Theory of Fun for Game Design, 2nd Edition

Foreword (from the First Edition)

Will Wright

The title of this book almost feels wrong to me. As a game designer, seeing the words “theory” and “fun” in such close proximity instinctively makes me a bit uncomfortable. Theories are dry and academic things, found in thick books at the back of the library, whereas fun is light, energetic, playful and...well...fun.

For the first few decades of interactive game design, we were able to blithely ignore many of the larger meta-questions surrounding our craft while we slowly, painfully learned to walk. Now for the first time we are starting to see serious interest in what we do from the academic side. This is forcing those of us in the games industry to stop and consider,

“What is this new medium that we’re working in?”

The academic interest seems twofold: First is the recognition that video games probably represent an emerging new medium, a new design field, and possibly a new art form. All of these are worthy of study. Second, there are an increasing number of motivated students that grew up playing these games and now find themselves inspired to work in the field one day. They want to find schools that will help them understand what games are and how to make them.

One slight problem: there are very few teachers that understand games well enough to teach them, no matter how motivated their students happen to be. Actually it’s worse than that, ...