Oh dear, over a month since the last update.

The book seems to be doing well. There’s some active discussion over at Grand Text Auto, which is an excellent blog focusing primarily on interactive storytelling and the narratological side of game studies. A lot of the discussion centers on whether the definition of fun in the book encompasses all forms of games, such as footraces.

There’s a heavy load of assumptions that goes into “fairness.” For example, competitive games of all sorts make use of leagues and handicapping in order to try to make things “fair,” and we take those for granted. In the case of athletics such as our hypothetical footrace, our hidden assumption is that training is part of the race, and training has rules that cannot be broken. And interestingly, training is a heavily cognitive task.

If training were not part of the race, then doping would be acceptable. But the magic circle clearly does not encompass only the moments between the starting gun and the finish line.

If that whets your appetite, head on over to take a look.

A special No-Prize goes to Richard Bartle, for being the first to spot an undeniable major factual error in the book. I refer, of course, to the bizarre mental slip that resulted in my conflating Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s piano work Pictures at an Exhibition
(Ravel’s orchestration being of course the version of the piece we know best) with Ravel’s orchestration of
his own Bolero, which was NOT written by Debussy as the book states. I plead cognitive failure, my chunks were in disarray. I shall now have to pore over Richard’s book in order to find a comparable egregious error that I can hold over him.

A review of the book accompanied by more discussion has appeared at Grimwell.com.

Raph didn’t just lay out a mental snack here, but one heck of a banquet, and it’ll be quite awhile before I’m done digesting it all. What you see here is a meager sampler platter that’s a far cry from experiencing the main course. Dropping the food analogy: my summary glosses over the ideas in this book, but can not adequately cover every one within without becoming as long as the book itself. (Besides, I imagine Raph could explain these ideas better than I could.) I would recommend everybody from avid gamers to the remotely curious to grab a copy from Amazon… At $13.59 a copy, you’ll find few better bargains.

Overall, I learned a lot from The Theory of Fun in Game Design, much of it helped to bring the thoughts of this gamer into alignment with the big picture of what gaming is all about. I’ll never look at game design in quite the same way again.

The discussion is quite stimulating, with comments such as Slyfeind’s question, “If games are destined to be art, why aren’t we there already? Or…are we?” The commentary also touches on what play is. Worth reading.

I am promised a review from Slashdot, but it hasn’t appeared yet. Nor, to my knowledge, has the interview I did with the Kansas City Star resulted in anything. Sigh. I am confirmed now as doing the opening keynote at the Serious Games Summit at the Game Developers Conference however. I have added reviews to the Press page as I find them.

Well, I’m all done voting. I’m also almost done proofing! Last night, we printed out the whole thing, both sides of the page, so what we got was something that closely resembled the book. Then for the first time, both my wife and I went over it with red pen, rather than doing editing on the computer… there’s something about that change of venue that makes it easier to see mistakes.

It looks like a couple of pages are running a bit long, so there will be just some minor touch-ups, but nothing too drastic. We’re pretty excited.

In other news, there’s actually stuff up in the Stuff section now–a mug, some shirts, and some mousepads. I’d love to hear what sort of stuff people might want…

I’ve also updated the front page with a bunch of quotes about the book that I have gotten from various folks. A special shout-out goes to Loren over at The Incremental Blogger, who commented on the book in his blog, saying,

The ISBN classification will call it a book about game design, but I’m guessing that the creativity and concepts will inspire designers and doers of all types.

The book’s genesis comes from a presentation that Raph gives on game design (5MB PDF). And no, this isn’t any ordinary PowerPoint slide presentation. Raph trades bullet lists for ink drawings. Words are limited to “See Jane run” simplicity. The result has a decidedly Lawrence Lessig feel about it and grabs your attention. And as a Tablet PC enthusiast the style shouts out “Tablet PC” to me.

The book is equally visual. It’s loaded with Raph’s illustrations. But it’s not all drawings–although with Raph’s conciseness that would be equally compelling. The manuscript is also filled with easy-to-read prose that’s interwoven with friendly insights and cerebral theories. I’m not finished reading the manuscript yet, but I just had to point out the book now. It gets the creative juices flowing.

Glad you liked it, Loren!

Over on Grimwell.com there’s a discussion about the book and some of its ideas. Some quotes:

AFFA:

Learning is fun. But so is doing–so is applying knowledge. I continue to play games (and enjoy them) after I’ve learned everything there is to know about them.

In fact, the only games that I stopped enjoying due to knowledge (or familiarity) were the ones I worked on. In those cases, I think testing the game 100 hours a week for 6 months in debug mode at .004 fps was the most important factor, not my insider knowledge.

Edit: Actually, I partly take this back. I’ve stopped playing new games, not because of my knowledge of that game, but because of my knowledge of the genre. I knew after only an hour or two of play that this game would not offer anything I hadn’t already seen before.

This still doesn’t explain why I’d re-play Planescape or Deus Ex ten times or more, even if I was taking the same path through the game and had read every guide and walkthrough… Gaining knowledge is only part of my motivation.

Darniaq:

I know for myself, Learning is the end and all of “fun” in these games. I enjoy the fighting and socializing, but when I quit a game, it is always because I feel like I’ve learned everything I’ve wanted to. This doesn’t mean I know everything, nor that I’m all that good at what I do know. It simply means I’ve looked ahead and see nothing more available to do but apply what I already know.

Unfortunately, that means for me Learning has a built in warranty.

In a player skill game, that’s not as big a problem. I can learn everything I need to know in an FPS or RTS shooter fairly quickly. But to become good at applying that learning requires manual practice.

Not so much in MMORPGs though. The need for me to respond faster hasn’t always grown as much as my need to respond smarter. Which is that warranty.

geldonyetich:

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a game that is about learning. Albeit this may have been because of long hours studying math books thinking, “There’s gotta be a less boring way to learn math than this!” Yes, I know there’s math games already, but they’re generally geared towards kids or the fun trappings are removed.

It’s got me thinking, if we could combine a first rate education with the addictive mechanics of a MMORPG, we’d have a lot more brilliant people walking around.

Castle in the air or realistic goal?

AFFA:

Learning isn’t the core fun for me. It’s a factor, but not the biggest one. I’d put at least two things far higher than Learning:

Winning
Belonging

I’m always up for a game of Tetris, even if I can’t “learn” anything from the game or improve my nearing-middle-age reflexes any further. Why? It’s fun. And I might “win,” even if I’m playing against myself.

Is just hanging out with friends fun? How about going to a concert? I don’t learn much, especially if I drink… But I have more fun than any game can provide. This is Belonging and closer to the core of most on-line games than Learning.

And I usually get Bartle typed as ESA or EAS. If I, as an “explorer” don’t place Learning first, who does? I enjoy figuring out the game, but I wouldn’t consider it my primary motive.

If learning is the core, how come it’s so hard to make educational games “sticky”?

If you’re interested in joining the discussion, head on over..

I turned in two chapters of edits, plus the first two chapters of endnotes late last night (VERY late). It’s amazing how much tighter you can get your text if you work at it! The endnotes are something that a lot of advance readers have asked for, so I am going back through my research to put them together. It’s been fun, because I keep finding things I forgot to mention. I haven’t settled with the editor whether or not the endnotes will take this form in the book, but if not, I’ll toss them up on the website.

In other news, I think I need to get real blog software. I installed the one that came with the web hosting, and I am not impressed… I can’t get it to point to a page other than the index, and I can’t customize it as I would like, either.