'Fun' is a word used to describe a source where we can receive enjoyment from. Fun can be hard to describe, but we know when we have experienced it, regardless of how hard it is to describe.
Paleolithic pastimes:
As humans, we have a strong dependency on social interactions with one another. This also leads to another dependency that we need. An establishment in our families and the ability to maintain this place in our families.
(RSS) Refined Sugar Syndrome is a theory that considers the way we behave towards things that give us pleasure. As humans in our past history we have always strived to get more of the things that taste sweet in this world. Sugar being a natural substance found in fruit, as ancient beings we found the sugary fruits and treasured them. However nowadays we have been able to produce a concentrated form of this substance. This is now true with the act of play, we have taken the simple act of playing and turned this into a concentrated source that is a video game. Our ancestors played games as a form of entertainment and as a way to keep their survival and hunting skills sharp and a constant improving.
Physical fun:
One of our primary urges as human beings is the survival instinct, anything that threatens our survival automatically commands our full attention and awareness. Games tend to tap into this theme to capture players and immerse them further into their games. As this urge is an automatic instinct, players find it hard to ignore, its built into our mind set. This can be considered to the whole mass entertainment media. Even films put viewers in a state of mind of survivability to capture their attention. This physical fun relies on strong muscles and good coordination. A theory as to why sports are popular, these often focus on physical strength and team cooperation. These activities go back in our history as they are similar to the hunting and surviving instinct of our ancestors.
The article mentions why many game items can easily be relevant toward our ancestry.
Casinos - Berry picking
Collectible games - Gatherers
RTS,RPG,FPS - Travellers/discovery
Weapons/hand tools - Stone tools
Social fun:
Games bring people together, it creates a ground for us to build social interactions and increase the development of language. It has also given us an indirect way of learning and increasing the ability of our process of improving our survival instincts. The existence of storytelling shows that our ancestors enjoyed or at least had the desire to communicate and socialise with each other.
MMO's can create the basis of socialisation from many different features in the game. Chat rooms can open up where people discuss experiences and such they have had in the game. The media is constantly expansive which then create more social interaction. A reason why many people play these games and a reason why many game developers focus on this aspect of their games.
Mental Fun:
Games that challenge us mentally, lure some players in just for that challenge. We have developed as human beings to have a large brain that holds so much information and this has given us the advantage of learning to survive and adapting over time. The constant expansion of our brains has given us quicker reactions, recognising patterns and important decisions.
Blended fun:
These games are smart as they use more than one of these natural funativity 'types' in their games to lure or attract in more than one type of gamer. Different gamers prefer different types of funativity, and so tapping into more than one type of funativity, they can gain a wider audience for their games.
All these types of funativity need to be considered when designing an original game that can be fun. However i never took the time to think how deep in history our instinct to have fun and entertainment were.
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