Games, Play, and Joy: Part 4

The art of finding the fun.

This is Part 4 of my series Games, Play, and Joy, which is based on a class I taught in 2019 at NYU’s ITP (as part of my residency there), aimed at games-curious artists. As ever, this essay series doesn’t represent the opinions of my employers or whatever — just me.

Hope you enjoy.

Theory

• Part 1: Creating joyful possibilities with games.
• Part 2: Using rules as excuses and catalysts.
• Part 3: Playing with systems of power.

Tactics

• Part 4: The art of finding the fun. (you are here)
• Part 5: Adding gamefeel and juice.
• Part 6: The promises and perils of simulations.
• Part 7: The joy of feeling seen.

Your Turn

• Part 8: Epilogue.

In the first three parts of this course, we’ve mostly focused on theory: understanding what “joy” is; how it intersects with, but differs from, “happiness” or “fun”; and how other artists, game designers, and activists have used it to crack open the confines of daily life.

But intending to make a joyful experience, or making rules that give lip service to joy, isn’t the same as actually facilitating a joyful experience. A game ostensibly about joy can be profoundly un-joyful in practice, and a game that doesn’t explicitly talk about joy at all— like our super-simple arts rulesets in Part 2 — can be explosively joyful, so much so that it fuels a whole art movement.¹

At some point, we have to stop talking theory and start talking about tangible design decisions. So how can we tell the difference between when a design decision brings our players closer to a joyful experience, rather than dragging them further away?

Keeping a taxonomy

One of the easiest ways to sharpen your design skills is to make your own taxonomy of play. Really all that means is to start keeping a list of the different ways that you see people play; what that form of play brings to its players; and what design decisions help reenforce that experience.

As you see people play, think: what itch is a particular form of play scratching? Is a player drawn in by the thrill of high-level competition? The loose, silly delight of successful improvisation? The excuse to move and dance and perform? The excuse to take risks and be vulnerable? Or something else entirely? What is the pinnacle of the experience they are reaching for, why do they value it, and what about their play helps them get there?

Let’s do a practical example. Pretend you’re a freelance game designer. You’ve been hired by a client to create and design Dodgeball 2.0. How are you going to design it?

There’s many ways you could approach this client work, but in my opinion, before we start messing with individual rules, we should step back and think about who we’re designing for. What does a joyful experience look like for our players? What forms of play do they already gravitate towards, and what do those forms of play have in common?

Pretend we have two potential players for Dodgeball 2.0: both elementary school kids who, we realize, love the same sport for different reasons. Perhaps we notice that one of them is drawn towards the skill aspect of the game, immersing themselves in their team and delighting in their mastery of the sport, like tiny Dr. Js inventing new ways to dunk. And perhaps we notice that the other, while playing just as fervently, doesn’t seem to care about the score at all — rather, they delight in the pure dizzying chaos that comes with having one million balls flying through the air at the same time, like little Charlie Kellys going full wildcard. They find joy in the same game, but not for the same reasons.

The importance of this distinction is laid out in the foundational 2001 paper, MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. The authors argue that when we try to understand why different games are fun, it is useful to move away from limited terms like fun and gameplay, and instead use a more directed vocabulary of “aesthetic components that create their respective player experiences.” The player experience of (and motivation for) playing Quake, for example — a game with challenge as a “main element of gameplay” — is likely going to be quite different from the player experience of (and motivation for) playing The Sims, where fantasy and expression are much larger aesthetic components of the game. Once we know what motivation draws a player into the game, we can tweak our mechanics and dynamics to reenforce those experiences. This aesthetic vocabulary, or taxonomy, gives us “a compass [to] define models for gameplay.”²

We can apply a version of that approach to our dodgeball kids. MDA provides a taxonomy which we’ll talk about shortly, but for the sake of breadth, let’s rewind a bit in game studies and instead use the taxonomy described by Roger Caillois in his book, Man, Play, and Games. He notes that games tend to function as:

• Agon (competition, e.g. chess)
• Alea (chance, e.g. slots)
• Mimicry (role playing, e.g. tabletop RPGs)
• Ilinx (vertigo/disorientation, e.g. rollercoasters)

These four exist on a spectrum of structure, between the two poles of:

• Ludus (very structured, explicit rules)
• Paida (unstructured, spontaneous)

Mapping onto our dodgeball kids, it seems safe to say that our sporty dodgeball champ wants a game that emphasizes agon, and is more on the ludic end of the spectrum, while our chaotic wildcard prefers an approach centered on ilinx and paida.

Knowing this, we can now start to pick out design decisions based on the kinds of experiences our two players are seeking out.

