Games are supposed to be fun

I can see this disturbing trend in games, they are no longer fun, they are just hard to beat. I hope PoE is not going to become one of them.

What is fun?
Science today have few theories explaining why do we find certain things humorous and laugh at them.

One theory says that we find something funny when logic is making us expect one thing and another happens. While the funny thing is happening our mind makes an assumption about the outcome, our body is already preparing for this situation starting processes related to our emotions but then suddenly something completely unexpected happens and our brain has to prepare different set of emotions and adjust them to the new situation. Some scientists think that this mismatch is what makes us laugh.

Another theory works with tension. Certain situations or stories build up stress and sudden relief at the right time can cause the mismatch of emotions making us feel amused. Laugh is described as a way to get rid of the built up tension and the discrepancy in emotions.

Last theory I'm gonna mention here is about other people's mistakes. When we see someone else making a mistake or experiencing a misfortune, we feel superior to them and the incongruence between the unfortunate object of our observation and our feeling of superiority is once again creating the emotions we describe as fun.

We may even find funny things that didn't happen yet. When we see a guy in TV walking down a street approaching a banana peel, we already know what's gonna happen and laugh without actually needing to see the obvious ending. Yes, human brain is that good, making us laugh without an actual reason. By the way the guy simply avoided the banana peel and walked away.

Games
A game is an activity that doesn't have to have specific meaning usually undertaken for enjoyment, sometimes used as educational tool. While education is the main reason for playing games in animal world, in human world the enjoyment is more important part of games. We play games to feel certain emotion - joy. Playing games can arrange this emotion for us through challenge and success, we experience pleasant feelings when we achieve it. Of course we have to succeed, without it the game is not fun. Different people enjoy different things but the most universal source of joy are humorous things.

Examples
Now you can see we need to get more fun into PoE because not everyone is capable of beating the game but everybody likes to experience fun. There is already some fun in this game but I am sure it could use more.

♦ People find funny an unexpected social behavior. For example when your co-worker comes to work with only one sock on his feet. Or without pants.

Nope, no picture here. Just log in as a templar.


♦ We find funny surprising things, simple surprise can be just enough to make us laugh.




♦ Another funny thing are narrated jokes. They can have many forms and PoE has excellent tool to tell them - NPC dialogues.




♦ Things reminding us human body with altered proportions are usually funny (especially face). Some are already in game, some could be added.




♦ For some reason people find facepalm funny lately. Fortunately we already have that in PoE but a bit more of them would be cool.




♦ It is typical 'conflict fun' when cute animals do things that are not cute, for example this kitten trying to kill you.




♦ We will also find funny when we see stereotypes behaving exactly as expected for some reason. For example fat Americans.




♦ And puzzles. We need more puzzles in PoE. People enjoy solving puzzles.




♦ And farts.









Last edited by Chuch Norris on 20th December 2012 16:53

Good work, Wiggin. I never noticed the templar only has one sock...

Actually pretty informitive

I can't help but admire the effort you've put into being purely entertaining with virtually no value beyond that.

Strangely enough, it seems this is valued on the internet. :)

I'd mention something about Oscar Wilde digging it but that might be contrary to the spirit of the thread.

rofl love it

I do think there's a distinct difference between "having fun" and finding something "funny". Though, they are related, especially in how fun can happen when there's an expectation, which is overturned.

In the case of cute things doing horrible things to you... I think so many games do that now, it's expected. I'd probably derive less fun from the game if my enemies were kitties.

interesting read, thanks for posting :)

This is probably the best thing that has ever been posted in this forum. All reasonable suggestions that need action!

Just because you put items on categories does not mean u r right.!!!