"Games should just be fun."

[Netrigan]

I am going to state this maxim right here;

[HEADING=2]"Fun/Entertainment" and "Art/Depth/Complexity" do NOT have to be separate entities![/HEADING]

I prefer to use the word "entertaining" as it encompasses the industry much better. Was Schindler's List "fun"? Was A Clockwork Orange a perfectly fun romp? No, but neither of these facts change how great those movies are or their impact on the world.

This can work for games to. Nobody wants "pure art" games or "pure fun" games, even though at times we do enjoy those extreme types of games. What people want is a balance of these things. You can still have an enjoyable game no matter the subject matter and you can still have a meaningful, artistic game without needing copious blood and guts or pretentious garbage.

Definitely.

Only thing I'd add to this, which I think a lot of people have alluded to, is a game has to have good core gameplay mechanics that fit with whatever style of game it is. If you spend the entire game fighting the controls, then it'll be a rare game that rises above it.

I enjoyed Heavy Rain, but there were more than a few moments where I cursed the really horrible movement controls. This didn't happen enough to wreck my experience, but if I had spent most of the game shouting "turn around, you fucking idiot" at the screen every time I had to cross the room, I'm not sure the story could have saved the poor experience.

In that sense, I think game play mechanics need to be, if not fun, as invisible as possible.

 

[TilMorrow]

Games have to have a level of fun specific to and based on genre, theme, gamestyle, controls, all the other astethics that they are made of. If a game doesn't execute this well, then it isn't fun.
EXAMPLES!!!!Woot we love examples)
Silent Hill games: Good scary fun. Deadly Premonition: Crappy 'scary' game that isn't fun.
Halo: Good FPS fun Black Ops Far Cry 2: Good story but crappy execution FPS
Mass Effect: Good RPG fun Emmm I don't know a crappy RPG...
GOW: Good TPS fun Terminator SAlvation: CRAPPY CRAPPY TPS

Examples done. Need more detailed info just ask.

Captcha: astothi USAID,

 

[Dfskelleton]

For me, I enjoy good storylines and characters and I love horror, but I also really enjoy mindless stupid fun like Doom or Duke Nukem or Bulletstorm.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Considering I'm one of those people...

At times, games like Call of Duty can be fun, but other times they are too serious and trying too hard to be realistic. That is ok, but now that every game is doing it, it is annoying. Bulletstorm, for example, is pretty much just killing dudes and not trying to be serious or realistic. You rarely see any games anymore like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc. NecroVision was another one I found really fun. Every weapon you come across you keep on you instead of having to switch it out with a weapon you already have (except melee weapons, but they are pretty much all the same anyway). They also had different combos you could do to increase your fury meter so you did even more damage. As for realism, you could have dual MG42 (equivalent) weapons, or one with a flamethrower mounted on it.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

(I mean this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otyXtzLNxoI], didn't manage to embed it).

All you need it the brackets is this:

youtube=otyXtzLNxoI

 

[vato_loco]

I would say that video games should be compelling.

I would say the same of all mediums. Fun is one way to achieve this goal. Excitement, fear, titillation, outrage, whimsy, and the full range of human emotion are all equally valid ways of achieving the same goal.

This. A thousand times this.

Sometimes a game isn't about "fun". It's about emotions. A range of emotions, most of them not even based around the idea of fun. You could say, though, that fun comes in a variety of ways.

Silent Hill, for example. It was scary as hell, but it compelled you to keep playing it because it was, at the end of the day, fun.

Another example: Final Fantasy VII. I played that ***** 'til the end because I was compelled to murder Sephiroth, to get revenge, to save the earth. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being only fun, to become fun by way of strategy, vengeance, warming up to the characters, etc.

 

[fealubryne]

Sorry, but I have to repeat this:

I think very few of the people on these forums and in this topic has any idea of what fun is and what art is. A game can be extremely enjoyable/compelling, thought-provoking and such, without being fun. A game can be fun without being artistic. You can combine both, but they undermine each other. If you allow the player to murder dozens of enemies (e.g. Homefront) then the point of your narrative is undermined and your artistic focus is much lessened. You can have great fun and great art in the same game (a movie representing this could be Inception), but it is so difficult to pull off (no, Bioshock didn't pull it off and you can cry to the moon and back about why Rapture failed and the themes it portrays, but from the moment that the gameplay is a total disconnect from those themes, it fails as both an art game and probably even a fun game; it may have good moments of both, but if they don't mesh, like Inception did, for instance, then it's just mediocre art, if not mediocre fun) that it's much more efficient to go fully artistic (e.g. in Homefront, instead of making you superpowered, you make the player character extremely weak and shape gameplay around the theme of rebellion, with few but decisive kills, sabotage and a lot of running from enemies while taking ocassional shots back at them; the point of the game is emphasised but the gameplay isn't fun, although it might be well paced, very enjoyable, etc.) or fully fun-focused (God of War, Call of Duty, Halo).

