This assignment has two parts: first, you will read the following material, and then you will spend some time browsing the additional course materials to see what grabs your attention. To finish up, you will write up a blog post with your thoughts.
Readings
The first reading this week, Gamification what has fun got to do with it? discusses gamification though the topics they are describing are equally applicable to game design. The 2nd paper is an academic piece that views the social aspect of fun in games. Putting the “Fun Factor” Into Gaming: The Influence of Social Contexts on Experiences of Playing Videogames
Additional Readings
- Kinds of Fun [Links to an external site] “Fun” is really just another word for “learning”. Putting players in a flow state is where this elusive “fun” comes from. Here we dig deeper into this concept to learn more about “fun,” digging into LeBlanc et al.’s “8 kinds of fun” and relating that back to flow theory and other things. We currently have an idea of what is fun, but it would help to know why these things are fun. What if there are new kinds of fun waiting to be discovered?
- Natural Funativity, by Noah Falstein [Links to an external site]
We’ve talked a lot about what is fun, and from the MDA Framework, we know there are different kinds of fun. But why are these things fun in the first place, and not other things? Noah provides a useful theory.
Blog
When you are done browsing, write up a blog post with your thoughts about what you have read
For the blog post, use “Game Fun” in the title, with “Reading”, “Week 8” as the labels, and include at least one image (with image information). Here is the Declaration for Reading:
| DECLARATION: Reading Options I spent at least 30 minutes browsing the readings. I have published a blog post with my notes. POST TITLE: I used the phrase “Game Fun” in the post title. POST LABELS: I used the label “Reading”, “Week 8” for the labels. LINKS: I included at least three links to items of interest, with my thoughts. IMAGE: I Included at least one image with image information. |
