As we all know there is no one definition of fun that can encompass everyone’s version
of fun…Thus where my question is posed from, how do you know if the game that you’ve designed is “fun”?
Are there some governing rules/hints to help guide you through? or do you just trust that your “fun” or the “fun”
that you have instilled in your game/game design is something everyone will understand?
Personally I draw from my experience of being a gamer and the countless number of games that i have
played through out me life to help me with this (which i know isn’t a very good idea and may create bad habits but it does have it’s pros to it as well) though in the end i’m unsure on this topic… What do you guys think?
I draw from experience. And the person I’m working with’s experience.
Obviously, not everyone shares my vision of fun. I don’t think it’s possible to find a game that will be fun for everyone… so I assume that if I think it’s fun and if the person I’m working with thinks it’s fun, then there will certainly be a group of people who will think it’s fun.
There’s probably a lot more thought that can be put into it than that, but that’s what I’ve been running off of so far!
Have you watched someone play it? Find a member of your target audience, ‘Would you mind testing my game? I just want to watch you play, please don’t ask me any questions.’ Give them the game, say nothing else, and watch them play. No excuses, no explanations. It’s the butt-in-seat test.
5-10 minutes of that will probably answer your original question and unless you’re lucky, the answer will almost always feel like a NO. Which means more iterations to ‘find the fun’.
I see… So you guys go full on practical (Make a working prototype as quickly as possible,post it out there and get feedback asap) but is that really feasible/doable for all game ideas? Aren’t there some ideas that don’t quite shine until they are complete? or is that just me?
Also Yes, there maybe no universally accepted “fun” game but there are games that are close…How do games such as Mario become really popular to the point of inspiring an entire generation? while others fail to do so in anyway? what’s in their design that makes a whole lot of us say “hey that looks like fun” ? (Okay i’m aware this may be partly another question lol)
Ask other gamers and developers. My friends generally don’t give the best feedback because they want to be nice and are impressed that I even have something moving on the screen. Post your stuff here and ask for some genuine feedback.
Well, if your game needs to be feature complete to start being “fun”, it means it’s not.
What I mean is that any of your mechanisms should be fun on their own, so that any part of your game would be too.
As for friends, I have a few that won’t hesitate to say if it sucks. Not quite nice for your feelings, but for feedback, it’s great.
I absolutely agree this is the case. All one needs to do is take a look at any of the tutorials about making games or dev logs of game developers to see it in action. Say you release your game and it has the player moving around an empty screen. Is that fun? Some people might think so. Most would likely say no. Maybe you wait until the player can also jump and perhaps you throw in some scenery. Is that fun? Probably a few more people would think so but again many would likely talk about how empty it is add some enemies or something. I do not agree with the whole “every part of the game should be fun”. I mean sure it should be well executed. The walking. The jumping. Whatever. But there is no way anyone could judge that game’s potential which turned out to be Halo or Diablo 3 or whatever just from that very early demo you threw out there.
I don’t think that “complete” matters. There are certainly some where the prototyping takes ages, though.
I’m currently working on two hobby projects. The larger one is heavily AI driven, and there’s no point testing it on people until there’s a base AI and an environment to test with. So that’s taking ages (months*). The other one is a simple casual puzzle game. That got its first user feedback test two nights ago, after just a week and a half*.
In both cases these are spare time projects on the side of a full time job. They average probably getting equivalent effort per week to a day or a day and a half’s full time work.
That is true. I didn’t catch the bit about “complete”. Of course, the game does not need to be complete for people to play test it and understand your design goals. But like @angrypenguin said about prototyping… enough of your design needs to be implemented for people to experience it. Take basically any game and then imagine it with 90% of it gone. It could go in so many directions from that point it would be nearly impossible to judge it. All that can be judged is what is currently implemented and if enough is implemented then the play testers can probably figure out ah so there will be more stuff like this and more stuff like that. And so on.
I’m giving it to people i trust that aren’t afraid to tell me that it sucks.
If the other person giggles when he/she dies and hits retry, i’m guessing that it’s going ok.
Whenever i want my friends or family to review something i make, I usually just say “Hey come check out this game i found…What do you think of it?” Just to get their 100% unfiltered opinion and as game designers we should be ready
for all kinds of answers…
Whhhich is easier said than done because trust me having one person bash your game is something but having an entire group bash something that you made is nothing but painful and sucks but still we have to find a way to take what they are saying and make something positive out of it…
Now I do understand what you guys are saying, actually i’m not arguing with the fact that the practical route is arguably the best way to go but lets take an example of an indie success… Limbo
Limbo despite it being simplistic in nature and game design was a huge hit and would have a simple prototype done it justice and fully describe what this game is supposed to be about?
In other words what i want to say is would have a game like limbo worked out if it went with the “practical” route we are describing right now? Would you have seen its appeal if you saw it first as nothing but a simple prototype? and that’s my question…sorry for not being clear >.>
What might it mean for a AAA to not test this way? “Well sir, we need another $80M to get a reasonably polished version, then we’ll start letting people play it to see if we can find the fun!” Can’t imagine it! Testing is an art, and a science and it happens early and often. There are vertical slices, horizontal slices, internals, butt-in-seat, prototypes, and more. Find the flaws and find the fun. Your early ideas are just clay, waiting to be molded into something beautiful. Iterate, iterate, iterate.
Maybe it’s a difference between a hobbyist and a professional. The hobbyist is hoping to maybe invent something fun. A professional expects success and is trying to improve their process for getting there.
