I am trying to see what I could use in my next game to make it funner. So, what do you guys think makes a game fun?

Multiplayer adds the most fun to a game. Another fun factor is replayability, like having side quests, or being able to accomplish something, like getting stronger weapons or rarer items.

I agree with YoYo, but I would take his replayability factor one step further, and include the ability for the player to really customize a game, whether through modding, or a map-editor, or what have you. I see a lot of great games make a big splash on the market, and then disappear three to six months later. If there was a community of players continuing to improve the game, this life span is greatly lengthened, because there are things to keep players engaged and involved past the storyline or gameplay elements you are able to create yourself, or with your smaller team (as compared to the size of your target player base).

Think of the difference between the lifespan of Warcraft III and C&C at the time of their nearly concurrent releases. C&C RA 2 was a great game, but with the limited modability/support amongst the community, it came and went. Meanwhile, WCIII kept right on rolling, and people created some truly amazing stuff, not the least of which were the DOTA's which went on to be a subgenre of gaming industry in and of itself.

This is a tricky question. This question has been asked numerous times since games were invented, and though I'm no master on the subject, this is what I have discovered so far.

People often seek the source of fun in attempt to get people to play their game. After all, people will do what is fun, right? Well, that's a limited view of things. I for one won't play WOW or Farmville because of all the grinding. But thousands of people are addicted to these games. So what makes people play them? I will attempt to explain this via a story.

Years ago, a group of psychologist came together for an experiment. The challenge was to get a rat inside a box to press a lever as many times as possible in 10 minutes. The scientist were given ample time to train the rat, and virtually anything could be done to the box to coerce the rat to press the lever. The first scientist wired the box such that food would be dispensed each time the lever was pressed. Fairly quickly, the rat learned to press the lever when he was hungry. However, when he was full, the pressing stop. So, another scientist came along, and in conjunction to dispensing food, also shocked the rat every 30 seconds if the lever had not been pressed within the last 30 seconds. This resulted in far more lever pushes, but not as much as the last scientist. The last scientist implemented the techniques of the first two scientist, but only dispensed food randomly when the lever was pressed. This resulted in a rat that went haywire pressing the lever over the course of 10 minutes, never stopping, constantly pressing. The challenge had been met.

Now, how does this relate to video games? First, with the recent advent of free-to-play games that make money from ads (and subscription services like WoW or Eve), the idea behind game design is to keep the user pressing the button. From a 3rd party perspective, this setup seems twisted and demented. Yet, people put themselves in this situation on purpose every day, and say they're having fun doing it!

So, now lets look at the similarities in the experiment and games. In game items are like food to a rat. They carry value just, as much as diamonds or any other physical material. And before you start yelling 'diamonds are so much better than a virtual sword', consider diamond are simply hard and shiny (they provide no shelter or nutrient source). So what real value do diamonds have? Frankly, none. Yet because of the high demand for them (people cover them like the sword of 1000 truths), they carry value. The same is true as video game items. In fact, in Korea, it was recently ruled that virtual items be considered the same as physical items in court.

Now consider random drops in games. Does this remind you of randomly rewarding the rat in the game? And how many games implement random drops? Because the next encounter might by that shiny ponita, or the next, or the next or the one after that.... this is the same technique that has people in vegas addicted to pulling the lever.

Now consider the shock after 30 seconds. In Farmville, your crops die if you don't harvest them. In WoW, other players will out level you if you don't log in to play daily. In many games, if you don't log in daily, bad things happen... and nobody wants to lose the things they've worked so hard to obtain.

The last final trick in what makes all of this appear to be 'fun' is the idea that a long series of choices have produced a set of rewards. Even though games are designed simply to trick you into staying around to push the lever, ultimately, your brain produces a sense of enjoyment out of this chaos. After all, you worked long hours, you optimized your choices to produce the greatest benefit, and its natural for your brain to happy because of this (consider this from the point of view of natural selection).

So what makes a game fun? Graphics and things of this nature provide great eye candy that people enjoy, but the real fun comes from being made to push the lever. Set up a good system of reward and punishment that people can optimize, and they'll be addicted in no time.

I agree, Cygnus_X, to look for "fun" in games we must look at it from a psychological stand point. SO to compliment what you were saying ther is a good table that shows how to get the most from reward punishment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement

The table is just down a bit under "Positive and negative reinforcement".

When I go shopping for a video game, I first ignore gameplay genres I know I don't like, such as FPS, then I look for the story and art to provide the fun. The story and art also tell you about each other - if the screenshot on the back of the box shows terrifying ugly monsters, the story is probably not going to be a romantic comedy. They tell you about the programming portion of the game too: if the art is awkward looking and poor quality, the gameplay might very well be poorly designed and buggy. If the story is shallow and cliche, the gameplay is probably not going to be complicated and innovative. If the story is violent, combat is likely to be the only well developed aspect of the gameplay, it's not going to have great puzzles and crafting; vice versa, if the story is non-violent, the combat (if any) may be under-developed or too easy/simple.

