A Theory of Fun for Game Design - by Raph Koster (Summary - PVII)

Chapter 7: The Problem With Learning

• The mind likes to take shortcuts when solving problems. In other words, many people are willing to cheat.
• Cheating is a long term tradition in warfare, where it is acknownledged as one of the most powerful and brilliant of all military techniques.
• When a player cheats in a game, he is choosing a battlefield that is broader in context than the game itself.
• Cheating may be a sign that the player is grokking the game.
• Gamers will try to make the gameplay as predictable as possible. This then means that the game will become boring and not fun.
• We dislike tedium, sure, but the fact is that we crave predictability. Our whole life is built on it. Unpredictable things. Unpredictable things are like drive-by shootings, lightining bolts that fry us, smallpox, food poisoning - unpredictable things can kill us.
• Since we dislike tedium, we'll allow unpredictability, but only inside the confines of predictable boxes, like games or tv shows.
  
• Games package up the unpredictable and the learning experience into a space and time where there is no risk.
  
• Unpredictability means new patterns to learn. Therefore, it can generate fun.
• The natural instinct of a game player is to make the game more predictable because then they are more likely to win.
• Bottom-feeding: player taking on weaker oponents under the sensible logic that a bunch of sure wins is a better strategy thn gambling it all (minimizing risks).
• Rewards are one of the key components of a successful game activity.
• Successful games tend to incorporate the following elements:

1. Preparation: Prior moves in a game, like healing up before battle, are automatically part of the preparation stage because all games consist of multiple challenges in sequence.
2. A Sense of Space: The space might be the landscape of a war game, a chess board, or a networking of relationships between players during a bridge game.
3. A Solid Core Mechanic: This is a puzzle to solve, an intrisically rule set into which content can be poured. The core mechanic is usually a small rule; the intrincacies of games comes usually from having a lot of mechanics or having a few, very elengantly choosen ones.
4. A Range of Challenge: Content. It does not change the rules, it operates within the rules and brings slightly different parameters to the table. Each enemy you might encounter in a game is one of these.
5. A Range of Abilities Required to Solve the Encounters: If all you have is a hammer, and you can only do one thing with it, then the game is going to be dull. This is a test that tic-tac-toe fails but checkers meets.
6. Skills Required in Using the Abilities: Bad choices lead to failure like: failures in timing, failures in physical dexterity, and failure to monitor all the variables that are in motion. But you need to be very careful when requiring those abilities, for you don't want to frustrate the player.

A game having all these elements hits the right cognitive buttons of fun.