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[Derek]

He's giving his own definition of "pleasure" the broadest possible meaning and giving everyone else's the narrowest.

ive seen a lot of people use the narrow definition themselves. people who say stuff like "games dont have to be fun" and then talk about how silent hill 2 is not fun and yet "compelling".

Without knowing exactly what examples you're talking about, I'd guess that they're using a definition of "fun" that is more like this:

Enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure: "anyone who turns up can join in the fun".

As opposed to the type of fun that comes from watching a tragic play or playing Silent Hill. With games they're probably describing simple reflexive challenges and puzzles.

[impulse9]

I'd say a good game is a mix of (in no particular order): charm, great story, good game mechanics, replay value.

Good example are games like Diablo and Fallout. They had it all.

[Houndninja]

He's giving his own definition of "pleasure" the broadest possible meaning and giving everyone else's the narrowest.

ive seen a lot of people use the narrow definition themselves. people who say stuff like "games dont have to be fun" and then talk about how silent hill 2 is not fun and yet "compelling".

Without knowing exactly what examples you're talking about, I'd guess that they're using a definition of "fun" that is more like this:

Enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure: "anyone who turns up can join in the fun".

As opposed to the type of fun that comes from watching a tragic play or playing Silent Hill. With games they're probably describing simple reflexive challenges and puzzles.

Silent Hill is compelling but its not 'fun' in it's typical usage of the word. I finished every Silent Hill game that I've played to the very end, but I wanted to, not because it was super fun, but the story and lore made me care about the characters and help achieve their goals.. Even if the game is messed up 

[Paul Eres]

yeah i don't think pleasure is all that "narrow" a use for the word fun. fun isn't broad enough to encompass the enjoyment of watching a horror movie, or a movie like grave of the fireflies

if someone said "i had fun watching grave of the fireflies" you'd think they were messed up, you wouldn't think they were using a broad definition of fun. but if they instead said "i found grave of the fireflies compelling" people wouldn't think badly about them

[Paul Eres]

Maybe they aren't direct synonyms, but I can't think of a single game (or work of art in general) that's compelling but not pleasurable, fun, entertaining, engaging, immersive, fascinating, or satisfying, or engaging but not compelling, pleasurable, fun, entertaining, immersive, fascinating, satisfying, or... etc.

i notice you didn't include "interesting" -- there are games that aren't fun *or* compelling, but which are interesting. i think those games are worth playing too, in the way that reading a weird novel that's written badly but has some interesting scenes or wordplay or vocabulary can be interesting

i think perhaps the difference is that if i can find a *part* of something that's good, i find the whole use of time on the thing good, whereas others sort of take them as a whole and average all their parts and see if it's overall good? e.g. i can forgive bad parts of a game (or movie, or whatever) if there's a really good part, whereas a lot of people don't seem to do that

[Houndninja]

yeah i don't think pleasure is all that "narrow" a use for the word fun. fun isn't broad enough to encompass the enjoyment of watching a horror movie, or a movie like grave of the fireflies

if someone said "i had fun watching grave of the fireflies" you'd think they were messed up, you wouldn't think they were using a broad definition of fun. but if they instead said "i found grave of the fireflies compelling" people wouldn't think badly about them

Touché Paul touché 

[Charlie Sheen]

you guys should completely rewrite thesaurus and call it tigsaurus or indiesaurus or whatever. you should also hire paul eres and gimmy tilbert to do it because they can do it the best.

Enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure: "anyone who turns up can join in the fun".

As opposed to the type of fun that comes from watching a tragic play or playing Silent Hill. With games they're probably describing simple reflexive challenges and puzzles.

so when they use word "fun" they mean LESS FUN lol they mean PLEASURABLE BUT NOT SO PLEASURABLE!