Replayability and possibility of modding.

Let's take in example that you're going to make simple platformer. Next to the interesting gameplay and numerous stuff that makes game interesting you need:

- MAP EDITOR
- CAMPAIGN / EPISODE EDITOR
- CUSTOM TEXTURES SUPORT

Ok, 3 basic stuff to make game replayable and possiblity to forge communities that will circle around your game longer.

When I was young, I was doing maps for Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Settlers 2, Age of Empires etc. and I was playing / modding this game for long time! I could finish on game in like week or two but after that, I was still around it for like a year and that's only because they had tools to make your own maps / levels and campaigns.

+ achievements that offers you to complete one map on a second way
+ random map / dungeon create (that will make somekind of different gameplay)
+ dynamic gameplay (build something or do something that will affect overall gameplay or world in general)

Just don't keep game linear and you'll do fine :)

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Original post by Cygnus_XSo what makes a game fun? Graphics and things of this nature provide great eye candy that people enjoy, but the real fun comes from being made to push the lever. Set up a good system of reward and punishment that people can optimize, and they'll be addicted in no time.

It must be pointed out that people are a more advanced life form than mice. I had a good time in several flight simulators, where I was using a joystick and throttle with many buttons. It felt like playing a musical instrument, with my central nervous system more fully wired into a simulator than just a mouse-click.

So, I like many levers. Knobs and buttons and sliders, oh my.

I think there are several areas to make a game fun:

Interaction - A game can be fun because its rules are fun to play. This category is about what the player do to play and win the game. When a game is fun in this way, a player would play it even if there is no freedom to customize.

Reward - The game can be fun because the reward is interesting. This is about the value of the reward the player gets from playing or winning the game. The gameplay itself might be tedious, but the player would overlook it if the reward is interesting enough.

Theme - The game can also be fun because the setting is interesting. This is about what the context of the game. The player likes the world of the game and enjoys being part of it. The reward and gameplay are secondary. The player may like the theme so much that they just want a sandbox instead of a game.

To tell how to make a game more fun, you could consider what the target audience expect in each area. Do your players expect more interesting interaction, reward, or theme? For each area, you could consider the sub-categories pertaining to the audience, since an interaction that is fun for something isn't necessarily fun for everyone.

These are some elements I consider:

Interactive Element: Wager
This is an action where the player voluntarily takes a risk for the chance to get ahead in the game. To do this, the gameplay needs to be based on skill, so that the mental alertness of the player affects the outcome. This is fun because it encourages the player to pay attention and psyche up themselves.

Interactive element: Overshoot
This is a rule where a player can lose by exerting too much effort. This is fun in a competition setting because it causes the leading players to slow down, which gives the other players the chance to catch up.

Interactive element: Lucky Shot
This is a situation where a player can win by dumb luck infrequently. This is fun so that the most skilled player doesn't always win.

Interactive element: Maintaining competitive gap
This is a scoring or resource structure where the gap between the best and the worst player does not widen indefinitely. The minimum resource or score the player gets assures that the player is still in the competition untill the final victory is decided.

Interactive element: Infinite success next to failure
This is a point assignment structure where for a variable actuated by the player, the closer it is to absolute failure, the more points the player gets. This is fun in a competition setting where a player tempted to beat the competitors are tempted to take more risk. This is fun because the losing players still have a chance to win in the end.

Interactive element: Non-possessive characters
This is an ability structure where the playable characters do not have valuable abilities that can be earned by a player. This is fun because it allows the current player to let someone else play the character without worrying about the new player messing up the character.

Reward Element: None
This is done so that the players focus on playing the game because the game is fun to play instead of anticipating what comes after the playing.

Thematic Element: Party
This is fun because it extends the situation when the game is played.

If you can't or do not aim to add in multiplayer or mod-ability, the game has to be challenging enough for me to be interested, but not too challenging for me to lose interest. Too less of a challenge creates boredom. Too much of a challenge creates frustration. Although much of this will depend on the type of audience you are aiming towards, the answer lies in the middle somewhere, to which you will have to constantly play it to fine-tune it yourself (or let a lot of other people play it for you to test it). You can also offer multiple difficulty levels for the player to choose from (ex: easy, medium, hard, etc).

Other than challenge, why else should the player care about your game? Maybe because you're offering something different, unique, and interesting to the world? Maybe you've perfected a particular popular old game mechanic?

Then there is replayability, to which will extend the life of your game. Adding in multiplayer and modding extends replayability/reusability, but what happens if you aren't going to do either of those? Then you would have to make your game play different each time you start a new game some other way. Use randomization, procedurally generated dungeons/content, etc. Or you can look at your AI, and create a type of AI that learns as you go.