And I would disagree with this. It implies that the only way people have fun is by being violent in some manner, even going so far as to determine the ways in which they have to do that.

If you want to get really technical about it, look up the dictionary definition of the word "fun" and the dictionary definition of the word "compelling" and see what you come up with. One might almost say that you could have more fun (1. something that provides mirth or amusement; 2. enjoyment or playfulness) playing a clever, story-driven game and that a violence-oriented game is more compelling (1. tending to compel; overpowering; 2. having a powerful and irresistible effect).

As for what is art, that can be pretty subjective too. (1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.) Look at the definition. The quality of the game, the production, the expression, what is appealing or more than ordinary significance. A game doesn't necessarily need to have a deep and thought-provoking storyline to be considered art. It can be just the quality itself; how the mechanics are presented, how the game itself flows, any number of things.

So yes, as I said before, I think it's possible to have both in a game and no, I do not think they need to undermine each other if handled correctly.

 

[tautologico]

It's just that a lot of people don't seriously consider the idea that a game may be art, even among gamers.

@Astalano has it right. Delivering depth, sophistication and fun gameplay in one package isn't impossible, it's just hugely difficult and happens less often than many people like to pretend. In most real-world cases it is desirable for one to be prioritized over the other.

(Like I said above, there would be a way to deliver both consistently, but it would mean more-or-less totally inverting the currently-common development model. I wouldn't mind seeing it happen, but boy would it be tough to justify it to the shareholders of a company.)

Yes, agreed, but the question is: why do we have to limit games to only being fun?

There are many respected and well-liked movies that are engaging but you probably would never classify as "fun". No one says a movie is only valid if it is fun. Some movies may be deep and emotionally engaging and fun in the same package, but this is not required. No one requires that.

There will always be games that are "only" fun, just as there will always be movies that are just fun. The thing is that movies and books and other forms are "allowed" (for lack of a better term) to be engaging in other ways than just being fun. Games, apparently, are not.

 

[Headbiter]

Unfortunately the phrase "As long as the game is fun" in my eyes has been degraded to exactly that: A phrase.
It's basically just a placeholder for "Well, I don't know, like, what exactly a good game should be like, and, like, I don't like thinking about such things much, so, like, as long as there are funny lights and I don't actually feel, like, the (financial) backlash of spending [insert average game-price in your region here] for a mediocre or bad product, I, like, think you shouldn't complain. Because, like, it was fun for me...as far as my brain grasps the meaning of the word fun....like."

Now the famous step back:
What above example was meant to illustrate is, that most people who spout said phrase can't even define what "fun" is. And I'm not referring to the semantic definition (though finding out how many people actually know that would be interesting, too). I'm referring to actually backing your personal opinion up. By VALID arguments.
If I ask someone why he thinks that [insert game here] is fun and the best answer he/she can come up with is "Because it's fun" and/or "It has explosions in it", then I already know that I could spend my time better by talking to a brick. At least then I don't have the feeling that evolutionary potential got wasted big time.

Intermezzo:
Some might ask at this point "Dude, you want to say that games with explosions are not fun?". To which I'd of course reply "No, bisquithead, if I wanted to say that, then that's exactly what I'd have said." The point is, that statements like those above are utterly empty. In fact, "It's fun", while being completely without meaning for anyone but the person who says it (since he/she knows what for him/her "fun" is) bears at least SOME value. One-phrase-statements like "It's good because it has 'splosions in it." are utterly void, since it either means, that the person in question likes EVERYTHING that features any kind of explosion in any form in it, or, more likely, the person went through the game in a trance-like state and the only thing he/she remembers are those big lightballs, accompanied by a loud noise.
Apart from that, those to sentences were just EXAMPLES, you could take the sentence "It has [insert any one aspect/person/item here] in it." and the argument would be just as pointless.

