Why We Play Games: Natural Funativity, Noah Falstein

 The word 'fun' is defined as a source from which we can receive enjoyment. It can be incredibly hard to describe fun, but everyone knows exactly when they have experienced it!

Paleolithic Pastimes:

 We all have a strong dependency on social interactions with one another; this leads to another dependency - An establishment in our family, and the ability to maintain that place in our family.

There is a theory that considers the way we behave towards things that invoke 'fun' to us, this is called Refined Sugar Syndrome (RSS). Throughout history humanity has strived to discover and collect various sweet-tasting things in the world. Sugar, being naturally present in fruit, was a coveted commodity to our ancient counterparts and after discovering the sugary fruits they treasured them greatly. More modern fruit sugar is generally created using a concentrated form of this substance. This process can be applied to the act of playing - we have taken this simple act and turned it into a concentrated source, Video Games. Our ancestors used games not only as a form of entertainment, but a way to keep their hunting and survival skills honed and constantly improving.

Physical Fun

 The survival instinct is one of our primary urges as human beings, anything that threatens our survival is automatically drawn into the centre of our attention and awareness. Modern games tend to play on this trait and cause players to feel more immersed in the game by doing so. As this 'urge' is completely involuntary and instinctive, players tend to find it hard to ignore it because it is built into everyone's mind set. Physical Fun relies on strong muscles and impressive coordination. A theory as to why sports are so popular is that these often focus on physical strength and cooperation with the team: these activities are what would have been required for our ancestors in order to hunt and survive.

Falstein mentions why many game aspects can be easily relevant in terms of our ancestral history:

Casinos - Berry Picking
Collectible Games - Gatherers
RTS, RPG, FPS - Travellers/Discovery
Weapons/Hand Tools - Stone Tools

Social Fun

 Games often bring people together, it creates a solid ground for us to build on our social interactions and increase our understanding of language and culture. It has also (indirectly) introduced a new way of learning and increasing the ability to hone our survival instincts. The existence of storytelling leads us to believe that our ancestors enjoyed or at least had the desire to socialise with eachother.

MMO's can create the basis of socialisation using many specific features in the game: Chat rooms tend to be opened where people can discuss their personal experiences within the game and recieve feedback from other players. The media is expanding constantly, creating even more social interaction! A reason why so many people play these games, and especially why so many game developers focus on this aspect of their games - Socialisation is, and always will be, something required by every human being in order to keep happy.

Mental Fun

 Games that challenge us in a mental way lure some players in purely with the promise of a challenge. We have developed as human beings to have an expansive brain that can hold so much information, giving us an advantage of learning to survive and adapt over time. The constant growth of our brains has given us quicker reactions, recognising patterns and important decisions.

Blended Fun

 The type of games that this 'fun' often use more than one of these natural funativity types in their games to lure in more than one type of gamer. Different gamers prefer different types of funativity, and so by tapping into more than one type of funativity they can attract and hold a much larger audience for their game.

After discussing this reading I have gained a large insight into how 'fun' is considered when creating a game. I did not think to look back in history and use the most basic of human instincts to see what 'fun' really is today - exactly what it used to be!