Raph Koster > Quotes

“That’s what games are, in the end. Teachers. Fun is just another word for learning.”
― Raph Koster, A Theory Of Fun For Game Design

“Noise is any pattern we don't understand. [...] If we perceive something as noise, it's most likely a failure of ourselves, not a failure of the universe.”
― Raph Koster, A Theory Of Fun For Game Design

“Boredom is the opposite of learning.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“Consider the games that get all the attention lately: shooters,* fighting games,* and war games. They are not subtle about their love of power. The gap between these games and cops and robbers is small as far as the players are”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“Based on my reading, the human brain is mostly a voracious consumer of patterns, a soft pudgy gray Pac-Man of concepts. Games are just exceptionally tasty patterns to eat up.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“Games that fail to exercise the brain become boring.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“All of these things make us feel good when we’re successful at them, but lumping them all together as “fun” just renders the word meaningless.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“It’s as if we are requiring the player to solve a crossword puzzle in order to turn the page to get more of the novel.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“In fact, most of what we see is also a chunked pattern. We rarely look at the real world; we instead recognize something we have chunked and leave it at that. The world could easily be composed of cardboard stand-ins for real objects as far as our brains are concerned. One might argue that the essence of much of art is forcing us to see things as they are rather than as we assume them to be. Poems about trees force us to look at the majesty of bark and the subtlety of leaf, the strength of trunk and the amazing abstractness of the negative space between boughs; they are getting us to ignore the image in our head of “wood, big greenish, whatever” that we take for granted.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“This isn’t an algorithm for fun, but it’s a useful tool for checking for the absence of fun, because designers can identify systems that fail to meet all the criteria. It may also prove useful in terms of game critique. Simply check each system against this list: Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge? Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed? Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge? Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake? Can the core mechanic support multiple types of challenges? Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental “move” in the game, like moving one checker piece?) Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.)”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“the more rigidly constructed your game is, the more limited it will be.*”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“Marc LeBlanc* has defined eight types of fun: sense-pleasure, make-believe, drama, obstacle, social framework, discovery, self-discovery and expression, and surrender.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“Fun is all about our brains feeling good — the release of endorphins* into our system. There are a variety of complex cocktails of chemicals that result in different sensations. Science has shown that the pleasurable chills that we get down the spine after exceptionally powerful music or a really great book are caused by the same sorts of chemicals we get when we have cocaine, an orgasm, or chocolate.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“The definition of a good game is therefore “one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“The illusion of reality lies not in the machinery itself, but in in the users’ willingness to treat the manifestations of their imaginings as if they were real.”
― Raph Koster, Postmortems: Selected Essays Volume One

“Art and entertainment are not terms of type—they are terms of intensity.”
― Raph Koster, A Theory Of Fun For Game Design

“Delight, unfortunately, doesn’t last. It’s like the smile from a beautiful stranger in a stairwell — it’s fleeting. It cannot be otherwise — recognition is not an extended process.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“Well, I could take on the Sisyphean task of trying to match these folks in every new game as it comes out, but frankly, repeated failure is a predictable cycle, and rather boring. I have better things to do with my time.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“how we think we know what we think we know.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“They present us with models of real things — often highly abstracted. They are generally quantified or even quantized* models. They primarily teach us things that we can absorb into the unconscious, as opposed to things designed to be tackled by the conscious, logical mind. They mostly teach us things that are fairly primitive behaviors (but they don’t have to).”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“One of the releases of chemicals triggering good feelings is at that moment of triumph when we learn something or master a task.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“Boredom is the opposite of learning. When a game stops teaching us, we feel bored.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“having a varied, evolving setting (even though it only evolves in that “middle layer” of NPCs/creatures/economy) encourages roleplay, encourages exploration, encourages alternate styles of achievement,”
― Raph Koster, Postmortems: Selected Essays Volume One

“with. In a very real sense, we do not see the world — we see what our brain tells us we see.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“My personal breakdown would look a lot like Lazzaro’s: Fun is the act of mastering a problem mentally. Aesthetic appreciation isn’t always fun, but it’s certainly enjoyable. Visceral reactions are generally physical in nature and relate to physical mastery of a problem. Social status signals of various sorts are intrinsic to our self-image and our standing in a community.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“More people are willing to do the same repetitive activity over and over again for the sake of getting a red polkadotted item to replace the green striped one, than are willing to engage in a broader range of activity.”
― Raph Koster, Postmortems: Selected Essays Volume One

“The lesson for designers is simple: a game is destined to become boring, automated, cheated, and exploited. Your sole responsibility is to know what the game is about and to ensure that the game teaches that thing. That one thing, the theme, the core, the heart of the game, might require many systems or it might require few. But no system should be in the game that does not contribute towards that lesson. It is the cynosure of all the systems; it is the moral of the story; it is the point. In the end, that is both the glory of learning and its fundamental problem: once you learn something, it’s over. You don’t get to learn it again.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“In fact, seeing what is actually there with our conscious mind is really hard to do, and most people never learn how to do it! The brain is actively hiding the real world from us.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“That’s what games are, in the end. Teachers. Fun is just another word for learning.* Games teach you how aspects of reality work, how to understand yourself, how to understand the actions of others, and how to imagine.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

“This isn’t an algorithm for fun, but it’s a useful tool for checking for the absence of fun, because designers can identify systems that fail to meet all the criteria. It may also prove useful in terms of game critique. Simply check each system against this list: Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge? Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed? Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge? Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake? Can the core mechanic support multiple types of challenges? Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental “move” in the game, like moving one checker piece?) Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.) Do advanced players get no benefit from tackling easy challenges? Does failing at the challenge at the very least make you have to try again? If your answer to any of the above questions is “no,” then the game system is probably worth readdressing.”
― Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design