I've been wondering lately how we can bring the qualities that help to make 'combat' in games enjoyable into other activities, like working on a project with a deadline. What qualities do we like about combat in games. 1. Exciting> managing risk and avoiding being defeated. 2. Tension. 3. Making decisions, you have to decide how to use your available resources / abilities to win. 4. Dynamic, the situation changes quickly. Any others? Ways we can implement these: I once came up with the idea of a surgery game where you heal Aliens. What about managing a project / team of reporters, you would need to be alert and tell your team where to go. And have tight deadlines to fulfill to avoid being sacked.

A Poul Anderson character once defined either sport or a game as something like "work you don't have to do".

With that in mind, the major elements that can make something "fun" (in my opinion):

1) Competition - being measured against other people
2) Free choice - not feeling it's something you "must" do (particularly not something you must do in order to get on to something you want to do)
3) Potential achievement - there has to be some sense of progress - either actual or soon to be achievable.

Quote:Original post by rmsgrey
A Poul Anderson character once defined either sport or a game as something like "work you don't have to do".

With that in mind, the major elements that can make something "fun" (in my opinion):

1) Competition - being measured against other people
2) Free choice - not feeling it's something you "must" do (particularly not something you must do in order to get on to something you want to do)
3) Potential achievement - there has to be some sense of progress - either actual or soon to be achievable.

Free choice definitly, there's research that supports this too in that getting paid for work really devalues it enjoyment. People who work voluntarily often report getting more work satisfaction out of it too. There's a good book called "Irrationality" which goes into this deeper showing results of various experiements.