Pleasure

Eating a sandwich, lying in the sun...Not necessarily fun.

(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 26)

Game Design

Game designer Marc LeBlanc proposed eight pleasures that he considers the primary "game pleasures" in LeBlanc's Taxonomy of Game Pleasures.

• Sensation - Involve using your senses. Seeing beauty, hearing music, touching silk, smelling and tasting delicious food are pleasures of sensation. Sensory pleasure is often the pleasure of the toy. This pleasure cannot make a bad game into a good one, but it can make a good game into a better one. See Axis & Allies for an example.
• Fantasy - the pleasure of the imaginary world and the pleasure of imagining yourself as something that you are not.
• Narrative - the pleasure of a dramatic unfolding of a sequence of events, however it happens
• Challenge - maybe the core pleasure of gameplay, since every game at its heart has a problem to be solved
• Fellowship - everything enjoyable about friendship, cooperation, and community
• Discovery - any time you seek and find something new. Covers exploration, discovering secret features, forming a clever strategy.
• Expression - the pleasure of expressing yourself and the pleasure of creating things. Covers designing your own characters, building and sharing your own levels, and choosing your own outfits.
• Submission - the pleasure of entering the magic circle -- of leaving the real world behind and entering into a new, more enjoyable, set of rules and meaning. Some games force you to suspend your disbelief, while others seem to suspend your disbelief for you allowing your mind to easily enter and stay in the game world. These games make submission truly a pleasure.

Game designer Richard Bartle observes tat players fall into four main groups in terms of their game pleasure preferences in Bartle's Taxonomy of Player Types.

• Achievers - want to achieve the goals of the game. Their primary pleasure is challenge.
• Explorers - want to get to know the breadth of the game. Their primary pleasure is discovery.
• Socializers - are interested in the relationships with other people. They primarily seek the pleasures of Fellowship.
• Killers - are interested in competing with and defeating others. This category does not map well to LeBlanc's taxonomy. They enjoy a mix of competition and destruction. Bartle characterizes them as primarily interested in "imposing themselves on others," so players who are primarily interested in helping others are included under this category.

The left quadrants are Players, the right quadrants are World, the top quadrants are Acting, and the bottom quadrants are Interacting. Killers are Players/Acting, Achievers are Acting/World, Explorers are World/Interacting, and Socializers are Players/Interacting.

Here are some more pleasures outside of LeBlanc and Bartle's lists:

• Anticipation - When you know a pleasure is coming, just waiting for it is a kind of pleasure.
• Delight in Another's Misfortune - We feel this when some unjust person suddenly gets their comeuppance. It is an important aspect of competitive games. Germans call it schadenfreude ("shoddenfroy").
• Gift Giving - There is a unique pleasure when you make someone else happy through the surprise of a gift. Wrapping will heighten and intensify the surprise. The pleasure is not just that the person is happy, but that you made them happy.
• Humor - Two unconnected things are suddenly united by a paradigm shift. It is hard to describe but we know it when it happens.
• Possibility - The pleasure of having many choices and knowing you could pick any one of them. Shopping or buffets take advantage of this.
• Pride in an Accomplishment - A pleasure all its own that can persist long after the accomplishment was made. The Yiddish word naches ("nock-hess") is about this kind of pleased satisfaction, usually referring to pride in children or grandchildren.
• Purification - It feels good to make something clean. "Eating all the dots," "destroying all the bad guys," or "clear the level" takes advantage of this. (For me, it's clearing fog of war for sure.)
• Surprise - The brain likes surprises.
• Thrill - Fear minus death equals fun (roller coaster designer saying). You experience terror but feel secure in your safety.
• Triumph over Adversity - pleasure that you have accomplished something that you knew was a long shot. Typically this pleasure is accompanied by shouts of personal triumph. Italians have a word for this pleasure: fiero ("fee-air-o")
• Wonder - overwhelming feeling of awe and amazement

Lens #17: The Lens of Pleasure

To use this lens, think about the kinds of pleasure your game does and does not provide. Ultimately, the job of a game is to give pleasure. By going through lists of known pleasures, and considering how well your game delivers each one, you may be inspired to make changes to your game that will increase your players' enjoyment. Always be on the lookout, though, for unique, unclassified pleasures not found in most games -- for one of these might be what ives your game the unique quality it needs.

• What pleasures does your game give to players? Can these be improved?
• What pleasures are missing from your experience? Why? Can they be added?

(The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008. Page 108-112)