Ian, you're a genius. You're absolutely right -- there CAN be an "addictively" fun video game that still can be plagued by the negative aspects of addiction.

thing is -- it hasn't been made yet. Who's ready to get together and compose the proposal for the grant it takes? I'm not talking $2k or $20k, I'm talking the big $250k+ grants to get a real team together and make something happen.

and honestly, I think it would be more like $1 mil... but I'm the guy who thinks everybody hates good ideas...

The best representation of drugs I've seen is in the rather woeful Postal 2. In that game crack was the way of healing quickly (you could just stand about, but that is pretty boring). But it had one major side effect, after a while you started loosing the health you gained via the crack. Of course by then you've prolly lost health from the bad (good?) guys shooting you, so you had a bit of a problem, ie. you health was going down, and you were going to die.

So what do you do? Why take some more crack, but of course the rate at which your health drops adds up, eventually you are constantly loosing health, and thus are on a rather hurried search for more crack, just to survive.

That mechanic was great, too bad the rest of the game sucked.

I'd like to see your full-length article on why games don't have to be fun. I'd like to agree, but I don't see a way around the problem of keeping the player engaged in an interactive setting if things aren't fun. How do you keep a player engaged and willing to actively participate in an experience that they aren't enjoying?

(Or is there a level of enjoyment that doesn't fall under the idea of fun? Can intellectual intrigue and interest in the game experience be enjoyable even when it's not fun?)

Great analysis here, and I'd like to throw in my 2 cents worth of agreement on the "fun" issue. My argument here would be that games provide structure to experience and interaction, and that sometimes simply having structure (and particular kinds of structures-- collaborative vs. competitive, e.g.) are more important than having "fun". I often deploy games, for example, in public spaces not to be fun, but to increase participation in an overwhelmingly ambiguous (what can I do here?) space.

I wonder if all this talk of whether games should be fun or not is merely a semantic issue. In it's pure sense, anything engaging to the reader/viewer/player is a kind of fun, even if it's low-grade.

I think JaneMcG has a good point in saying: "My argument here would be that games provide structure to experience and interaction, and that sometimes simply having structure are more important than having 'fun.'"

I would amend that to read: ". . . and that simply having structure and interaction is fundamentally a kind of low-resolution 'fun.'" But what do I know?

How do you keep a player engaged and willing to actively participate in an experience that they aren't enjoying?

It seems to me that we do things we don't enjoy in the sort of pure, mindless American sense of the word all the time. Especially when it comes to art, film, literature, and so forth. The word "engagement" is another tricky one, and I fear it too reeks of commodification.

anything engaging to the reader/viewer/player is a kind of fun

Well, some things are really miserable. Or shocking. Or incongruous. Or in any case not fun.

On both of these points, sometimes we just want to explore and interrogate other parts of our humanity... and I don't see why games can't be a part of that challenge.

"How do you keep a player engaged and willing to actively participate in an experience that they aren't enjoying?"

Workplace training simulators and educational games used in the classroom might be examples of instances where someone will play a game that is not "fun". In these cases, participation is linked to an external reward that is sufficient to compensate the player for a less-than-enjoyable experience.

oooh... let's not forsake the word "engagement" for fear of its commodification... I think it's a very useful term to describe an investment, emotional or physical or mental or some combination, that an actor has in a given system. I realize lots of people want to co-opt the term to make hoo-ha claims, but I think we should keep it around and try to use it with specificity and intentionality... it is just so useful to me as a metric for the success of a play experiment.

Jane -- yeah, I'm thinking of the hoo-has when I express concern. Especially in education, I've often heard the word "engagement" used as a sort of political replacement for "fun" and nothing more. Lately I've been talking about the kids of expression that game experiences produce as a metric for success. Interesting point is, these kinds of ideas open up the door to fuzzier, more qualitative responses, like I was talking about in my GDC talk.

Ian, all I meant by engagement is whatever it is that keeps the player motivated to actively participate. I'm not up to date on any past academic history of the term. =)

Just to try and rephrase what I was thinking ...

It seems to me that there are some things in books, film, etc which will keep someone observing or reading but which may not translate directly to games. I'm not very clear on this though, and a good example could probably change my mind.

It also seems to me that you need stronger motivations to keep someone actively participating in a game than to simply sit back and continue watching or reading a non-interactive media. But feel free to convince me otherwise.

David, that's a good example, but not really in the scope of what I was thinking of. I'm assuming that the problem at hand is how to make a game that's "not fun" in such a way that people will be willing to play it without external coercion. (After all, kids will write exams when there's external rewards, but I don't think that makes exams a model for good games.)

a dialogue about fun and the representation of drugs in games and no one remembers the 1989 shareware classic Popstar? the game was a very primitive simulation (mainly text) about a scottish rock&roll band in a world of sex and drugs. the main narrative was that the player needed to name the band and start gigging and writing songs. characters incessantly paused time in the game to ask to go on a pub crawl (yes or no?) or to smoke marijuana (yes or no?), have an orgy (yes or no?) or the most deadly of 'em shoot heroin (yes or no?). if you did any drug repeatedly, you began habit. no drugs= depression, suicide and you lost. oh, also you had stats such as creativity, health, etc. so when you were on drugs it effected them either +ly or -ly. and if you weakened, then you checked into a hospital or go on vacation. rest was the cure.

