ABSTRACT
Good video games are typically described as being “fun,” so game designers are usually striving to reach that outcome. For game designer and educator Tracy Fullerton, designing a game is about creating an “elusive combination of challenge, competition, and interaction that players just call ‘fun’” (Fullerton 2014). Therefore, one of the goals of iterative design is to verify if players are having fun (Salen and Zimmerman 2004). The problem is that what makes a game “fun” can be difficult to assess. As game designer Jesse Schell points out, “Fun is desirable in nearly every game, although sometimes fun defies analysis” (Schell 2008). For example, game designer Raph Koster describes fun as “another word for learning” that makes our brains feel good and evade boredom (Koster 2004), but researcher Roberto Dillon considers that, “Fun is a very personal activity that can be completely different from individual to individual” (Dillon 2010). As game designer Scott Rogers put it, “The problem with fun is, like humor, it is completely subjective” (Rogers 2014).
