Fun is Fine: Toward a Philosophy of Game Design

In "Fun is Fine: Toward a Philosophy of Game Design," David Kennerly writes: "In the fine game, fun intersects fine art. By fine art, I mean basically great art: fine art is the final art, or the most perfect of the arts. There is a quotation: 'The more I study the smarter Aristotle gets.' In a fine game, the more the player studies the deeper the game gets. Once a player knows the perfect strategy in a game, such as tic-tac-toe, no amount of play will reveal a better strategy. When the game ceases to teach the player a new lesson, the game stops being fun. The mind engages in a process of learning, in an education about a special system when playing a game. When perfected, there is nothing new to learn. Whereas, in Lost Cities, Go, or any fine game, each iteration teaches a new lesson. New strategies unfold. Weaknesses in old strategies appear. This is a kind of wonder that precedes discovery. This shares the impetus of science and art.

"So fun is the art of the game. It is a high goal. It is noble. It is not necessarily base. It is not necessarily a simple pleasure. Whosoever plays earnestly at a fine game ascends an upward spiral of intelligence. Even the strategies for choosing playing strategies evolve. The enabling goals within the span of the game themselves change. And once so involved, one is learning, 'To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated.'"

This idea of the "uppward spiral of intelligence" is very much in consonance with the nature of fun as described by Csikszentmihalyi and myself in my article Sober Doesn't Mean Somber. But clearly we're not just talking about any old kind of fun here. We're talking about the "fine" kind - the kind that takes us always deeper and higher and most often totally by surprise.