What makes a game fun?

 What makes a game fun?

Why are there some games that I love playing and others that I'm not really up for all the time? Example: I now own Wingspan on Steam, and I've played over twenty games of it so far. Every time I'm done I'm like, Maybe one more game. I remember the very first time ever playing Dominion, where it wasn't our copy, it was the Lovelands, and we were at the Lovelands. And two turns into the game I was like, I need to buy this game.

And there are other games where I'm like, uh, okay I'll play. Such as Terra Mystica. I'll play it, sure, but I know I'm going to lose.

So, is liking a game tied to how well you do at it or if you win? I don't think so. I think I might not like Terra Mysitca as much, not because Alex always kicks my butt at it, but because I don't know how to get into it, get well at it, hmm, how do I put this? Like, I always feel like I never have enough stuff. Never enough workers or coins. So I can't do anything.

So maybe it's the freedom you have? Is the more freedom you have tied to how fun it is? In Alex's latest post he mentioned how he didn't like Charterstone as much as he thought he would, and one of the reasons was "I never felt I got a good grasp on the gameplay itself. I don't really know how to win. Which is kind of concerning in a strategy game."  

So maybe it's how well you understand the intricacies of a game? Because I'll tell you what, I don't really know how to win Terra Mystica. The last game I played I thought it was doing really well on the Element tracks, but I got first on all four of them and still lost, so that wasn't it. 

So what makes a game fun? Freedom of choice during your turn? Knowing how to do well? Something else? The mechanics? 

Because certain mechanics I just find so fun. The reason I like My Village so much is because I love the mechanic of having a large die pool and pulling out two dice from it to make a specific number. I love Dominion because it's a deck-building game and I love deck-building.

I don't think how fun a game is has to do with the theme, or even how well the theme matches up with the gameplay. It might be a deal breaker for some, but not for me. Going along with the previous paragraph, I'm more of a mechanics kind of guy.

Here's another idea: Maybe it's the idea of having progressed. One reason I love 7 Wonders is because at the end of the half-hour you feel like you've created an entire civilization. At the end of a deck-builder (or pool-builder like Quacks) you feel like you've made something. 

I think that might be a major reason why the game Cerebria wasn't liked by critics. Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower states that he felt for such a huge game with tons of components "it feels like a small payoff" and "I'm doing this and this and controlling this and playing this and... we get one point." Moral of the story: games are fun when it feels like you're accomplishing something.

Another thing about Cerebria: It's too complex, too complicated. Why is Wingspan so fun? Because you don't feel like you're overwhelmed; you can do one of four things. In 7 Wonders the biggest choice you have is between 7 cards. In Dominion there's only ten kingdom cards out per game you can buy. 

But there's this balance, right? Because earlier in this post I said that the freedom you had made it fun, and now I'm saying it's not having that many choices. So which is it? Too many and you get analysis paralysis, not enough and you get Chutes and Ladders. And, like, I love Caverna. Caverna is an amazing game. But there's so much stuff you can do and so many paths to victory. But I still love it.

Here's a BGG article on this idea if anyone wants to read it: (Is there such a thing as too many choices?) 

So why do I like Caverna, and Viticulture, and 7 Wonders, and Dominion, and Scythe, and... all the other games on the right-hand side of my blog? I like them because I have fun playing them. But why?

Why play games at all? What's the purpose of games? I think that Michael of VSauce said it best when he said, "In life, the rules are complicated, the goals are indeterminate and the methods for achieving them are often unknown or different for every single person. Plus, the rewards themselves are often slow to come or non-existent. So, in the face of all of that, it's no surprise that we invented games within the larger game of life itself that ensure fast, easy-to-achieve and understandable rewards."

So maybe a game is fun when there are clear goals, clear ways to reach those goals, clear things you can do on your turn, (but not too many things you can do on your turn,) but the goals aren't too easy, but they're not too difficult, and has awesome mechanics, and... man, I don't know.

And the reason I'm asking myself these kinds of questions is because I want to make the games I create fun. I want people to want to play my games. I want the games I make to be played and for the player to say, Man, that was really fun. I'd like to play that again. Because that, my friends, that is the dream.

From what I can remember from my dream last night.

So it was Christmas break and so everyone's hanging out at mom and dad (Glen and Beth)'s house. And my foot kept hurting so I kept having to bring my foot up and take my fingernails to take great big slivers out from my foot. But the slivers were actually long sewing needles. And I didn't think anything of it at first, until it kept happening and I realized, hmm, this is weird, how did all these sewing needles get jabbed up into my foot? Because they were like, all the way in there, with just a centimeter of the needle sticking out, which I grabbed and slowly slid the needle out of my foot. But like, no blood or anything, just stabbing pain when I stepped. And I thought, what if these aren't actually needles, but my brain is playing a trick on me? 