Again OT:
If someone can explain to me, in an understandable and reasonable manner, why he/she thought that [game] was good, then I agree with it completely. I might still feel differently, but at least I can grasp the viewpoint of the other player.
Example: Someone explains to me the exact reasons why he likes the Civ games. He tells that he enjoys the large-sclae, multilayered planning that has to go in it, the mix of economic, military and diplomatic simulations, that he really likes the art style because it is very realistic/cartoony/whatever, and so on. I, personally, still will not feel comfortable in the Civ-games, because they are too cluttered, too slow paced for me and lack the kind of story-hook that is needed to draw ME into a game, but it gives me an UNDERSTANDABLE picture of why person X likes playing Civ-games.
And it's on a completely different level than "Oh, it's fun."

Which brings me to the opening post and the post of MrMoustaffa (whom I just pick because by the time of writing, his comment is the last on the thread for me). There, something is done, I can't understand:

If the game isn't fun to play, then it doesnt matter how good the characters, story, or graphics are, because you won't be able to enjoy it.

I've played several games that had good stories, characters, enviornments, messages, etc. but they were boring as hell to play, and ultimately I hated them because of it.

Here is a perfect example for something, that is already hinted at by the Thread-opener: The seeming statement is, that "fun" is not connected to things like the "story, the characters, environments, messages, ect." which makes me frown. What if all these things actually ARE what is fun for me in a game? What if a well-developed story is exactly what is needed to bring me into a game? How can you disconnect an aspect of a game from the term "fun", when it obviously is part of the fun for other gamers?
And yes, these are actual questions. Not just some rethoric crap, I'm not writing a live journal here. In your text, like in others (again, you're the person I'm talking directly to just by chance), I see the term "fun" a lot. A game has to be fun, fun is important, etc. But no matter how hard I look I can't deduce WHAT fun means to you actually.

Deriving from your avatar I'd guess you either like RTS or you like Sci-Fi-Action-games, but I'm not exactly Columbo, nor should I have to try to be in a gaming-forum.

And thus, we return to the opening-thread: Well, I'm not someone who pounds on the "games are art"-drum....too often but if I had to guess why "artsy" gamers are offended when faced with the "but it's no fun"-"argument", I'd say it's because such a statement implies that an artsy game cannot possibly be fun. You're basically saying art=/=fun.
As a statement for one game, that might have artistic visuals but has absolut horrid game-mechanics, that might be true.
But as a general statement that's just bullshit.

 

[moretimethansense]

If the game isn't fun to play, then it doesnt matter how good the characters, story, or graphics are, because you won't be able to enjoy it.

That statement is demonstraightably false, I've played games with "unfun" gameplay and loved them for the charecters, story or even just the way it tries to get the point across.

"Fun" is an objective thing, some people find mathematics to be huge fun, others caligraphy, yet others genuinly find the idea of simply obseving as a game plays itself to be entertaining.

Don't tell me what I will or won't enjoy, I know what I enjoy, you don't.

 

[Astalano]

Don't mean to single you out from a crowd there, but I think it's strange that you're telling us in definitive terms what art is and is not. That's been up for debate since the word came about.

I'd personally disagree that art can't be fun, but then again my definition of art is along the lines of 'something that elicits an emotional or thought-provoking response'. If Bioshock, to use your example, made the player question the relationship between the player and the character, then surely the gameplay and the story art both in harmony in this idea?

I try to give art a definition, because if we don't have a clear basis for art, then we'll never move forward. Yes, anything can be art, but in my opinion, good art only exists when everything flows in unison and the game doesn't treat art as its sole objective (i.e. being different for the sake of being different or ramming a theme down your throat). Bioshock is about a city without rules and regulations that tore itself apart. The gameplay is about shooting people and using plasmids and solving extremely simple and tedious puzzles. The two don't complement each other and your character doesn't even choose to embrace plasmids, it's forced upon you.

Yes, Bioshock has artistic elements, but I would never use it as an example of the artistic potential of our medium, because the art is just a small disconnected part of the game. The gameplay doesn't complement. If Bioshock had been about you as a businessman that embraced Rapture and allowed the player to make choices about how you proceeded in that society then yes, it would have been art. The Bioshock we have now is about shooting things. The shooting isn't a metaphor for anything or a symbol, it's just shooting.

Amnesia, on the other hand, mixes gameplay, presentation (graphics, visuals, sound, etc.) and story in one glorious unison. While the success of this is debatable, the very fact that they do flow in unison is not. Amnesia is an art game. Bioshock is not. Both can be considered good depending on what you consider enjoyable, but only one is truely art.

