[...] learning, but learning isn’t sufficient.  (Raph Koster elaborated on this recently, in a post discussing fun in games, class, and sex.)  The fun doesn’t kick in until you’re using the tools the [...]

[...] read about the connection between Raph Koster, sex, and English lit essays. Raph refers you to Word On Play, which takes it eight [...]

I mean, think of how every color we see is a result of “just” three specific wavelengths of light.

Of course, I’m also over-educated and extra-introspective, so there you go.

This may not have been the intention, but what you have written there also seems to be to perfectly encapsulate what any employee needs to receive from their work and superiors.

It struck me as a fascinating point as the above is exactly what I feel like I’m missing from my employer right now, but is exactly what I’m getting from the games that I’m playing…

The cited texts explains the assembly building in the brain responsible for learned behavior based on perception. You are discussing this at several levels higher but some made references to studies. That is one of the better texts I’ve found if one is interested in theories of the physical mechanisms. Amazon.com has significant chapters for viewing.

Pattern-matching, then, is like lifting weights for the brain, and as you said, there are other exercises but none we know how to really describe. But like lifting weights, or exercise in general, eventually you have to find new challenges, otherwise you plateau. The brain doesn’t like to plateau.

I’d say that what I’ve said still holds for non-videogames, though, as in essence I’m saying that only so much can come from the game, or the part or parts able to be described as game.

Yes, but the problem that normally baffles us, excepting Marc LeBlanc’s model, and helps undergird Eolirin’s assertions is that we can’t seem to come up with any other remotely reliable explanation for what fun is other than what Raph has proposed. It’s also worth appreciating how incredibly general the term “pattern-matching” is: it is not so different from what you do when you look around a room you’ve never been in; it is hard to say that “that’s not all of fun” when you can turn it on its head and say, “What isn’t pattern matching?”

I will point out that theory is not something that needs to cover all bases: it should be helpful, but ultimately, innovation will shoot it all to hell.

Limiting the discussion of games in general to videogames in specific is usually a mistake, in my opinion. Lest you forget, note the title of the OP and tell me which sensations are missing from that “game”. (I originally typed “mixing”, but I caught it before I posted.)

True, I’d narrowed my line of thiking without, well, thinking about it. Thanks for pointing it out. I’d say that what I’ve said still holds for non-videogames, though, as in essence I’m saying that only so much can come from the game, or the part or parts able to be described as game. Consider the question, “How do we create a fun variant of Tag?” There is likely a limit to what the person writing the new rules can promise (or what the rules sheet can deliver) and thus in a rather indirect sense to what can, as had been brought up, be formulated as a falsifiable test. Isolatable and controllable variables and whatnot.

Oh, but feel free, in the spirit of the OP, to replace “Tag” with any one of those… intriguing boxed games they sell in adult novelty stores.

That won’t make it fun for all players. Goals ARE important. Posit two:

1. Women come first.
2. Everyone gets a cookie.
3. When in doubt, see rule one.

Applying skills learned elsewhere to the game being played is a way of changing the flow of play to introduced novelty and heightened fun. Classical guitar players master a technique called the rest stroke and another for a sustained 32 notes both of which are reapplicable. I’m sure the flute players and clarinet players have some as well.

Then there is mastery of breath that singers to high degree and all musicians to different degrees have to learn. Understanding of synchronized and syncopated breath techniques are taught in both music and tantra.

Abstractions of fun are only fun for thinking about the game. The deeper meaning of the phrase is to focus on the act as that act which means when the technique is incorporated it expands the mastery of that act. The fun is bringing what is learned from applying the technique in a different medium back to the original.

Watch the orchestra for the occasional blushes in the winds.

A theory of fun is like a theory of breathing. If you have to think about it, you aren’t doing it right, but if you think about it, you can do it better.

insert spherical chicken joke here

I didn’t know this joke, and I like it immensely. Actually, I think I’ve heard a version, but yeah.

Certainly you can not yet offer (much) physical sensation, or generate an awesome meal for the player that kicks butt at a cooking game. In being limited to sight and sound, and approaching these media with the goal of interactive participation, it does constrain what types of fun can be offered.

Limiting the discussion of games in general to videogames in specific is usually a mistake, in my opinion. Lest you forget, note the title of the OP and tell me which sensations are missing from that “game”. (I originally typed “mixing”, but I caught it before I posted.)

Finally, even more scatteredly, I would not describe love as binary. No no no no no.

Spherical chicken.