at "well, we evolved to enjoy flavors because they nourish us"
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@raphkoster4490 · 10 months ago
A bit of trivia: my original title was "A Theory of Fun: Why Games Matter." The publisher changed it. :) FWIW, I personally think about this in this way: Most lists of "types of fun" are actually lists of "types of problem spaces to master." There's loads of ways to clump problem types -- you mention Caillois, and other taxonomies. (You missed Nicole Lazzarro's four types, which are similar to Caillois but use modern terms! And are based on actual psych experiments!) Some problem types are about your body, others about your perception, others are math, some are about other people, etc etc. Pretty much all the problem types are going to need a similar list of ingredients to actually end up fun: clarity of problem, multiple ways to approach the problem, decent feedback when you take actions, etc. That part is generally common across all of them. NO problem will be fun for everybody. That's where motivations comes in. That's just a mapping of problem types to people. There are some lists which include things that are not related to mastering problems. You mentioned surprise being fun. But surprise and delight don't really work the same way as problem types do. Usually, they're part of the juice, not the problem. Any problem type can be made delightful, or surprising. And you can have delightful or surprising things without having a problem behind them. Making a game solely about juice is almost always doomed because juiciness wears off with exposure, unless you are making truly chance driven games (which trick your brain into thinking there's a real problem there). That's why I used a narrow definition of "fun" in the book -- to try to break apart that blob into smaller parts that were useful. The moment the book came out, though, your critique emerged -- one academic said "you should have just called it 'kfun'" which i suppose is fair! :D
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@Mallsoleum · 11 months ago
This video is POPPING OFF Great job on this one. 10/10 DOPAMINES
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@handbot · 6 months ago
This is the first of your videos I've watched and is an instant-subscribe. Really well thought out and produced. Wecan tell you kept returning to the question of "what can people actually use from this information to make a better game". Great work
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@theCervial · 9 months ago
DOPAMINE! (it hits so well)
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@EastWestInfinitiGameStudio · 7 months ago
If I got a quarter every time a big game developer told me "you need to figure out if your prototype is Fun", id be a billionaire. And I'm like okay but what is fun? And lo and behold 5 years into game Dev with two releases I stumble on to the explanation of "fun" in games. Bravo Dr ....Bravo!
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@MrModez · 8 months ago (edited)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56ENqlUST9U&t=1011">16:51</a> I laughed way too hard on this section 😂 Thanks for the video, very insightful!
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@mejiasan · 7 months ago
the way the dopamine clip was used continuously is the best exampke of type 3 fun
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