Chapter 10: Fun and Accessibility

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Overview

Remember when you first started testing your core idea, when you had just built out the foundations and structure of your game? All we were worried about at that point was making sure the idea was fun, i.e., was it a good idea for a game? Now that we've gone on and created a functional, complete, and balanced game, it's time to go back and really make sure the essence of what you thought was fun is still there. Of course, you've been paying attention to whether or not your game was fun throughout that process, we know that, but now is the time to make fun and accessibility your primary focus.

Before we can test for fun, we have to define what we mean by 'fun.' Unfortunately, 'fun' is one of the most elusive concepts you'll ever try to pin down. As with many aspects of art and entertainment, fun is subjective, contextual, and an entirely up to personal taste. You may think washing dishes is fun (we don't), or you may think shooting bad guys is fun. Your favorite game may be entirely based in strategy, while a friend's requires physical skill and dexterity.

In order to have a useful guideline for our testing process, we can at least determine why we want our games to be fun. Games are voluntary activities; they require player participation-a high level of participation. Unlike movies or television, the 'show' does not go on if players cease to play. So if your game has no emotional appeal, players are apt to stop playing, or never pick it up in the first place. So, fun appeals to the emotions. And all of the emotional and dramatic elements that drive a player to pick up your game, to try it out, and to continue to play it, are usually what players cite when asked about what makes a game 'fun.' So those elements are what we will look for when testing your games during this next stage.

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