If our target demographic is the one thrilled by competition and skill, we can add structure and sharpen the rules to keep the game tight. We can add constraints to make the game harder, to spur creative thinking around the margins. We can limit what individual players are able to do, to encourage teams to work collaboratively. We can create situations in which trickier shots are worth more points, forcing players to make split-second decisions and hail-mary plays. We can design rules around getting out that specifically keep evenly matched teams balanced and in tight competition, to avoid positive feedback loops that might accidentally favor one side once they start scoring.

If our target demographic is the one thrilled by pure chaos, then we can take a different tack — one oriented towards disorientation, vertigo, and drama. Maybe we keep our “out” rules loose, so if no one is paying attention, you can sneak back to your side and be right back in the game. We can make the balls super-soft, so getting hit hardly feels like anything; or coat the balls in colored powder, with the person being “cleanest” at the end winning and everyone else delighting in being covered in color. We can add twenty more balls, so it is nearly impossible to strategize or keep track of who has what. Maybe we add a touch of chaotic mimicry, where each team has a traitor whose role is hidden until they dramatically decide to defect.

Will some of these changes in the latter game make it less mechanically-perfect than the former? Sure! But that doesn’t make it a bad game. After all, a “good game” is nothing if people don’t want to play it. We’re going for a different embodied experience for different players, and what may feel unfair in the former context may now feel liberating and great.

Neither one of these is the “right” way to design dodgeball, nor are the categories themselves necessarily exclusive. (Dungeons and Dragons, for example, combines mimicry in the form of roleplaying, and alea in the form of high-stakes dice rolls.) The use of the taxonomy is not to rule things out: rather, it is to highlight a certain quality of play that we can use as an experiential North Star, helping us choose rules that reenforce the peak experiences our different players are seeking out. For any given rule or feature, our taxonomies help us ask “does this support the aesthetic experience people want to have/joy I want people to feel?” and add or discard it accordingly.

A case study

I’ll use one of my own games as a case study of this reverse-engineered development. In 2014, I was asked to make a game for NYU’s No Quarter exhibition. This game ultimately became Slam City Oracles, but as with all my games, it started a lot fuzzier than that.

At the time, I was really into the idea of making a game that felt like the mosh pits at the shows I had gone to in my youth. The game itself didn’t have to be a literal mosh pit, of course, but rather feel like one: the heart-pounding craziness, adrenaline rush, and sensory overload of getting flung around in a circle full of similarly ridiculous people.

I focused on trying to encapsulate that feeling first, prototyping mechanics that felt like a good time in the pit. I ended up coming up with this trampoline-style soaring up and slamming down.

The very first prototype of Slam City Oracles looked like this:

I showed this prototype to my partner and we both laughed about how it was barely a game and how little you could do in it. Then we didn’t stop playing with it for about fifteen minutes straight. That’s usually a good sign.

There was something super satisfying about the tension of the rise and the impact of the slam that just felt good. Even as two tiny yellow balls, the sensation came through loud and clear — you can almost hear the impact, even without any sound effects. Having just finished grad school with Caillois in my mind, I thought, okay, that’s what this game experience is about: pure sense-pleasure, utter chaos and vertigo, total ilinx. I still had to design the rest of the game, but defining that key aesthetic helped me choose (or cut) other mechanics based on how well they supported it.

For example: I had originally set up the levels to be horizontal — mostly as a default in my own brain, since most games are horizontal. Besides, I assumed people would be most interested in destruction, and since most real-life destructible things are on the ground, I figured I’d keep the players fairly close to the ground.

Thing was, everyone kept going up. I’d tell them they wanted to get points by slamming the stuff on the ground, and they’d go “yup, sure, uh huh” and then keep giggling while slamming themselves higher and higher into orbit, fully ignoring the stuff on the ground. Players kept reporting that they had the most fun trying to soar higher — to build up more dizzying momentum — rather than to bound across the level. It just tickled that ilinx bone. So, I changed the levels from horizontal to vertical, and everyone was immediately delighted.

Pardon the programmer art — this was well before I had implemented Jenny Jiao Hsia’s incredible assets.

Likewise, when tweaking the actual physics, I assumed that if folks wanted to do big slams, they’d want it to be satisfying on a tactical level: that is, having the ability to be really accurate and use big speed to shake up big objects. I made large objects much heavier (assuming they’d feel mastery by gradually gathering up enough speed to move something huge, a la Katamari Damacy) and slowed movement to give players time to line up their perfect shots.

Turned out: I was wrong! People responded a LOT more to the game when the objects were all relatively light and the physics were faster and looser, even if that was at the expense of their own accuracy and points. The precision I had initially valued was at odds with the ilinx they were seeking. Once I recalibrated my process towards ilinx, they were absolutely delighted.

Precise, more “accurate” relative mass, but almost painfully slow.

