[game_edu] suggestions for readings?

[Kim Gregson]

I see fun as an effect. In the case of my class eventually we want to
consider fun an effect of playing games. Entertainment, enjoyment, and
engagement are effects, too that we might see from media use, and we have to
consider how all the effects are related. There's a developing field of
study looking at  entertainment as a media use effect that I think will add
a lot to the discussion too. Play is something people do. Games are one kind
of thing (concept) people use to play

When we study other media effects, we consider a variety of factors that
could affect the "fun" effect, including
 - characteristics of the "media user" (in this case, game player) - past
experiences, psychological factors, reasons for using the media, how they
felt when they started using the media, genre they typically prefer, how
they evaluated the media before we started (had they heard lots of bad
reviews for instance), how much time they have to spend on media use
 - characteristics of the "media" (in this case the games) - quality of the
media, difficulty of use, what does the user do with it (watch vs interact),
content (really gory/bloody, sexual references, violence, characters that
look like the user..)
- characteristics of the environment (in this case where the games are
played) - is the computer fast enough, does screen size matter, does
fidelity of the audio playback matter, does the temperature of the room
matter, the comfortableness of the couch/chair matter.

We look at the effect too because there's usually a range of responses in
that effect (in our case from not fun at all to so much fun I'm going to
explode<G>) - how we measure comes from how we define it, how we
differentiate it from other effects.  We have to see if there are physical
results of having fun as well as emotional results since physical effects
would be easier to measure.

In my mind this is not something to be solved in a semester - lots of good
questions and issues being raised right here and they've made for
interesting reading. But lots of questions can be raised, relevant
literature can be identified and summarized, some variables can be examined,
perhaps a list of variables to consider in the future can be created.

I'd love to get  with people from a lot of different fields to see how they
consider "fun" Probably they could suggest still other variables and
measurement techniques. As David mentions - the idea of having fun is pretty
new (maybe it's related to a certain amount of economic excess that allows
for free time) but we know that games have been around longer than recorded
history. Maybe the history and econ folks can shed some light; i need to
track down some other email lists and get them in on the conversation<G>

A lot of my research has been as a media effects person. So that's my hammer
and fun is my particular nail today.
How else can we consider fun besides an effect or outcome? We need some
different lenses to look at it I think.

Kim

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 12:48 PM, David Thomas <david at buzzcut.com> wrote:


> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>

>> As for the division between "play" and "fun," I'm not familiar with any

>> readings that make explicit distinctions between the two, but I'll go out on

>> a limb and say that play is an activity, and fun is the result of (or

>> emotional reaction to) an activity, so the two terms describe different

>> things and can't be directly compared. But that's just my reaction.

>>

>> - Ian

>>

>

> Can you play and not have fun? Sure.Can you have enjoyable play and not

> have fun? Maybe.

> Can you have fun and not play? Of course.

>

> So why do play and fun stick together as much as play and games (or fun and

> games for that matter)?

>

> I think something else that complicates the "fun" concept is that from what

> I've been able to dig up so far, the term fun is pretty new. It's not an old

> word by any measure, and the way it is used in, at least North American

> contexts, is something different than "fun as amusement" of the past 200

> years.

>

> It's a bit out of my area, but I am led to believe that the meaning of the

> word as we use it in English might be more an American concept, and one that

> has filtered out into other languages. I would certainly like to hear from

> my global friends on that assumption.

>

> Sorry to tack this problem onto this particular thread. But I stumped at

> the moment on the fun concept and wonder either a) what I am missing or b)

> if there is actually a real problem here!

>

> -- David

>

>>

>

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