so the game was very addictive, ha. fast and fun, insanely replayable.

what i really liked about the game was that when you were on a drug such as LSD, it was an actual perceptual event. the sound got distorted and all sizes and colors of flashing rectangles piled up and invaded the screen space. this moment in modularity (if that's the word) disrupted narrative time in the game, but that's where the art was.

and i don't have much to say about morality. as jack kerouac said, "there is a lugubrious senilty in morality which is devoid of real life"

so in this game, you as the character can OD at anytime, you as the player have vivid perceptions. it's obviously not the true experience of a drug abuser, but it is a form (as an aethetic form) based addiction.

probably when academics say games are fun, they are really depoliticizing them from the start and making the discourse too narrow. i mean they don't see the connection between katamari damacy and quine's word and object. reading is fun, too.

I'm sorry, but I not only disagree with this article, I also take offense to it. The game in question, Narc, is an adults only (17+) game that is in no serious way meant to be realistic. This is an action game that attempts to replicate the look and feel of action films. It is not a life simulator.

Perhaps if you were to do some real research you'd see that Narc is a remake of an old arcade game, one that featured extreme violence on the part of the police to take out drug pushers who fired what had to be 6 foot long hypodermic needles, and giant attack roaches.

You seem to miss the point. You must think this game is about addiction. Were that the case then perhaps your arguments would make sense, but that's not the focus of the game. Maybe the makers of Steer Madness will make "Oh no, I'm in withdrawl" the action game.

Maybe if this game were targeted at children I'd be a little worried, but its not. "But kids are going to get their hands on it" you say? Then fine the parents $500 per violation and make sure the ratings are enforced before whining and trying to run these forms of entertainment for everyone else. If someone hasn't figured out that drugs and addiction are bad for them by 17, they're probably destined for bad things and most likely require an intervention.

Jean — I'm not sure if you're speaking to the author of the NY Times article or me, but I certainly didn't write the article I refer to. I'm not talking about the game getting in the hands of children; clearly it is a game for adults. Rather, I'm trying to highlight the fact that we don't see games about addiction, an interesting and unexplored possibility space. Furthermore, the representation of drug use in this new version of Narc does indeed and undeniably miss the point of drug addiction, whether or not that is "the focus of the game." Any aspect of the game is fair game for inquiry and critique.

It is an interesting point and sometimes I wonder if saying that games should be/need to be 'fun' is really glossing over a lot of what is already in many games (so here I would be agreeing with Ian in disagreeing with Koster). Even something simple as seeing someone throw a controller on the ground and then pick it up again to start over... could we say that person is having 'fun'? To me, frustration and odd sorts of challenge and fascination are just as prevalent as 'fun' in many games already (and *how* people play them).

Ian, thank you for writing back. I appreciate what you have to say, and I agree that Narc does miss the point of drug addiction, however I still feel as though we are not yet in agreement. Its true, we don't see games about addiction, and it would be interesting to see something of that nature be released, but a realistic take on addiction is not necessary for a game like Narc, which is pure escapism. I can only argue this from my own perspective. I know that addiction is a horrible HORRIBLE thing, and that the kind of drug use exhibited in a game like this can only lead to ruin in reality. Narc, like GTA or Mortal Kombat is unrealistic to such an outrageous extreme, its fun to play and watch and laugh at, but can in no way be confused with reality by a rational individual.

And honestly, I haven't bought it, and I probably won't. I'm saving my money for Mercury when its released for the PSP. And for those non-game titles coming out for the DS. They actually sound like exactly the kind of titles I've been hoping for. In the meantime, I'm all about Lumines and Wipeout Pure, though Lumines is like digital crack. There's my addiction right there.

Anyway, sorry for the hostility. I actually tried to edit my original post to sound less grouchy, but I didn't see the option to do so.

Jean - Hostility is welcome if it engenders good discussion! One of the things that bothered me about the article about Narc was that the developers seemed very lackadaisical about including drug use in the game. Actually, an escapist game might be all the more needy of "responsible" representations of addiction.

Lumines is totally digital crack though. That's an interesting take on the problem, actually... a game that foregrounds its addiction as part of the experience.

Here's my 2 cents, I don't know how much they're worth at this point, but after reading through some of these comments I'm starting to notice a trend with regards to what we are calling "engagement." What I see when we're dealing with engagement is the player's opportunities. By opportunities I mean options for action. What can the player do next? What could the player have done instead? How might the player open up possibilities for interaction within the framework of any given game?

This is an assumption, but I believe there is quite a bit related between the success of a game and its open-endedness. An example of such success is the GTA series, where players are basically given the freedom to mix and match variables within the game without having to follow the story line. Of course, following the story line does allow the player to unlock more and more options, but it's the idea that players find incentive to follow the story line to increase the number of variables (opportunities) at their disposal that intrigues me.

In my estimation, I'd say engagement is directly associated to the amount opportunity a player has to manipulate the environment/game. Now look what I've done...reductionism.

ok im not all fancy writing so im just going to say this.Having a game based tottaly on fighting drugs is the stupidest thing i have ever heard of.

Although the drugs still dont give you much power ups except for liqued soul and and extacy if you are in sticky situatians. you could make it a little more realistic though and have it harder to gight off drugs.