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Why Video Games are Fun to Play


by Richard Clark

21 February 2009 371 views 2 Comments

Why Video Games are fun to play:

what kind of pleasure do games aim at? What is the gaming equivalent of katharsis? My answer is that games aim to inspire a characteristic sort of pleasure, the delight in the discovery and mastery of rules. Play is an expression of the human mind’s native lust to master the lawlike natural world through experiment and planning. As Kant says: “The understanding is hungry after rules, and it is satisfied when it finds them.” And video games are most fitting artform to satisfy this desire, because unlike other games and sports the rules of a video game are not disclosed in advance. Each game reveals a novel rulebound world to the player, and asks her to uncover its underlying logic through inquiry and imagination. And that is why the games are fun to play.

via Versus CluClu Land: A Clarification.

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2 Comments »

  • Alan Noble said:

    Dane? No comment on this? This seems like an interesting take on gaming, I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts, even though I am too busy currently to share my own……..

    Alan Nobles last blog post..Snark is the new excitement

    - 23 February 2009 at 7:42 pm
  • The Dane said:

    Alan you’re such a cheater.

    Not to disagree with Kant, but I think I’ll disagree with Kant. Not real bad though. Just enough to say that he stops short when he says, “The understanding is hungry after rules, and it is satisfied when it finds them.”

    I will go so far as to say that there is absolutely no satisfaction to be found at the mere discovery of rules. Satisfaction cannot arise until we realize (in both its discovery sense and its completion sense) the path to exploit those rules to bring about our victory over the rules. I think a lot of us settle for victory within the rules, but our longing is for victory over the rules.

    I do like both the name of the site to which Rich referred us (as I loved Clu Clu Land) and the point made that games are the perfect medium for exploring this one particular kind of human desire—despite the fact that far too often, the author’s wrong and we do know the rules of the game before engaging them (but bemoaning stale game development is so vogue and hip that I’ll politely abstain until it becomes the renegade’s province once more).

    The Danes last blog post..20081119.ChurchLies

    - 23 February 2009 at 10:22 pm

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