Another turn in a discussion that I already started here (the second part in particular).

“Content that is not seen as good by players is not content”. Fun is subjective. And there’s also a “communicative pact” between the game and the players that is the premise of what comes next. “I’ll tell you that story you want to hear”.

From the comments where this discussion is continuing:

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The parallel you do between games difficulty, greater player choice and “sandbox” games is interesting. They seem to have so much in common that the concrete distinction between each is a blur.

Which could bring to the conclusion that fun in games is always subjective. Exactly because “the pattern the player masters does not have to be the one that the game was intentionally presenting”. What is fun for you could be boring for me, the game could communicate something to me that “doesn’t tick”. That doesn’t have a common ground.

And then. “That goal and the player’s goal have to actually align”. Which actually means that the player must be “preventively” interested in the pattern offered.

And what if this specific pattern comes in the form of a metaphor that the player is trying to “roleplay”?

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I think “mastery” means the acquisition of a competence. It’s always an idea of fun strictly tied to “learning”. When you have mastered a pattern (meaning you know it thoroughly) you stop having fun, it becomes boring. Which is the idea of the “losing battle against the human brain” that tries to optimize everything and make everything “boring”.

The “jump” in the discussion is when we deal with games that are subject to an interpretation. So where what the game “teaches” isn’t strictly codified but that allows the player to interact with less “filters”.

I discussed about this point here, but it’s where I start to have different ideas than Raph. From my point of view the immersion becomes a fundamental element because it removes the filters and allows the player to explore and determine the game and its patterns from a personal point of view. Adding subjectivity.

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To the last line of the first comment Raph replied:

Then the underlying game patterns that the player wants to learn likely aren’t mechanical, in the rules sense… they may be social.

But “roleplay” isn’t always social. I don’t even think that the two are connected. Take the recent example of Oblivion. It’s all about the roleplay, all about the immersion, all about creating your character and “exist” in the “slice of world”. Oblivion can be considered as a “sandbox”. And again I see “sandbox” and immersion as tightly connected.

The roleplay is a basic form of experience without “filters”. This is why we would like to reduce or remove completely the HUD. Live an experience in its full potential instead of through stictly codified patterns. A degree of freedom that is again strictly tied with the immersion, then the roleplay and finally the symbolic meaning. The myth we are trying to reproduce.

All this may or not include social patterns, but these patterns aren’t essential.

I don’t see the games as a medium that has its fundamental qualities in the mechanics. I see it more as an hybrid medium that can borrow narrative techniques from everywhere. It’s more like an infusion of different styles. Probably one of the most powerful way to communicate even if not yet used in that sense (which brings to ethical problems).

I’m not sure if I can effectively connect all the dots but I have a very precise point of view, with ethical implication: “learning” should be the discovery of oneself:

The evaluation should come from within. Not from the outside. Originally “education” meant the discovery of oneself. Not shoving in an empty, valueless mind the imposed categories and dictates of a culture.

Which brings to:

We learn through stories; we become who we are through stories.

Our own stories, those that we can shape the way we want, those that we can control to an extent and add our subjectivity. So adding something that is about us. About our symbols. Our value.

From wherever you want to look at the problem, the mechanics are a mean, a vehicle of the communication. Not its end. We can communicate how we are to someone else, we can explore ourselves in a game but, essentially, a game is a form of expression. It must be personal, somewhere, so that it can truly communicate to us, or communicate who we are.