Poll: It's All Fun And Games Until We Talk About Fun In Games

[Skatologist]

It's been a while since I've seen a discussion regarding the use of the word "fun" in terms of video games on this forum, and I've now got the motivation to talk about it.

The discussion seems to often be brought up either when someone says that "not all games need to be fun" or when a person claims a certain criticism of a game or games in general is unwarranted simply because the game(s) were made just for fun.

"fun" can be described as something pleasurable, enjoying, amusing, and entertaining. All these words and the word tied to them like cheerful and laughable give the impression the word only elicits positive responses and emotions. This is why I don't like the word and actually don't find that many games or other art forms for that matter to be "fun" due to the kind of emotions most games get out of us other than pure enjoyment, like stress, curiosity, disappointment, sadness, frustration, composure or anything else. Saying all games need to be or ought to be fun seems as odd to me as saying all games should or ought to be sad or stressful.

I'm sure there will be other people's view on fun, and I'm all ears to hear them, but I just find my view of "fun" as a an easily obtainable lower form of happiness(thanks John Stuart Mill!) that isn't brought about through conflict, but can be obtained without a large amount of worry, loss, or any other feeling that isn't already positive. Fun also has the trait of having very little emotional impact on a person other than enjoyment. That's not really a bad thing necessarily, but I usually prefer more from a game or other pieces of media than that.

[HEADING=3]So, here are some discussion topics along with[/HEADING]

Question: What's your view/definition of the word fun?

My answer: see above. I might also note that the words fun/engaging/etc. are still subjective feelings, but it seems that a good portion of media/forms of entertainment has an intention of wanting to elicit X response from their consumers, but whether or not they get said response is a different story. For example, many people find fun in amusement park rides while I personally do not. This is also why option 3 and 4 exist in the poll.

Questions: What would be your example of a fun game? What about a not fun game? Fun/not fun things from other media or forms of entertainment?

My answers: The closest things I can think of would be GTA series and Saints Row 4 in terms of games intended to be fun. Despite both having in-game consequences and likely having the player experience, games like these allow for you to have an insane amount of power and both largely don't treat themselves too seriously. A game I view as not fun would be the one I am attaching to this thread, Spec Ops. As for fun other media, I find a lot of Weird Al and novelty songs to be fun, along with Guardians of the Galaxy. As for other media I might enjoy but don't find fun, I'd say I've got a bit of a spot for sad punk songs and works that tackle dark subject matter like historical atrocities.

Questions: Would you recommend someone play a game you that wasn't your definition of fun? How about other media?

My answers: Despite asking this, I'm not actually sure what I'd do in these situations. In an informal review for anyone to view and make up their own minds or list features of a work someone I know might like, but given how the few times I recommended media taking note on how serious or sad or deep it was to friends and family, they were uninterested. So I have no idea if I'd try again.

Question: What option dd you pick in the poll?

My answer: I chose option 2, since I largely agreed with Extra Creditz assessment of the game in the videos below:

Spoiler: Part 1(Non spoilery)

Spoiler: Part 2(Spoilery)

 

[Ambient_Malice]

I really hate to be a spoilsport, but I think Spec Ops is overall an unfun game because it is a BADLY DESIGNED game. If its "edgy" aspects were well designed, it would be a very different game. A better game. Possibly a genre defining game. But instead it is a generic cover shooter, the edgelord great grandchild of Operation Winback, paired with heavyhanded storytelling that attempts to guilt trip the player repeatedly without having the mechanics to induce guilt in the player.

edit:

Is the shooting fun? Maybe. Is the game as a whole fun? That's something that comes down to the player's tolerance for blatant railroading and hamfisted storytelling.

 

[Evonisia]

I found Spec Ops: The Line fun. The gameplay is solid and challenging enough to not bore me as I indulge in the other parts of the game (the story, the characters and the world). It's not Tomb Raider 2013 or Gears of War 3 solid as a third person shooter, but it's not exactly Uncharted levels of frustrating either.

I think Spec Ops: The Line was supposed to be mildly entertaining. Just entertaining enough to keep you going, but not striving to be the most fun shooter out there.

Question: What's your view/definition of the word fun?

I suppose providing enjoyment suffices. It's just some ways of enjoyment effect me differently than others. Call me broad and boring.

The other questions are a tad awkward to answer given how broad and non-specific my answer to the first one is. I may edit in them if I think of answers later on.

 

[Zhukov]

- There is more than one kind of fun. A person who can only think of one kind of fun is a boring person.

- When it comes to games, or any media now that I think about it, "engaging" is probably a better word.

