Reading Raph Koster's "A Theory of Fun (for game design)"

I'm actually rather pleased with myself for managing to post something recently. I've been so busy as of late, but I'm glad things are finally starting to wind down. I've had enough free time to actually read a whole book, which is a rare event in itself these days.

At my last game design club meeting, our adviser brought in Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun (for game design) for the group to take a look at. I was the second one to get her hands on the book, and I took it with me every morning to the gym to read on the treadmill. I still remember the adviser's remarks on the book; "This is the first book you should read as a game designer."

Theory of Fun is Raph Koster's take on the idea of fun and why it matters not only to game designers, but society as a whole--it proposes that games are a powerful tool for the use of educating and furthering the development of human behavior and thought, a tool perhaps not fully wielded correctly by game designers today. The book isn't too big, I think about 200 pages or so with each page having text and an accompanying illustration. I made sure to take note of my reactions as I read through the book for the specific purpose of writing my response on this blog--my very first thought being, "this ought to be the second book you should read as a game designer."



For all Koster says about being a writer in Theory of Fun, I often found the narrative to be remarkably difficult to follow, and from the perspective of someone new to game design, immensely overwhelmed by esoteric terminology, pop culture references outside of my generation, and tips of the hat to artists and works I could never have been expected to understand beforehand. What my adviser said had some truth to it, because Koster speaks to the audience as though they had stepped into the world of game design for the first time--but at other times, Koster (perhaps lost in the passion of his own words) begins to slip into the sort of manner of speech one could use with an experienced game designer. At the end of the day, I'm really not sure who the intended audience was supposed to be. I have to admit my eyes went a little bleary every few pages as words began to run into eachother to form long, introspective rants about the importance of flow, and why we've all outgrown tic-tac-toe, and why game design is important because we can never give up jumping puzzles and Mozart, and games shouldn't try to be writing but writing is important in games and Grandpa I'm a teacher now so let's get out there and change the world! Gasp!
Surely these are all minor critiques and can easily be forgiven if someone considers the book to be a more lighthearted gallery of ideas for game design mixed with one designer's personal experience trying to understand why games and fun matters. That's probably what the book actually is, and I'd probably leave it at that if it weren't for the occasional little golden nuggets sinfully ferreted away in the pages. See, I think when you strip away all the personal narrative and cartoons and postulation, one happens across about five or six revelations about game design every game designer should know by heart. Five or six (maybe more?) truths that deserve their own little dissertation, that deserve to really be studied and discussed at length amongst the game design community, that get passed around a big official round game design table and burned into a big official game design scroll. These ideals so easily skimmed over in Theory of Fun should be what every hopeful game designer knows is expected of them.
Is revelation too strong a word? I feel like when I finished the book, my whole idea about what games are changed. I feel like when I put Theory of Fun down, I wasn't really the same. I'm glad I sweat my way (quite literally) through Theory of Fun, because I'm convinced now more than ever the community I want to become a part of really matters.

In future blog entries, I'm going to go further into the sorts of yummy stuff Koster talks about in his book, particularly one entry I'm excited to explore all about defining what a game is. But, to make a long blog entry short, I read "A Theory of Fun (for game design)", found it very busy and confusing, but after going through a thorough pasteurization process, inspirational and life changing. I highly recommend it to any fellow game designer hopeful. Just... maybe read a game design textbook or something first, so you don't get completely lost.