So Adam and I looked it up (Adam was there, by the way) and yep, it was just all in our mind. Because Adam had the same thing too. So it was all in out heads, and the needles weren't real, but wait, because I could see the needles Adam pulled out of his foot and he could see the needles I pulled out, so how is that possible if they were just a figment of our imagination? Then I had the idea that maybe because we told each other there were needles our minds would fill in the gaps, so I had the idea that we should draw what we saw and then compare the pictures to see if we saw the needles in the exact same locations, and if not then it meant our brains were just filling in the gaps.

Only Adam didn't like that idea and he told me we should take medicine, and the medicine was in the top of my mom and dad's right-hand closet. And I go there and there are boxes on top and I look through them and there's no medicine but there is a Christmas gift I wrapped for Heather and hid up there so no one could find it, but I forgot about it too. So I come out and unwrap it (instead of giving it to Heather to unwrap, I guess, my bad) and it's a cute little couples gift, which for some reason reminds me that Adam is old enough to be married with kids, but he doesn't, because he passed away years ago in a climbing accident.

And then I'm like, what the heck? Because, you know, I've been hanging out with Adam this whole time, and so I confront the rest of the family about it, and they admit that all this time I've been talking to Adam I've actually just been standing there by myself talking to myself. Which annoys me, but I guess that explains how I was able to see the needles that Adam took out of his foot. But I was like, wait if it was all just really in my head how was Adam able to lead me to this Christmas gift for Heather? Spooky.

And this somehow transitions to Heather and I are going to be moving, but instead of bothering to pack up everything because that would take forever, we'd just pick up the entire house and move it with all the stuff still inside. And my parents were gone for the week so it was the perfect time. So we made arrangements and lifted the whole house up, and Uncle David took it off to put in near Grandma and Grandpa's house. But for some reason we still had a bunch of stuff which we had to pack up, and loaded up in this large trailer.

And Dr. Strange was there and he helped us out, only Dr. Strange was Uncle Alan and everyone just took this in stride, and he drove the large trailer with an attachment on the back. His car was so packed full of stuff and four people (I think Henry and Joy, along with Brent maybe?) that there was literally no room for me, so I had to ride on the back on top of the back attachment. Only I couldn't get a really good grip, so part way there I fell off with a bunch of stuff. This was on a dirt path on the dairy. We tried to fit it back on but to no avail, but then thankfully Eric showed up, who worked for some sort of moving Uber company, and after calculating how much stuff he would help us carry in his truck, he calculated that he'd be paid $9.95 from his company, so he excitedly agreed to help. 

So we made it the rest of the way and ended setting up the house next to Grandma and Grandpa's house, right where their trailer/RV was. And it was super hot out, so everyone was in the shade. And then I realized with horror, What were mom and dad going to do when they got back into town and noticed a giant hole where their house used to be? It was the first time any of us had thought about it. And I was like, how can we just take their house and move it without telling them? And I asked around to Alan and David and everyone if they had told my mom and dad but everyone just assumed that someone else had done it so no one had. 

And I can't really remember what happened next but I woke up a little bit after that. I don't think my parents ever made it back into Fallon to see what we did by the end of the dream.

Christmas break in Fallon, 2021

This last previous December (a week ago, I don't know how to say it) Heather, Henry, Joy, and I traveled down to Fallon to visit family. It's the first time in years that all 7 of us have been together in one place in person (Glen, Beth, Andrew, Eric, Ryan, Hannah, Alex).

As expected, we played tons of games. We also did two really cool major things: We played through the campaign of Charterstone, and we did a Taskmaster season.

Charterstone is a great game in its own right. It's a solid worker placement. I didn't win a single game in the campaign, but still had fun.

Taskmaster is a show that I've watched on Youtube. And apparently Hannah and Kaellen have too, because they decided to be the taskmaster and assistant and put all of us through four (or more) tasks. Our last full day there they put on the live show and we got to watch the videos they edited together of us completing the various tasks. It was a blast and I really loved it. (And, yes, I'd say that even if I hadn't have won.)

The tasks: Hide and seek, make the best noise, give other competitors bonus points, don't blink, stand up after exactly 90 seconds; eat exactly 345 calories, collect papers and find out they tell you to scream, do something that looks impressive in reverse, write your own task, figure out who wrote which task, come up with a cool fact and have Kaellen guess what it is simply by mouthing it.

Games I got: Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, Wingspan, Pandemic Iberia, 7 Wonders Duel, Between Two Cities.

Playing The Crew Mission Deep Sea.

Angeles playing Meow Meow Mia with Henry and Joy.

My mom and Dad talking about something,
probably how cool their eldest son is.

Heather and Sarah Rader, socially distanced.

Joy and Hannah enjoying the snow.

Andrew, Henry, Joy, and Heather with their snowman.

Henry and I played Wingspan this morning;
it was Henry's first time playing.

He decided to go for a "use practically every action to get more food" strategy.

It didn't work, and I beat him 18-62.