September 14, 2026: “Fun” is a slippery quality. Most designers take for granted that a game must be fun and make a conscious effort to ensure it is. Unfortunately, that fun often gets lost somewhere between caffeine/pepperoni fueled ideas and the last-minute rush to master the damn thing and get it out the door. This problem is not new. Even before computer games came along, the rush to ship could trample the fun out of a game.

But in a computer game, unlike a manual one, no single person has control over both (a) what is going into the game and (b) how all that effort comes across to the player. Computer games are much more of a team effort, and too often nobody retains enough control to keep the fun in. I’ve designed a hundred or so games, and although only a few were computer-based, I’ve found the computer platform the hardest to make unfailingly fun.

There’s got to be a better way. There probably isn’t, but just in case, here are a few areas to tread carefully on.

1. Figure out how much fun you can afford and try not to sacrifice it to solve other development problems.

Computer game development spends most of its money on graphics and sound. The game design itself accounts for 5-10 percent of the cost. Thus, the design effort gets about as much respect as the screenwriter does during the making of movies.

2. Find out what design elements in your game enhance fun, and which put a damper on things.

Once you’ve staked out its budget, how do you describe “fun,” much less define it? I generally go with the “addiction” interpretation: if a game keeps people at it for hours, something’s got to be turning them on. So, look for the addictive elements as well as those that drag the action down. To keep the fun elements in your sights, you also need a constant supply of fresh testers; this way you avoid inbreeding during game testing. Finally, beware of Designer Hubris, especially if you don’t have much design experience: this is when someone thinks that because they have the power, they also have the talent. It doesn’t always work that way.

3. Defining Fun.

Looking for addiction is all well and good, but how do you identify it? Any gamer who's thought about this will recall moments that were fun in a particular game. What any single player considers fun, however, varies by individual preference; not every gamer buys every game. Nevertheless, a few “fun” items constitute the majority of what turns on all gamers:

• Action. The first computer games always emphasized active involvement. The first was PONG, and in recent years many others have added continuous action.

• Puzzles. In many early PC games, players had to type in questions, read the computer's answers, and solve puzzles.

• Exploring. Another early feature of PC games was the ability to explore unknown territory, discover goodies, and embark on adventures.

• Collecting and Building. The player has explored the unknown and- lo and behold- found stuff. Some items are useful, others are a bother, and a few are even disastrous, making the entire enterprise a very sporting proposition. Sometimes you can combine the useful ones to make even more useful things. The original role-playing games (including some predating Dungeons & Dragons) used this angle of collecting things and building up your character to drive the entire game.

• Strategy. Even the simplest game — chess, for example, or even checkers —has a strategic element for players who can think beyond the immediate situation. Some games emphasize strategy, but all games involve its use.

• Conflict. All games are competitive to one degree or another, but some make conflict central. Wargames are the most obvious example. Direct conflict “gets the blood going,” making it one of the more popular fun elements.

• Surprises. One of the most difficult elements to build into a game is surprise, because even the most lackadaisical players will anticipate what a game will do next. Nothing improves a game more than the ability to truly surprise. This is much easier to do in computer games than in paper games, incidentally.

• Achievement. All games include a way to recognize player accomplishment. The more you can do this, the better the game will be received. This is basically stroking the player. It never hurts, no matter what fun element you are working on.

The list can go on, but you get the idea.

4. Set up procedures to keep track of how much fun surviving in your game is as it struggles towards a ship date.

This is a tough one. How do you keep track of something that was so difficult to define in the first place? First, you’ve got to quantify your fun elements, or at least identify them, and do so in writing at the outset. If you don’t, opinions scattered among individual development team members and management will do it for you. These opinions are likely to (a) conflict, ultimately and inevitably, and (b) fade in the face of more seemingly important items--like getting the 3D library debugged before mastering--unless they exist in black and white somewhere in the spec.

Make a list of the fun elements. Then note which game elements support each. You can add items like how many development resources are needed, and an estimate of how important each element is to the game's overall success. Does this sound complicated? I usually put all this on a spreadsheet. The purpose is to help you decide how to use limited development resources.

Design resources are less limited, and I often “design my way around software problems.” This also brings the designer into the development process in a highly productive way. Too many projects come down to two feuding camps: the programmers and the designer(s). A third combatant is usually the producer. Oh, all right, it gets more complicated than that. The marketing people, the bean counters, and perhaps a few suits intrude. Many game development projects have come to grief when these factions brawled and trampled the game in the process.

5. Quantify fun for profit

The important thing is to use gaming techniques to build the game itself. Too many game designers do not practice what they preach. Psst: A game is a mathematical system, and it must be a good one to work for the players. I figured this out before there were computer games, and all you had was cardboard and paper. (“And we liked it!”) By the end of my manual game design career, circa 1980, I was creating design tools in BASIC on PCs; before that, I used programmable calculators to lay down algorithms and perfect them before ever implementing them within an overall design system. Designers may not like acknowledging it, but all they are doing is arranging algorithms and visual elements in a way that will grab players. That’s all there is. Some designers were reluctant to embrace my method, but I have dozens of successful games to prove it works. I also found the “fun list” approach worked.

Enough ruminating. We’ve all seen a few disasters. Let’s concentrate on what will prevent the civil wars that probably produced them. By using the “Fun Database” and quantifying tasks, resources, and goals, you can create a tool to achieve peace among competing interests on any game project. If you don’t, the one item you want most — fun — will be trampled in the rush to accomplish many more obvious but ultimately lesser goals.