ABSTRACT
Our love of media entertainment has never been greater. From boy wizards saving the world from evil to aging gangsters desperately trying to keep their families together, our appetite for written, televised, fi lmed, and interactive narratives is seemingly endless. A primary motivation to seek out these stories is the boundless joy that they offer to readers, viewers, and players. On its face, enjoyment appears to be the outcome of a rather straightforward process: we seek, we view (or play), and we enjoy. However, entertainment theorists have for decades been unraveling a complex set of factors that lead to the experience of media enjoyment. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of some of these efforts.