Fast, loose, technically less accurate, but way more satisfying. (Easter egg: the billboard of the NYU Game Center, as a lil’ thank you for funding the game. Smashing is the highest form of flattery.)

Once I got into the groove of designing this way, I found it easier and easier to add aesthetics and mechanics that players loved, rather than disliked or ignored. You can’t die or lose in Slam City Oracles, because people want their momentum and velocity to keep going. The game is full of bright colors, screenshake, and rainbow trails to add to the sensory overload. Objects bounce and dramatically break and explode with stars when you touch them. The points you get for slamming something is absurd —rounds often end with scores so comically high that they have to be denoted in scientific notation. It works, because ilinx is the name of the game. Not competition, not mastery, not precise headshots — just shrieking, laughter, slamming, and 100% pure, concentrated, no-pulp ilinx.³

You will not be shocked to learn that Caillois’ taxonomy of play is one of many taxonomies in game studies. There are many, many taxonomies of play, perhaps nearly as many as there are game designers. Attempting to define the One Canonical Taxonomy Of Play To Rule Them All is not only an academic death wish, it is — for our purposes — unnecessary. They are all useful: each one gives us data about the kinds of joy people are seeking through games, which we can use to guide our own design decisions.

For example, the taxonomy laid out in MDA includes:

• Sensation (game as sense-pleasure)
• Fantasy (game as make believe)
• Narrative (game as drama)
• Challenge (game as obstacle course)
• Fellowship (game as social framework)
• Discovery (game as uncharted territory)
• Expression (game as self-discovery)
• Submission (game as pastime)

I personally like the taxonomy of play laid out by Colleen Macklin and John Sharp in their book Games, Design, and Play. It includes (summarized):

• Competitive play (in which players try to come out ahead of their opponent, e.g. soccer)
• Cooperative play (in which players work together to achieve the same goals, e.g. Pandemic)
• Skill-based play (in which players are asked to develop a skill to perform the game’s actions in pursuit of its goals, e.g. Super Meat Boy)
• Experience-based play (in which players focus on exploring a world/a narrative/etc. instead of skill-based challenges, e.g. Dear Esther)
• Uncertainty-based play (in which players must deal with chance, e.g. blackjack)
• Whimsical play (in which players get absorbed by silly actions, unexpected results, and dizzying euphoria, e.g. Hit Me)
• Role-playing (in which the game generates stories through players inhabiting different roles, e.g. Dungeons and Dragons)
• Performative play (in which players act, perform, and/or generate dramatic action, e.g. Charades)
• Expressive play (in which the player experiences or expresses a feeling, a concept, or a facet of the human experience, e.g. Deadbolt)
• Simulation-based play (in which some aspect of the real world is abstracted into a game, and the player can tinker around with it, e.g. The Sims)

As you read through these lists, consider: which forms of play are you personally drawn to? Which ones bring you joy, and why? Are there any forms of, or motivations for, play you think are missing from this list? What are they, and how could you design games (or re-design games, like Dodgeball 2.0) to facilitate them?

All these taxonomies of play are pointing at desires that people have that they fulfill through playing games. Learning about and developing your own taxonomies of play will help you hone in on all these peak experiences, and sharpen your ability to choose the mechanics that support them.

So: what do we want to do? What feelings do our players want to experience? And what design choices can help us get them there?

We are just about halfway through the course! The last few chapters will be an overview of some specific (largely digital) game design techniques that you can use to help foster certain forms of joy in games. We’ll be talking about conveying physicality (especially scale, speed, and power); creating juicy sensory experiences; using simulation/de-gamification/re-gamification; and creating mechanics that subvert the rules of everyday life.

It would be absurd to say that these are all possible tools in this game design toolbox. These are simply a handful of tools that I use regularly, and that I hope help you cultivate the kinds of joyful experiences that you want to see in the world. My hope is that you use them as a jumping-off point to develop exponentially larger taxonomies and exponentially more tools for the field as you work and grow as a designer.

See you in Part 5.

¹ As Eric Zimmerman said: “To design a game is to construct a set of rules. But the point of game design is not to have players experience rules — it is to have players experience play.”

² MDA is more rigorous than the approach I’ve outlined in this essay, so if that appeals to you, I highly recommend checking out the actual paper.

³ I wrote more about the process of designing Slam City Oracles in my Gamasutra post, Finding the Fun.

Hope you enjoyed! If folks seem to like this series, I’ll keep going. If you want to buy me a socially-distanced coffee, you can do so here. If you want to donate somewhere, I think these folks are pretty cool.

Also, full disclosure, I’m friendly with some of the folks I cited here. But as a rule, I only cite folks whose work I think is legitimately important and great, regardless of whether we are friendly or somehow mortal enemies.