- My definition of fun would be "enjoyable and lighthearted". Although I suppose the second bit is negotiable.

- A fun game: Bulletstorm.

- A non-fun game: Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Still engaging though. I recommend anyone who hasn't played it do so.

- I found Spec Ops: The Line to be mildly fun just on gameplay alone, although I understand the criticism it gets in that area. As for the story... well, I love what it was trying to do, but I don't think it was subtle enough to pull it off. The way it tried to incorporate player actions (as opposed to protagonist actions) was interesting but ultimately failed for me.

 

[someguy1231]

A game could have the best story I've ever seen, but if it's not fun to play, I won't buy it. Simple as that.

In that sense, "Spec Ops: The Line" fails as a game for me. The most common defense I heard of its mediocre, lackluster gameplay was "It's supposed to be that way because of the story!" If your "story" demands that your game have boring gameplay, then I won't buy it.

 

[camazotz]

I enjoyed it, but blogged at length about why I liked it and also why I felt a lot of the arguments about what the game intended weren't really accurate. http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com/2012/08/spec-ops-line-war-as-horror-and-madness.html

Your poll doesn't have a "Yes because this sort of game rewards the player with insight into the nature of the genre and its implications."

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I feel like your answers are a little weird.
Is the game fun?
No, because it's designed to be fun.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question but, huh?
Anyway.
I only played it once a long time ago, don't remember it that well but I remember the game itself being more engaging than enjoyable.

- There is more than one kind of fun. A person who can only think of one kind of fun is a boring person.

- When it comes to games, or any media now that I think about it, "engaging" is probably a better word.

- My definition of fun would be "enjoyable and lighthearted". Although I suppose the second bit is negotiable.

- A fun game: Bulletstorm.

- A non-fun game: Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Still engaging though. I recommend anyone who hasn't played it do so.

I'm in full agreement with this.
Maybe an oversimplified way to put it, but there's enjoyment and there's engagement; I don't watch Mad Men for the same reasons I watch Pacific Rim.
They're not mutually exclusive, you can blend the two but those are the two primaries for me.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

It started out fun for me. Typical shooter action, fighting against "traitors" and whatnot. Slowly, the game started to turn that on its head. The more I saw of how far the U.S. soldiers I was fighting had fallen, the more I wanted bring them down. Torturing a fellow U.S. agent to death, shooting civilians who were just trying to survive, and the executions of so many people really got to me. I had to stop these guys.

Then, all sense of "fun" went out the window when the event happened in the game. I literally had to stop playing because I felt sick for a bit, but then it became a mission. I was going to stop Conrad and his madness, and I was going to make sure he suffered for it.
It wasn't until the reveal at the end that I realized I had fallen completely into the game's trap. I think it was masterfully done, but then I tend to lose myself in games a lot more than most people it seems--especially in terms of this game.
Do I consider it fun though? Not anymore. Not after what happens in it. I still think it's a great game and I still own it, but I won't be popping it into my system to blow off steam like other games I own.

A fun game for me is basically a wish fulfillment game. Call of Duty games let me be a soldier in a war with exciting set pieces. RPGs let me be a hero that saves the world and gets the girl. Stuff like that, stuff that offers me a chance to escape into a realm where I can be the good guy in the movies and cartoons I watched growing up.

A game that isn't fun to me--besides sports and most fighting games--is a game like GTA or God of War. A game where I play the type of character I'm usually out to stop in my other games. My conscience screams at me so much that I can't enjoy them, no matter how good they are.

 

[thewatergamer]

I wouldn't call Spec Ops the line "Fun" or even a good game, it's a bland and standard shooter, but it's story was pretty damn solid and a great social commentary, even if it's infamous scene that was meant to make you feel guilty utterly failed on account of not giving you a choice in the matter, and it's MP was shit...so was it "Fun?" I'd say no, but it was engaging and kept me playing it, so I'd say it did it's job

 

[ThreeName]

I think your poll options are fucked mate. "Is it fun?" "Yes because I didn't enjoy it". Might want to change the question.

And the answer is it was fun because I enjoyed myself. Fun is subjective regardless of what elicits it and there really isn't another answer, despite all this 2deep4u shit.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Then, all sense of "fun" went out the window when the event happened in the game. I literally had to stop playing because I felt sick for a bit, but then it became a mission. I was going to stop Conrad and his madness, and I was going to make sure he suffered for it.
It wasn't until the reveal at the end that I realized I had fallen completely into the game's trap. I think it was masterfully done, but then I tend to lose myself in games a lot more than most people it seems--especially in terms of this game.
Do I consider it fun though? Not anymore. Not after what happens in it. I still think it's a great game and I still own it, but I won't be popping it into my system to blow off steam like other games I own.

