Now, that I've introduced the concept of fun, let's look more systematically. Because knowing that there are many different things that can produce fun, doesn't necessarily tell us as much as we need to know to apply the concept of fun in either game design or gamification. Nicole Lazarro is a researcher and game designer who has a firm call Xeodesign. And she has specialized in emotion in game. She's actually done foundational research, it's tracking peoples' eyes and faces. And looking at, what in games actually produces fun? And you can find out more of her research on her website. I put a link her to an image file that provides much more detail, as well as the original white paper that describes her findings. Lazarro talks about 4 keys to fun. Four different kinds of fun that are general categories that appear in any kind of game like context. So what are they? The first is easy fun. Fun that's about blowing up stream, just chilling out, goofing off, hanging out with your friends. It doesn't have to be taxing. In fact, you don't want it to be taxing. It's fun just because it's casual, it's light, it's nice. It's fun, because it's easy. Second category is just the opposite. It's hard fun. So, how can fun be hard? Well, as I talked about challenges, problem solving, mastery, completion, overcoming obstacles, all of these things are fun in their own rite. So, we think of those things as fun, because the fun represents accomplishment. It represents overcoming something. And that's what makes the activity fun, if we're able to reach that plateau. So, second category is hard fun. Third category is people fun. Guess I'm drawing the other one, so I'm drawing easy, as well. The fun of interacting with others. The fun of working together on a team. The fun of socializing, fun that requires other people. Now, that could wind up being hard fun or easy fun as well, but this differentiates out the aspect of that fun that comes from the social interaction. And finally, there is what she calls serious fun. Well, fun can be hard. How can fun be serious? I thought serious was the opposite of fun, not really. First of all, some kinds of fun tie into serious real objectives. So, I talked about the fun of giving to others. There's a fun in doing things that are meaningful. There's a fun in doing things that are good for the planet, good for your family, good for your community. There's also a fun in doing things that have meaning for you. So, you recall that when I talked about some of the aspects of games. The magic circle and so forth. Part of what makes something game-like, is that some objective that has no real outside purpose, has a purpose within the game and it becomes engaging, because in the game that's meaningful to you. So, this relates to fun, as well. In particular, when we're talking about things like collections, pulling together something, getting a whole bunch of badges to unlock some sort of award. It's fun because, it's meaningful in some serious way, for you at that time. It may not be something that someone else finds fun or meaningful, but for you there is some objective involved, some meaning involved, and so Lazzaro would call that serious fun. Four different kinds of fun. All different and not necessarily mutually exclusive. So, the same game may be one or more of these things. The point is when we think about fun, we can't limit ourselves to just focusing on one aspect or another. If we think that fun is just something easy and casual, we'll miss the opportunity to engage people and make things fun using some of these other categories. Now, other game designers that come up with their own frameworks. One of them that's fairly well known is from a game designer named Mark LeBlanc. Who developed a framework that I'll talk about a little bit later for conceptualizing games. And as part of that, he came up with eight different kinds of fun. Slightly different template than what Lazzaro talked about. I won't go into these in detail. But just to get you thinking about different ways to structure thinking about fun. LeBlanc talks about the eight as sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, and submission. That last one submission is just the casual kind of fun, just something as a pastime. And if you really want to dig into what fun means for game design, I recommend a book to you by Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design. A classic book, talking about how game designers can think about fun and apply it. It's very conversational, gets you thinking. So, if you're looking for something else to dig deeper, that would be a good place to go. Alright, so some take a ways. What do we learn from this extended discussion about fun? Three things that I would have you take away from this. The first is should go without saying, fun doesn't just happen, it has to be designed. I'm going to talk later in the course about design frameworks for gamification. And it's really important to understand that fun is not just something that's out there in the world, sometimes things just happen to be fun. But if we're talking about making something game like, about motivating people to go and use less electricity, or to go and spend more time on your website, or to go and work together on a team to solve a problem on a project at work. We have to build systems that are expressly designed to unlock these different aspects of fun. Second is, fun isn't always easy. Fun isn't always simple, fun isn't always a purely happy positive experience, fun can be hard. Fun can be challenging, fun can be serious. And we tend to ignore that when we're thinking about fun, we shouldn't when we're designing gamified systems. Finally, there are different kinds of fun. Whether you take Lazzaro's four or LeBlanc's eight, or some other template. The point is, fun is a very nuanced concept. And we should look to exploit as many kinds of fun as possible. It's not always the right answer, or the best answer to focus in on one kind of fun, because we're missing opportunities to make things fun in different ways.
