Fun is the essence of games—whether they’re video games or real-life games like soccer, card games, and playing with toys—and it’s what attracts players. If a game isn’t fun, no one will be interested in it or play it.
A game developer is an artist who creates games that are truly fun, right? In fact, they can create fun out of almost anything. Give them some paper, pens, or even a small ball, and they’ll surprise you with their ability to create something that keeps you entertained for hours.
So a game developer must learn how to create fun from their surroundings, and this raises the question: What is fun, and what elements turn things into a game? More precisely, what are the elements of a fun game?
What Is Fun, and What Is a Game?
In the dictionary, fun is a beautiful emotional experience characterized by contentment and happiness. It may be short-term or long-term, and may be associated with specific activities, objects, or people.
Then there is enjoyment, which is the process of experiencing pleasure. You could say that the things around us that we do for the sake of pleasure constitute enjoyment; therefore, it’s fair to say that games provide pleasure through enjoyment—a bit philosophical, but important.
A game, then, is an entertaining activity or event that lifts the spirits and brings joy—that is, it is enjoyable—so games must be fun.
We must draw a distinction here between video games and “real” games, such as toys and LEGO blocks. The latter are small objects and models that help you build games; they are not games in and of themselves, but they assist in that process. In contrast, the former are games in and of themselves.
But why is there this difference? Why do I call the former a game and the latter not? The answer lies in the elements that make up games.
The Four Elements of a Game
Games consist of four essential elements: (goal, rules, challenge, and decision-making). When these four elements are present in the right balance, we experience the enjoyment we discussed earlier.
There is also the player, but this is such a self-evident element that it hardly needs mentioning. I could go on at length here about the philosophy of existence and how the player is fundamental—but suffice it to say that they are essential, and I won’t discuss them further!
Let me now talk to you about the remaining elements one by one and how they relate to enjoyment.
The Goal
People never strive for something without a goal; there must be a goal, even if it’s simple—like a simple game such as soccer, where the goal is to put the ball in the opponent’s goal, or perhaps even to set a new record.
A player might aim to accomplish something within a set time limit, or the goal might be very complex, such as completing many different tasks.
However, some games offer a different approach to goals. While most games tell you what to do or what your goal is, there are sandbox games—games that don’t specify your goal but give you the freedom to do whatever you want within them.
Thus, you, as the player, determine what to do. In other words, there is ultimately a goal, but the player defines it for themselves—like in Minecraft, which gives you the freedom to build, destroy, explore, and much more. You might decide, for example, to build a house or a large city, or to finish the game in record time.
The absence of a goal can be described as absurdity—meaning there’s no point in doing anything. People don’t like absurdity, so the lack of a goal means that people—or players—will dislike the activity presented to them—in this case, the game.
The Challenge
A challenge is a type of obstacle that prevents you from reaching your goal. It appears in games in various forms, and since its purpose is to prevent you from achieving your goal, the nature of the challenge is shaped by the nature of the goal.
For example, in table tennis, the challenge is the net, as well as an opponent trying to achieve their own goal. In some other games, the challenge is time-limited; you must perform a specific action within a set time frame.
There are video games where the challenge consists of level obstacles—such as spikes on the ground and walls—designed to test your jumping and character control skills (parkour)—or enemies trying to kill you with their weapons.
The challenge may be so difficult as to be impossible, or so easy that it isn’t really a challenge at all, so as a game developer, you must strike a balance; the challenge must be appropriate for the objective and the player’s own abilities.
I’d also like to point out the concept of the “target audience”—the players you want to reach. If you’re aiming for children and older adults, you might need to make the challenge easier; if you’re targeting professional gamers, make it as difficult as appropriate.
When a player feels capable of overcoming the obstacles in front of them or conquering a difficult challenge (from their perspective), they’re sure to feel a sense of accomplishment, which makes them happy. This is the second part of fun, as defined above: the feeling of satisfaction.
Rules
For some reason, we humans love laziness and procrastination, so our minds always work with us to find easy solutions to the difficulties we face. If there’s a difficult challenge, there’s bound to be an easy way to overcome it.
