A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2013)

Appendix B. Afterword: Ten Years Later

It all began as a keynote address at the very first Austin Games Conference.*

The talk led to a book, essentially an adaptation of the slide deck from the presentation, with the speech itself greatly expanded and turned into a book-length essay. It took months to do the cartoons, on a tight deadline, which is why they were mostly fairly crude. I did them all with Rapidograph pens on Bristol paper, something that now seems rather quaint. The text itself spilled out quickly, mostly over a single long weekend.

The idea that play is a primary form of learning was not new even then, of course.* But at the time that the book was written, games were under regular and sustained attack. They had not yet been exhibited at the Smithsonian.* Many game designers themselves believed that games could not be considered an art form.* We had yet to see a court case upholding them as worthy of First Amendment protection.* Game books were mostly how-to manuals for game developers, with some shining exceptions.

The reception of the book is still difficult for me to believe. It has become standard reading at game design programs around the world. I feel incredibly lucky to have touched so many budding designers, and I sincerely hope I did not damage them for life. It may well be the single largest legacy I leave on this planet, outside of my children.

Writing the book changed my own approaches to my work, and led me on an intellectual and creative journey that is still ongoing today. Ten years after the original talk, I attended the last Game Developers Conference ever held in Austin, and delivered a “ten years later” retrospective.*Sometimes, there is closure.

There’s a science of happiness now (such a phrase!). Researchers tell us that happiness is driven by factors like gratitude, using one’s strengths, a sense of social connection, striving for goals, and optimism.* These sound a lot like what games do at their best, and that may be the most important closure of all.

It may be that playing games my whole life is itself what led me to see them as systems and machinery, that they taught me to perceive everything that way. But after ten years, I look back on it all and I see games as not just a swirl of systems, but as a space between the dust from which we come and the dust we shall be, a space in which we can engage in that grand pursuit of happiness.

Thank you for reading.