1. MSCH-C 210 Introduction to Games Professor Castronova
11. Player Experience
MSCH-C 210 Introduction to Games
Professor Castronova

2. Outline Attendance Check calendar
Announce problems with G300, explain how programming gets you out of ILS-Z 399
Questions?
Lecture. Player experiences. Why are games fun?
Game. Power Grid.

3. Lecture: Player Experience
Book talks a lot about costs, rewards, and returns to effort
Costs: monetary, cognitive
Rewards: Joy….?
Returns to Effort: No point trying hard in a game of luck
Theories of game happiness
Koster Theory of Fun: Mastery
Flow; “risk zone” for optimal learning
Self-Determination Theory
Connectedness, Autonomy, Competence (“intrinsic motivations”)

4. More happiness theories
Big Five or OCEAN:
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Bartle types
Socializer
Explorer
Achiever
Killer

5. Still more…
Meyers-Briggs (four factors, 16 personalities, deductive/inductive, thinking/feeling) – discredited
Maslow hierarchy – satisfy food/hunger, then safety, then sex, then social, then self-fulfillment

6. Ted’s Theory of Game Fun
Games stimulate both aversion and appetite in survival-relevant situations.
A lot of learning and mastery is not fun.
People with the same personality types find different things to be fun
People enjoy low skill and high skill, and basic survival as well as self-realization
Need an explanation that encompasses all of these but does not have exceptions.
There’s always risk
There’s always reward
It always has something to do with survival (usually on a deep, unconscious level)

7. Power Grid Markets and investment Network effects
How can economics be fun??