I've been talking about game thinking in very clinical or structural terms, very process oriented. It's important though, as you're doing that, not to lose sight of what really makes games engaging, the emotional component of the experience. And we can represent in one very short word what it is that makes games engaging. Games are engaging because they are fun. Fun is a word that we use to represent what it is about things like games that makes them good, that makes them wonderful, that engages us, that makes us want to start playing them and want to keep playing them. Fun is a hard word to get your arms around, kind of like games. But, as we're able to define games, we'll be able to define fun or, at least, define some aspects of what makes things fun. The starting point is a quote from the great philosopher, Mary Poppins, who noted that, in every job there is to be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! The job's a game. Important point here. Notice what she's talking about. She's talking about jobs. She's not talking about play time. She's talking about how to make things that you have to do fun, and of course, in the context of the play that's an important lesson that she's teaching, but it points up something very significant. Fun is not limited to recreation, fun is not limited to entertainment, fun is something that we can enjoy at work. It's something we can enjoy in all sorts of context. And therefore, when we think about gamification, think about making work or social impact, or behavior change seem more engaging and game like. It's essential to think about how to make it fun. But the question is, what's fun? So, think for yourself. What are some of the kinds of things that you feel are fun? I'm not saying an activity. I'm not saying that you think it's fun to jump out of airplanes or something like that. What are the categories of emotions or the categories of experiences that you would think of as fun? Try to think about as many different possible ones as you can. And think about how they relate to different kinds of fun. Here's some things I've come up with that are fun. Winning, all right, that's an easy one. Many games have the idea of winners and losers and certainly winning is something that we think of as fun, but it's not the only thing. Problem-solving. Sometimes the fun comes in overcoming obstacles. In surmounting challenges. Whether we win or not, even if the activity doesn't have the notion of a winner, just solving the problem, achieving something that in and of itself is fun. Or, sometimes just exploring. Just finding something new feels like fun to us, whether or not it's embedded in some kind of challenge or some kind of game that has winners or losers. Or, what about just chilling out? Lying on a beautiful beach, in the sun, relaxing, at least for me, is fun. Even though it doesn't have any of those other attributes. Teamwork. We are hard wired as a species to enjoy collaborating and cooperating with others, working together as a team to achieve a goal independently feels like fun. Recognition. Now, recognition is a little bit like winning. But it's not some objective standard that says you have been victorious in the game. It's someone else has told you that you did a good job. That's fun. That feels good whether or not it means you've won the game. Triumphing. Now, here I'm talking about something that is similar to winning but that has a particular aspect of it which is, you win and someone else loses. Vanquishing your opponent. Some people find that independently fun, above and beyond the joy of winning, the notion that you've crushed someone else. Collecting. We find it fun to assemble things together into collections. That's why some people love to collect antiques or certain categories of objects and we find this more generally in games when people have an opportunity to assemble a bunch of things, even if that's not an express objective of the game. People do it voluntarily because they find it fun. Surprise. There is something fun about being surprised. Why do we love surprise parties? Because the idea of surprise, of some novelty, something we didn't expect, is independently fun. And this will tie in later on, when I start to talk about psychology. The way that our brain actually releases the chemical dopamine when something is unexpected and the reward that we get is one that we didn't anticipate. More so than if it's the same reward that we expected. Imagination. Daydreaming is fun. Just thinking about ideas and imagining something in your head has an element of fun in and of itself. Sharing, being altruistic is fun. People feel good when they give money to charity. Again, something that we are hard wired to think about as a species. Now, it doesn't mean that every time we share, it's fun, and everyone shares everything all the time. Anyone who has kids knows that getting them to share is not always an easy task but there is an element of fun in the act of altruism or sharing or giving someone a gift. Role playing. We love trying on roles, we love pretending that we're someone else inhabiting another character. Whether that's all the way at the level of a role playing game where we are playing a night elf druid or something to that effect, to the more lightweight ideas of imagining ourselves in someone else's shoes. Customization. It's fun to be able to make something our own. It's fun to be able to decide exactly the color that you want for every aspect of the Nike shoes that you buy. We love to be able to personalize and customize things. And finally, goofing off. There's something fun about just letting it all hang out. About exploring the opportunity to just be silly. Alright, so think about, for a game or for a business process or some objective that you can imagine, or perhaps some of the ones that we've already covered in the course. How you might use the different kinds of fun that we've identified to produce an emotional response, to engage people in the activity, and then next, we'll look a little bit more systematically about how game designers understand the concept of fun.