I don't think games like Flower and Osmos are good representatives either, because they shove themes down your throat and are simplistic and irrelevant. Yes, in Osmos it's all about survival and the biggest of the biggest. So what? That's not good art, it's not relevant and it doesn't play to the strengths and potential of gaming, where gameplay and story and presentation often possess characteristics that cannot be found in other mediums. In a book, movie or play, you don't participate, so artistic games should strive to involve the player as much as possible, challenging him to make decisions even.

Ultimately the quest for the best art game isn't about making art, but making the best game, in a way, for me. If we strive to tell a story about love, it should contain gameplay and presentation that complements a hopefully excellent story. This unison between the 3 core elements of gaming is what leads to the best games and yes, the most artistic.

I hope I explained that well enough and I don't want to come off as overbearing, but I do think art and fun in games needs to be clarified if we're ever going to stop debating for two seconds and actually make an artistic game or a truely fun game.

 

[ragawolf]

games should be fun

but in various ways
I find storytelling, immersion, and presentation enhancing the fun.

 

[tautologico]

Well, "we" don't have to do anything. But like I said, fun is the primary thing I look for in a game. It's why people from time immemorial have played games, of any kind. If it isn't delivering that, there's no point for me and I won't play it. Games are not movies or books and cannot hope to compete with either of those forms at what they do. Nor do they need to, nor should they try to. I really find all the insecurity about whether games are respected as "art" to be a huge drag.

I have no problem with people who only like "fun" games, but don't oppose games trying to be something else.

Having said that, have you considered the possibility that games can do things that neither movies nor books can? Games are interactive, after all.

Yes, games aren't books or movies. I'm not saying games should be long cutscenes telling a story with very little interactivity. I'm saying games are an interesting medium exactly because it is interactive. This adds an element that just isn't there in other forms of media. I think this has a huge potential, one that was never realized to this day.

It's not about insecurity. It's about seeing the potential. I've read brilliant comics that are definitely in the "art" camp, but if you go back some decades, everyone would say that comics are just entertainment, they could never be artistic or deep. They could never "compete" with books.

That's exactly what you're saying about games.

(BTW, I love fun games too.)

 

[bushwhacker2k]

Overall, I think games should be fun... actually, yeah, I can't remember the last game I enjoyed that wasn't fun... why are we having this conversation again?

 

[ArchBlade]

It's a little too 2-dimensional to say what games "should be". I think the variation between sheer fun or entertainment and engagement on other levels is healthy. The variation gives everyone some of what they want.

And if you're like me, you'll play more than just one type of these games. I enjoy the simple power trips, the action games as much as the next person. To compliment, I also love games that engage me emotionally, mentally or just on any other levels than simple enjoyment. If video games are a medium, then variety in "genre" as you might call it and audience is a healthy thing. There's no definite answer to what all games "should be" because there's so many different areas of potential to what they can be.

 

[spartandude]

I love it when a game is thought provoking, good story and characters and such. but having said that if the game isnt fun then i wont play it, however the things ive just mentioned often make it fun for me

 

[Dorian6]

The people who say that are idiots

that's like saying "movies shouldn't be thought provoking, they should only be a series of gunfights and explosions"

or "comic books should only tell superhero action stories"

or "musicals should just be a story punctuated by songs that reiterate what the characters just said"

It's an incredibly small-minded view of the genre, not to mention fodder for all the Jack Thompsons of the world. It's like the people who thought the "talking pictures" would ruin the film industry. Why can't a game tell an amazing story and be fun at the same time?

 

[Astalano]

Sorry, but I have to repeat this:

I think very few of the people on these forums and in this topic has any idea of what fun is and what art is. A game can be extremely enjoyable/compelling, thought-provoking and such, without being fun. A game can be fun without being artistic. You can combine both, but they undermine each other. If you allow the player to murder dozens of enemies (e.g. Homefront) then the point of your narrative is undermined and your artistic focus is much lessened. You can have great fun and great art in the same game (a movie representing this could be Inception), but it is so difficult to pull off (no, Bioshock didn't pull it off and you can cry to the moon and back about why Rapture failed and the themes it portrays, but from the moment that the gameplay is a total disconnect from those themes, it fails as both an art game and probably even a fun game; it may have good moments of both, but if they don't mesh, like Inception did, for instance, then it's just mediocre art, if not mediocre fun) that it's much more efficient to go fully artistic (e.g. in Homefront, instead of making you superpowered, you make the player character extremely weak and shape gameplay around the theme of rebellion, with few but decisive kills, sabotage and a lot of running from enemies while taking ocassional shots back at them; the point of the game is emphasised but the gameplay isn't fun, although it might be well paced, very enjoyable, etc.) or fully fun-focused (God of War, Call of Duty, Halo).

