There’s a chapter in my book about the WoW raid group I followed learning a new encounter. I wrote about one specific instance, but I watched this happen about 70 times while I was researching, always the same basic way. It went like this:
- Initial run of new encounter, with some people having done research, some having not done research, some having done the encounter with other groups as other characters, and some having absolutely no idea what was coming.
- John and Mary die.
- John and Mary die.
- Repeat as needed.
- Patterns emerge. People who lead see patterns and start to address them.
- More death.
- Even more death.
- A close run, where the group finally realizes this could all work out.
- More death, more discussion.
- Eventually… success.
The thing that stuck out to me in my research is the thing I’ve argued with a number of people, something that at least one person to review my manuscript absolutely went bonkers on me for: this wasn’t like five or ten deaths to learn something. This was around 200 deaths (per member) to learn something. By all accounts, that’s a point at which frustration should kick in. And I’ve been accused of valorizing my participants by pointing out that they didn’t get mad or overly frustrated to the point of irrationality by these multiple deaths, but I don’t think it’s rose-colored lenses or being overly generous. I recorded and scrutinized all those deaths. I had a well-honed understanding of how they were treating it, as a group. They were learning, and they saw what was happening as a process.
Here’s the argument that the one reviewer decided to write me a multi-paragraph lecture about: there’s a group of people who study games who think that games don’t have to be fun and that a game that frustrates and leads to the player being daunted and upset is an important part of gaming.
I disagree. I think that is still “fun” for the player.
I’ve been told that I can’t make that argument because I don’t get to define what fun is based on my own opinion. This is where a game studies person who isn’t also a PhD in English shouldn’t be quite so cocky with me. We all want to be precise, be scientific, but there’s a big problem with that in this debate. There is no way to quantify “fun.”
The common argument is that games can be hard and that when a game is too hard, it’s not fun, but people keep playing for the challenge. I’ve even had people, at times, exasperatedly say to me “some of the best games aren’t fun! They’re hard and frustrating.”
I think people don’t understand what my disagreement with that sentiment is. I’m not trying to counter their logic. Yes, there are games that are quite frustrating. For me, one of those games is the relatively low-impact social game Clash Royale. As I am learning to actually be competitive, there are moments where the opposition somehow just out-resources me and I can’t fathom where all the units come from. I end up being overwhelmed in game, and I lose. And it’s frustrating. And I make up new profanities to shout at my phone (last night, and Julie can correct me if I’m remembering wrong, I believe I called someone a “bean obsessed frickty-fracker” then, upon gaining advantage I started chanting, inexplicably, “Frank loves Jamba Juice!”– neither of those things make sense).
So yes, a mechanism of gaming is to frustrate and challenge us. That’s been part of game design since the start. Why do you think one of our most popular American games is one where someone throws a small ball really hard while another person tries to hit it with a stick into a confined area of play? We don’t want our games to be easy.
Buuuuuuut…
This is what I disagree with. A number of people are creating a binary of fun/frustrating. And I don’t think that’s a binary at all. I think the reason I keep playing Clash Royale even though it frustrates me is because it’s fun. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t subject myself to it. There are better ways to self-punish than games, and there are better things to do with our time than to self-punish. That’s PRECISELY what my WoW research participants to me, too. They kept playing because the fun of the challenge, the joy of trying to figure out the new puzzle, the thrill when it all went right and the group won, was good for them. They were having fun.
In their own words. Fun.
Here’s the dictionary definition:
“What provides amusement of enjoyment,” doesn’t preclude frustration.
That’s sort of my game/set/match in this argument with others. To claim that if something isn’t easy and you aren’t laughing and giggling the whole time it’s not fun abuses a word with no scientific basis. What amuses a person isn’t univeral. Some people, for example, love rollercoasters. I pass out when I get up too high, and I don’t like being completely out of control, so for me, that’s not an amusing and fun thing. I had a friend who used to do those Good Will Hunting/A Beautiful Mind math equations on his wall because to him spending days on a math problem was fun.
It’s not accurate to claim that a player who us frustrated isn’t having fun with a game. It’s a weird judgment call. And it wouldn’t be fair for me to assert that a frustrated player IS having fun. Except, of course, that I asked them.