In this article, Paul Dean explores the core elements of a video that make it fun to play, and consequently, a financial success.
Introduction and Hypothesis.
It’s 2 AM and I’m absolutely glued to my TV playing ‘Helldivers 2’. “For Democracy” my character screams as I call down endless ordinance to lay waste to hordes of terminid (bug) enemies before me. I’m flanked on both sides by some of my best friends, also contributing equal shares to the chaos with rockets and hellfire of their own. Our mission is simple: traverse a desolate planet together and ward off the terminid’s advance through various sub-objectives over the next 45 minutes. The premise behind ‘Helldivers 2’ really isn’t much more complex than that. Yet, within mere weeks of its launch it commanded a spot at the top of the charts for both Steam and PlayStation, far surpassing the anticipated reach of the game by hundreds of thousands of players. It is so successful that the developer team had to scramble to dramatically expand their server capacity to withstand the voracious player demand to join into the fray. Over the years I’ve become far more selective with where I spend my time in gaming, but the mythos of ‘Helldivers 2’ had spread like a mind virus I could not immunize myself against. All of the hype surrounding the game is not misguided, it is outrageously fun to play.
In the same universe, several other major titles have dropped to far less fanfare. Ubisoft reportedly spent over a decade crafting ‘Skull and Bones’, and Rocksteady Studios promised the next generation-defining live service game in the form of ‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’. The launches of both these highly anticipated games straddled ‘Helldivers 2’ by a week on both sides, condemning it to be yet another forgotten casualty of the ruthless release cycle. Instead, both ‘Skull and Bones’ and ‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ instantly became pariahs for their unimaginative gameplay and lazy design while Helldivers 2 stole their core audience overnight. What on earth happened?
What is the secret sauce that makes a video game wildly successful? How can one game boast overwhelming success well beyond its shelf life while another parroting the same formula only suffers derision and hemorrhages its budget? The gaming industry and pundits alike are all grappling with these questions with no clear answer in sight. In 2023, widespread layoffs and colossal live-service game failures have catapulted this very issue to the forefront of gaming discourse. The lack of clear answers to what actually affects the long-term health of a game signals a tumultuous future. Even the fundamental question of what makes a game fun seems to elude public consensus. Upon deeper reflection, I realized that I have struggled to find a concrete answer to this question, so I took several steps back and attempted to sequence the genome of an enjoyable game.
Video games are already dominating the entertainment industry, and their reach is only increasing each year. Modest estimates suggest that well over one billion people play regularly, while more bullish accounts assert that over half of the world does. It is true that these statistics often get muddied with the mobile game player base as well, so for the purposes of this paper I am only referring to more conventional games played on consoles and PC. However, even when considering the lowest estimates, such staggering prevalence makes the task of defining “fun” both daunting and mystifying.
Key points include:
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Player immersion
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Progression
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Community Trust
Read the full article, What Makes a video game “Fun”: A theory for delivering success in a fraught industry, on DeanStrad.com.