I always feel that Spec Ops The Line is one of those games that you very much get out what you put into it.

That is to say whether you like the game or not depends entirely on how much you "engage" with games in general. If you're disengaged and looking at it from something of a distance then you find the whole thing cynical and get annoyed that overall the whole point of the game is to tell you not to play it, and that continuing to play is your own decision. If you're engaged with it though...well, you get what happened with you here, based on what you said.

Personally I loved it.

 

[pookie101]

ive played it twice. by the end it gets a very oppressive feel about it and yes i did enjoy it for being different and all the little touches and references you will probably miss in a single play through

my second play through and the first time ive ever done it with a game was play it in conjunction with a book called "Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line" well worth doing if you have a love for the game

as for fun.. well there isnt a single definition that fit everyone, the same as there isnt a single game that will speak to everyone the same. to me spec ops is fun because it got me thinking, left me wondering what was actually real in the story and is the main character actually in a psych hospital somewhere imagining the entire event a mix of all the things hes committed over his life? love shit like that

 

[Casual Shinji]

'Fun' in games is just a shorter way of saying 'I want to keep playing'. And whether you want to keep playing depends on what you want out of any particular game, whether it's action, humor, puzzles, story, horror, or a combination of the sort.

 

[KissingSunlight]

Fun is something you enjoy interacting with. Videogames should be fun. Can videogames be educational or provide social commentary? Sure. It's just more challenging to make them fun.

An example of a fun game is Deadpool. The gameplay itself is mediocre. Part of the fun is that the game is self-aware that it's not breaking any new ground. The fun comes from playing a clownishly violent comic book character offering meta-commentary throughout the game.

I haven't played Spec Ops: The Line. So, just judging from the 2 videos in the OP. It is a sub-par game that wants you to feel guilty for enjoying better quality games in the same genre. I would be harsher in my criticism for it. Except, I do not enjoy playing realistic military shooters. The gameplay is so realistic that I feel sick when I shoot human beings in these games. (However, I enjoy FPS that features aliens and monsters. I guess I am some kind of species-ist xenophobe.)

What's not a fun game? I've already mentioned military shooters. Stealth games are boring. If I want to sit down, watch TV, and do nothing. I would turn off the game console and then sit down, watch TV, and do nothing. RPG's are tedious to me. Broken gameplay(What's the deal with playable characters in Horror Games? They can barely move and unable to defend themselves from the slightest attack. That's not scary. That's frustrating!), stupid difficult levels(OK, I have defeated everyone in this room. How do I get out of here?), or ridiculously difficult games. Like Ninja Gaiden. I couldn't get past the first level. Even when I had the walkthrough right in front of me telling me how to do it.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

I think fun comes in all shapes and sizes. There isn't really one way to have fun, and not everyone's idea of "fun" is the same.

For me, as long as the game has me engaged or invested in some way, I consider it "fun." It doesn't even have to be especially light-hearted or silly. It can be something incredibly bleak but if it has me engrossed enough, and I come out of it feeling depressed yet satisfied with my experience, then yes, I would say I had "fun" with it.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I found it fun because i found it challenging on the hardest setting. The challenge in a game is the only thing i find 'fun' about it and games that aren't challenging i often deride as worthless because of that. Games should be more challenging than watching the TV and pressing the odd button to see the next story section

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

'Fun' in games is just a shorter way of saying 'I want to keep playing'. And whether you want to keep playing depends on what you want out of any particular game, whether it's action, humor, puzzles, story, horror, or a combination of the sort.

This sums up my opinion (which I could not formulate to myself) really well. Having just completed the Hearts of Stone expansion for the Witcher 3 I can safely say that there was a section that wasn't fun, it was just really tragic, but it made me want to play on. Perhaps fun is the wrong word to use, perhaps enjoyment is better...

 

[Mikeybb]

*snip*
- There is more than one kind of fun. A person who can only think of one kind of fun is a boring person.

Quoted to add my agreement to this point.

It may be because I tend to define "fun" as anything which is an opposite to a "chore".
Accepted, that definition is pretty damn broad, but it also captures an essential quality of fun.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

There's a lot of ways to have fun with a video game. It's not easy to define it. I'll try to think of something more later, but let me address Spec Ops: The Line first. While it is mechanically a very simple game, I find it impossible not to like it because it's completely married to the narrative. There's just as much dialogue during gameplay as there is during cutscenes. The story never takes a break and since the story was so engaging, so was the gameplay.