Natural Funativity

This week we were asked to read an article titled ' Natural Funativity', an interesting title to be sure. (The title is a pun on natural selection). In this blog post I will summarise and discuss what I think are the important points of this article.

Intro

Fun in itself is not a useful term when critically analysing a game, the term 'fun' is too subjective and not specific enough. This article written by Noah Falstein attempts to remedy this by looking back at the past of our human existence to determine why we like to partake in certain activities and find them 'fun'.

In the article fun is broken down into 4 distinct types these are; physical fun, social fun, mental fun and blended fun. Below I will describe what each type of fun involves and where it likely evolved from. The article also mentions something the author calls, refined sugar syndrome, below I will explain what this means, and how it relates to the different types of fun.

RSS - stands for Refined Sugar Syndrome. It is the act of wanting more of something, even though we know it is bad for us. It is the act of refining something to make it more extreme, e.g. a person’s love of fast cars may date back to when we needed to move faster and faster to escape hungry predators. The modern car can be seen as a more refined version of that original love of speed, which helped us to survive. It's the same principle, but taken to a much greater extreme.

Physical Fun - is very likely to be linked back to the pure survival skills, such as hunting and gathering that our ancestors possessed. Hunting skills can be seen in a large variety of games, including but not limited to; racing games (chasing down the 'prey', or escaping from the 'prey'), FPS games, where the player physically runs after the enemy player in an effort to destroy them, or conversely, when low on health, attempts to escape from the enemy player. Physical fun is not just limited to tool use. The mere act of interacting with the game itself; whether it's by using a game controller, mouse and keyboard combination, or one of the various new motion sensing technologies, (Wii, Kinnect and Playstation Move), this interaction and manipulation of the input peripheral is in itself an act of physical fun.

Gathering skills can also be seen in many different types of games. This type of skill likely dates back to our time as berry and cherry pickers, once again an essential part of our survival. Here are some examples of collectibles from a variety of different video games; Pacman - dots, Mario - coins, stars, Zelda – heart-pieces, weapons, tools, Final Fantasy - different weapons, potions, etc. Collecting is also a large part of MMORPG's (massively multiplayer online role playing games). In most MMORPG's the player must acquire better items in the form of progressively better 'loot' as they continue to fight monsters which get increasingly more difficult. The new loot keeps the player powerful throughout their time playing the game. The Pokemon video games were entirely based around the idea of fighting and catching hundreds of different monsters, as the games catch phrase, "Gotta catch em' all!" states. As you can see, the act of collecting is crucial to many video games.

Social Fun - can be traced back to our need to survive as a species, via reproduction and living as part of a larger tribe or clan. Just as important is our development as a species with our love of storytelling. The earliest form of story was a way of imparting information and lessons to future generations. Stories can impart knowledge even if the author of the story has long since passed away. Stories then, are one way we record events throughout the ages.

In games social fun can take many forms, here are a few of the most common ones; in most MMO's; especially those that discourage or disable player vs player killing, the impulse to help out other players especially if they are new to the game, exists. Players often travel around the world in clans, to complement each other's individual skills, and stand a better chance against the majority of monsters and quests throughout the game. This type of play is very reminiscent to how we as human beings behaved back thousands of years ago when we lived as part of a larger tribe, in order to stand a better chance of surviving.

Mental Fun - can be traced back as an alternative to always hunting. Instead of instantly going outside again after returning from a successful hunt, one of our ancestors could have taken a break from hunting, and played a simple game using a piece of wood and stones. The single piece of wood would be balanced on a stone, and the ancestor would throw other stones at the wood to try and overbalance it. In this fashion the ancestor is improving his mental abilities, whilst in a safe environment. This also has the added benefit of helping his muscle tone, since he is getting a miniature workout by throwing the stones, even when not actively hunting for food.

Intelligence itself is sometimes defined as the ability to find and manipulate patterns. Imagine if you will the importance of our ancestors recognising the difference between a normal field of grass and a field of grass occupied by a Sabre-tooth tiger, lying in wait. It's not difficult then to see how mental fun would have been essential to our ancestor’s survival.

In games mental fun can take many forms, puzzle games such as Bejeweled, are perhaps the most obvious example in video games.. Jigsaw puzzles and the ever popular Rubix Cube are two common examples of non-digital mental fun. I imagine most people will at some point in their lives, have completed a jigsaw puzzle or grappled against a Rubix Cube.

Blended Fun - Most modern entertainment is made up of a mixture of the above categories.

A common sport such as football for example, uses elements of; physical fun - kicking, throwing and catching the ball, social fun - team work, communication throughout the game, and mental fun - the actual overall game-plan and tactics throughout each minute of the game, e.g. when to put more of an emphasis on attacking, when to shift that emphasis largely to defence etc.

Rayman Gold

Video games also use a blend of the different types of fun listed above. Consider the 2D platforming game Rayman Gold. Rayman contains a large element of collecting. In Rayman the player must collect all 100 'tings' (balls of light), in order for the exit to the next level to appear. To accomplish this, the player must practise playing the game, learning the controls as they go, along with learning how to execute certain moves effectively. This is another aspect of physical fun.

Rayman Gold also contains mental fun. As the player plays through the game they will encounter a variety of different enemies, based on each environment in the game world. Many of these enemies use specific attack patterns which need to be memorised, in order to effectively defeat them. This mechanic is most prevalent in the many Boss stages throughout the game. The player must fight each boss several times before they will be able to effectively recognise and exploit the weaknesses in the attack patterns that each boss utilises. Only then will the player be able to triumph and move onto the next environment of the game.

Rayman Gold: Mr Skops Boss Battle

Rayman Mapper

It could also be argued that Rayman Gold contains social fun through the use of the built in Mapper. The Mapper program allows the user to create complex, 2D single player levels, much like those that were included in the game. The player is, in fact, given the exact same tools that the Developer (Ubisoft) used to make the levels in the game, and so can create levels nearing or even surpassing the quality of the Ubisoft levels.

The learning curve of the level editor is almost non existent, I should know since I was able to make fairly complex levels back when I was only around age 7-8. The level editor is comprised of two main screens; the first screen is the 'level' being constructed itself; this will start of as a completely blank background.

The second screen is a 2D template image containing all the individual elements of one of the 'themes' from the game. The themes are, Dream Forest, Band Land, Candy Chateau, Picture City, Blue Mountains and The Caves of Skops.. To start creating a level, the play simply needs to drag a box around an element from their chosen template that they want in their level and then use the ‘Ctrl C’ and ‘Ctrl V’ hotkeys to copy and paste the element onto the other screen. (Fun fact: The Rayman Gold level editor taught me those two extremely common hotkeys. Before playing the game, I didn't know of them).

Rayman Mapper Dream Forest Template

Anyway, back to how it could be classified as social fun. After a level has been created, it can be uploaded to the internet to allow other Rayman Gold players to experience it. Sometimes the players may give the level author feedback, thus communicating with them. This is a simple form of social fun. The author can use this feedback to improve their level, and then re-upload it to get more feedback. This iterative process of improving the level may overtime produce something of great quality that many people will enjoy playing.

Conclusion

In conclusion I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article. The possibility that fun can be linked back to our evolution as a species, and can then be broken down into four sub-categories is an intriguing one.

Bibliography

Falstein Noah, "Natural Funativity", 2004.

Available online at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2160/natural_funativity.php

Games Referenced

Rayman Gold (PC, Playstation) Ubisoft