And I would disagree with this. It implies that the only way people have fun is by being violent in some manner, even going so far as to determine the ways in which they have to do that.

If you want to get really technical about it, look up the dictionary definition of the word "fun" and the dictionary definition of the word "compelling" and see what you come up with. One might almost say that you could have more fun (1. something that provides mirth or amusement; 2. enjoyment or playfulness) playing a clever, story-driven game and that a violence-oriented game is more compelling (1. tending to compel; overpowering; 2. having a powerful and irresistible effect).

As for what is art, that can be pretty subjective too. (1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.) Look at the definition. The quality of the game, the production, the expression, what is appealing or more than ordinary significance. A game doesn't necessarily need to have a deep and thought-provoking storyline to be considered art. It can be just the quality itself; how the mechanics are presented, how the game itself flows, any number of things.

So yes, as I said before, I think it's possible to have both in a game and no, I do not think they need to undermine each other if handled correctly.

I think you shouldn't value the word fun so highly. Fun is about enjoyment, but enjoyment covers other things as well. I enjoyed Metro 2033, but I didn't think it was fun. I call such games enjoyable or compelling because they toy with your emotions. Is it really fun to be in a weakened state? No, fun comes from power fantasies, from humour, from light-heartedness and pleasure, from what I can tell. Just because a game isn't fun doesn't mean it's boring, which is an awful stereotype which is used way too often to describe art.

No, art isn't enjoyed by everyone and doesn't have the same definition or quality scale for everyone, although I do think there are some things that can be considered artistic because of their structure (e.g. Citizen Kane). When I say that art comes from the 3 core elements of gaming complementing each other, that's a cry out for better structure and clearer goals. Yeah, you can call Flower good art if you want, but you can't justify it by looking at the structure, as it doesn't play to the strengths of our storytelling medium. I don't disagree that some might find flower to be the best art there is or 2001: A Space Odyssey, because they have themes that can be picked apart through images, but I would suggest that if we're to aim for the improvement of art in games, we should look at structure rather than style and craft our gameplay and presentation around our story and concepts. Games often get presentation right: the visual images of Rapture are a great example of it supporting the story, but games often get the gameplay completely wrong, because they want it to be fun and forget that it doesn't complement the visuals and story and their general idea of the game.

The idea of Rapture was not that some guy went around with guns and plasmids and killed everyone and occassionally rescued creepy girls. It was about a society free of regulation that collapsed due to it embracing extremes that couldn't sustain themselves.

I hope I've explained well enough.

/For The Love Of The Game

 

[joshthor]

the thing is. games shouldnt be fun. they HAVE to be fun. no one is going to sit through a boring 8 hours to finish a boring campaign. fun means different things to different people. it could mean epic story based adventure, or it could be cut as many people in half in 30 seconds. fun is relative, and if you have to say "games should be fun" to try to get your point across about a game you arent appreciating many games genres. i can play through bulletstorm, one of the dumbest, craziest shooters out there, and then switch to limbo, treck through the nothingness and dispair of it (goddamn spider), and then switch to dragon age 2 for an awesome adventure. just have to be open too other genres besides goddamned shooters.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

OK, this reminds me of a debate I saw in another topic where people were arguing one of two points: Some people thought that games should just be mindless fun and shouldn't worry about being all "deep" and "arty". The other side, obviously, was defending the "deep and arty" games.

Now there were two odd things about this argument:
1. That no one seemed to know exactly what "deep and arty" MEANT, and
2. That both sides had seemingly discounted the possiblity of there being both deep/arty AND stupid/fun games available at the same time. Both had decided that one would kill off the other.

And that's what I don't understand. Some people seem to think that if games start trying to convey complex messages and themes, or start trying to use an interactive medium in more creative, less "game"-like ways, then the Halos, CoDs, and "Bulletstorms" of the medium will die out. I don't really see a reason why both can't co-exist. I mean, Black Swan is a pretty damn complex movie, but that won't stop "Sucker Punch" from hitting theaters in a few weeks. If film can encompass such a wide range of ideas, why not the gaming industry?

Oh, the actual topic? Right, I'll get right on that.

When people say "fun", I think they're usually talking about games actually behaving like GAMES. You know, rules, a winner, a loser. No message, no moralizing, just plain, stupid, fun. [footnote]SIDE NOTE: I love games like that.[/footnote]