Theory of Fun for Game Design Author: Visit Amazon's Raph Koster Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1449363210 | Format: EPUB
Theory of Fun for Game Design Description
About the Author
Raph Koster is a veteran game designer who has been professionally credited in almost every area of the game industry. He's been the lead designer and director of massive titles such as Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies; and he's contributed writing, art, soundtrack music, and programming to many more titles ranging from Facebook games to single-player titles for handheld consoles. He has worked as a creative executive at Sony Online and Disney Playdom, and in 2012 was honored as an Online Game Legend at the Game Developers Conference Online.
- Paperback: 300 pages
- Publisher: O'Reilly Media; Second Edition edition (November 29, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1449363210
- ISBN-13: 978-1449363215
- Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.6 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
First this is an easy and interesting read. It is in full color and may be just what you need if this is the first time you wondered why something is fun. It goes on to explain at a very high level why a specific subset of games are fun and then become boring.
However, it is NOT a THEORY on the psychology of why people find things fun. By the title, this is what I thought I was going to get, and I was disappointed. I'm going to nitpick on what I found wrong with the book. If you don't like reading criticisms like this, it might be better to skip this review.
First, it is not a theory and is not done by a psychologist or someone who understands human behavior, but by a game designer. Sure, he writes great games, but it is his intuitive guess or opinion on why things are fun. It doesn't even rate as an untested hypothesis, as the sample size is only 3. It's based on himself and his very young children. At that age, children are taught to think like you, so it is a biased and unfair sample.
He goes on to say that, like Tic-Tac-Toe, ALL games are based on a pattern, are teaching games, are only fun while we are learning the pattern, are boring when we have mastered the pattern, or are not smart enough to grasp the pattern early on. He then admits to often quitting the games he cannot master easily or once he has mastered them. So I find his opinion suspect.
Every other page is a full-page, full-color drawing. Why is this a bad thing? Full color art should add value to the book, right? As comics (which is what you assume they are at first) they are not funny, and the art is amateurish. As illustrations they are not often useful. Which means they are filler to expand the book.
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