There is no useage of the word 'fun' that applies to Silent Hill 2.  It's not an issue of broadness or narrowness but correctness.  Silent Hill 2 is rubbish.

lol fair enough.

but let's use any other horror game. or we can even use a horror movie as an example. or fuck all of that -- let's just use a child play.

have you ever, as a kid, went to the graveyard at night pretending you'll see zombies or some other scary shit? ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS WASN'T FUN? it was nothing but pure fun! (until we grew up and realized that graveyards, after all, aren't that scary, unless we count junkies lol)

[Paul Eres]

i definitely agree that scary things are usually fun but i'm still not sure how tragedies and sad / heart-wrenching things can be called fun

"It is not only pleasant and agreeable images that he experiences with such universal understanding: the serious, the gloomy, the sad and the profound, the sudden restraints, the mockeries of chance, fearful expectations, in short the whole 'divine comedy' of life, the Inferno included, passes before him, not only as a shadow-play — for he too lives and suffers through these scenes — and yet also not without that fleeting sense of illusion; and perhaps many, like myself, can remember calling out to themselves in encouragement, amid the perils and terrors of the dream, and with success: 'It is a dream! I want to dream on!'" - nietzshe, the birth of tragedy

(of course there aren't all that many games that can be classified as tragedies, unless you include games that are really really bad. so it's understandable that the sad and the profound aren't feelings people normally associate with videogames. but there are a couple)

also the idea that games don't have to be fun isn't a tigsource invention, it's a chris crawford invention; he wrote about the subject way back in 1984, in the first book on videogames. here's a more recent thing he wrote about it (it's clearer than his other statements on it):

http://books.google.com/books?id=USBbi1Dyw4sC&lpg=PA35&ots=7SgxOWtCXn&dq=games%20don't%20have%20to%20be%20fun%20chris%20crawford&pg=PA34#v=onepage&q&f=false

selected quotes:

"Some game designers seem to want it both ways: They claim that play covers a universe of entertainment activities, but then apply much narrower criteria to the evaluation of the merits of a game."

"[Fun] is a semantic chameleon, changing its meaning in each new context. [...] I never use that word in serious design analysis. Condemning a game as "not fun" is about as useful as calling it "crummy"; it expresses an emotional reaction but offers absolutely nothing that you can get your hands on."

[xix]

I feel like compelling is a much better word to use here if only because it encompasses many of the things we're looking for and isn't childish.

Or maybe I've been reading too much Ralph Koster...

[Derek]

you guys should completely rewrite thesaurus and call it tigsaurus or indiesaurus or whatever. you should also hire paul eres and gimmy tilbert to do it because they can do it the best.

Enjoyment, amusement, or lighthearted pleasure: "anyone who turns up can join in the fun".

As opposed to the type of fun that comes from watching a tragic play or playing Silent Hill. With games they're probably describing simple reflexive challenges and puzzles.

so when they use word "fun" they mean LESS FUN lol they mean PLEASURABLE BUT NOT SO PLEASURABLE!

I got that definition from Googling "fun", so the connotation of light-heartedness is definitely there, dude. But yeah, I don't think most people equate "fun" with "pleasure". "Fun" is certainly pleasurable, but "pleasure" is a much more general term in English.

If playing Silent Hill 2 is like spooking your friends in a graveyard, then I'd agree that sounds more like "fun", "light-hearted pleasure", etc. I haven't played it... I thought maybe the game had a really oppressive atmosphere.

Anyway, I'd probably just use "fun" the way you're using it, in a more general sense, so whatever.

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

compelling? as in people want to play it a great deal of times?

add internet connectivity

even the most non-sensical of games draw people back if they made a friend ingame. That's how most of those chibi anime MMO's with no real purpose do it

every once in a while add a joke or a comic relief scene, or just add something mildly sexually provocative

as technology advances we have lesser and lesser attention spans. but jokes and boobs always engage someone to play, even if they're female

:D

[xix]

Or maybe Koster hasn't been mentioned enough.

We're born with the proclivity to play because we're curious and adventurous. The best games are both easy and hard, presenting levels of challenge that are just within our reach. As we get older we learn different skillsets from games or other things. This redefines the things that fit within that spectrum. You'll notice that your friends that are good at management will be preferential in one way and your friends that are good at being decisive are preferential in another. It's always interesting to see overlap - my friends that play fighting games also like Starcraft 2, and, well, that's interesting to me as a designer.

This talk about fun is, like I said, childish. Fuck, fun. If you don't know what's fun to you or your audience, go out and play more videogames. Or don't. Do something else. Just don't do anything boring. If it's interesting it's fun. That's what fun is. Not understanding what fun is while playing something is absurd.