For example, in a running race, a competitor might use a car or a bicycle—that’s how they make it easier to achieve their goal. Without rules, a player can do whatever they want, and nothing ties them to the challenge at hand; they will certainly find a way to circumvent the challenge to get what they want.
Rules in games aim to set limits on the capabilities of the human mind so that players do not cheat their way to the goal or avoid the challenge at hand. And, of course, they also aim to establish a fair system that prevents cheating in competitive games.
Rules are somewhat similar to challenges, but differ in that they are fixed. A challenge, on the other hand, may vary—such as the enemies or opponents a player faces—meaning they might encounter an easy opponent or a difficult one. However, rules are fixed and unchanging; thus, they represent a kind of systematic challenge.
Rules play a major role in the difference between real-world games and make-believe games, because the latter have no specific rules to follow—so your way of playing differs from someone else’s. As soon as you establish rules for how to play, you’ve created a real game.
In video game development, sometimes there’s no need to establish actual, visible rules, because the game world itself is enough to create these rules—for example, a character might not be able to jump at all!
And sometimes you need to establish them so that players understand what’s required and why they can’t do certain things, such as in card games or role-playing games (RPGs).
Decision Making
And here’s the most important element of all: it’s not enough to just give you a goal, a challenge, and the rules of the game. Who says that’s enough to have fun? What if your goal is to eat a salad, the challenge is to eat the whole plate, and the rule is to use a spoon!
Eating the salad is still no fun; the final element—decision-making—must be present. This means providing the player with several different options so they can achieve their goal in whatever way they prefer.
People love to be right, so when a player makes the right decision, they feel joy and happiness—and that was the second part of the definition of fun. Therefore, offering different decisions is a fundamental element in creating fun games.
There must also be wrong choices that could lead to your loss. This is what adds to the fun of making the right decision. Otherwise, the player’s choices wouldn’t make any difference.
There are split-second decisions, such as choosing one path over another, and there are long-term ones, such as planting potatoes instead of onions in Stardew Valley during the appropriate season (and harvesting them after a long period of tending to them).
Balance
If we view these four elements as numerical metrics, they must align with one another.
A complex objective with many available options and strict rules leads to difficulty in gameplay, and in most cases, that’s bad. The opposite is also true: a challenge that’s too easy, with a goal you can complete with the press of a button, is also bad.
A lack of options means the player has no freedom of choice, so their actions have no impact; the game is therefore linear—and that kind of experience is always boring.
You can make sure your game is fun by having others play it; if they don’t enjoy it, try rebalancing these four elements again, and keep doing so until the game is fun.
What about real-world games?
I’ve already discussed these toys in several sections of this article, but I’ll summarize them for you here.
Dolls, toy cars, and LEGO bricks are all referred to as toys, but they aren’t toys in and of themselves—rather, the game is what you create with them.
Imagine creating a story for a doll, building a special track for a car and making sure it can navigate it, or constructing a house out of blocks—that is play, because you’ve set goals and challenges for them.
And as soon as you establish fixed rules for how to play with them, a game is formed that others can play as well. Take the Rubik’s Cube, for example: if there were no rule prohibiting you from solving and reassembling the cube, it wouldn’t be a game—it would just be a cube with certain movement mechanics.
Not a Requirement
I’ve talked a lot about fun, play, games, and their basic elements, but humans are complex beings; we can’t easily describe our feelings. Drinking coffee in the morning might be a fun activity, and sitting with someone you love and talking to them is also fun.
Fun remains a mystery to us humans, but we try as best we can to describe it and test whether our descriptions are accurate.
So it’s not a requirement that your game be fun just because you include the four elements mentioned; it might actually be bad and need additional elements to be enjoyable.
I believe these four elements are enough to turn anything around us into a game, and the rest are secondary extras. So tell me what you think about this: Do you think they’re really enough to create fun games?
Resources: Game Elements, Game Design, Fun Image resources: Image 1, Image 2, Image 3