Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today I wanted to talk about fun because the other
Speaker 1: day I was thinking about trying to explain what we
Speaker 1: mean when we say something is fun, uh, particularly about
Speaker 1: how the idea of fun is strongly related to the
Speaker 1: idea of pleasure, but not exactly the same thing as it.
Speaker 1: Most things that are fun are pleasurable, though maybe not
Speaker 1: all things. And then there are tons of things that
Speaker 1: are pleasurable but are not really fun, Like, despite the
Speaker 1: the infamous name of the fun sized candy bar, I
Speaker 1: think it would be really weird to say that eating
Speaker 1: a piece of candy is fun, even though it is
Speaker 1: pleasing in a sense. What might be fun in relation
Speaker 1: to a candy bar, maybe like I don't know, making
Speaker 1: candy bars with a friend, or like going out trick
Speaker 1: or treating or something. Uh, And candy bars? Whoa making candy?
Speaker 1: Who makes candy bars? Joe? I don't know. People do
Speaker 1: all kinds of like kitchen projects with friends for fun,
Speaker 1: don't they. I don't know. I've seen it on Great
Speaker 1: British Baking Show. It looks fun. They're okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1: I've never done it, though, I I do cook, but
Speaker 1: I've never made candy. I don't know. It seems seems sticky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it is generally generally sticky. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are candy I can I can picture people making various candies,
Speaker 1: but for some reason, the candy bar in my mind anyway,
Speaker 1: it instantly feels like this can only be produced by industry.
Speaker 1: This is not something that is achievable by the by
Speaker 1: the kitchen. I'm likely wrong about that. Well, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's got to be hard to make the
Speaker 1: ones with all the layers and stuff. But I mean,
Speaker 1: people make multi layer of cakes and at also, why
Speaker 1: not candy bars? Sure, okay, I was just throwing it
Speaker 1: out there. It seemed like a potentially possibly fun act.
Speaker 1: It somebody does, I don't know, trigger treating. That's fun, right, right?
Speaker 1: And I think I think that's what Ultimately, that's what's
Speaker 1: fun about fun sized candy bars. It's the idea that
Speaker 1: since it is smaller, it may open itself up for
Speaker 1: fun possibilities like trigger treating, like a fun additional treat
Speaker 1: that's put into your lunch or something by your parents,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, Right, So I want to open
Speaker 1: this up to the original context in which I was
Speaker 1: thinking about trying to define fun and finding some of
Speaker 1: these difficulties. So, something I've noticed when we do our
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema episodes, the episodes we release on Fridays
Speaker 1: where we we we just have fun talking about weird movies.
Speaker 1: When we pick movies for this show, I feel like
Speaker 1: one of the core things we look for is a
Speaker 1: quality of fun. Though this does not correlate in any
Speaker 1: consistent way that I can find with internal features of
Speaker 1: a movie like a fun Weird House Cinema move movie
Speaker 1: could be a an elegant, imaginative fantasy movie like Returned
Speaker 1: to Oz. Or it could be an audacious, technically incompetent
Speaker 1: cheese fest like Plan nine for Matter Space. Or it
Speaker 1: could be a grainy, juicy barbarian movie like Conquest. These
Speaker 1: are all movies we've done recently that have very little
Speaker 1: or almost actually nothing in common with one with one
Speaker 1: another in terms of objective contents or qualities. But what
Speaker 1: unites them is that they're all these unusual genre exercises
Speaker 1: and at least for you and I as viewers. They're
Speaker 1: all fun. And there are lots of good movies that
Speaker 1: I love that are not fun. The other day we
Speaker 1: were talking about we're talking off Mike at least about
Speaker 1: the movie Under the Skin, which is a good movie,
Speaker 1: but it would be hard to say it's fun. So
Speaker 1: fun isn't some necessary quality of good films or of
Speaker 1: art or entertainment in general. But I think it's a
Speaker 1: core element of weird house cinema. Yeah, I know what
Speaker 1: you mean. I think most of, if most certainly most
Speaker 1: of the films we've picked for weird health cetema I
Speaker 1: would classify as fun. If in the cases where maybe
Speaker 1: a film didn't turn out as fun as I was
Speaker 1: hoping it was going to be, uh, you know, those
Speaker 1: are more of the exceptions to the rule. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is hard to really figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what is the fun thing because you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: it maybe a children's movie and may be very lighthearted,
Speaker 1: it may not be lighthearted, and maybe technically competent, it
Speaker 1: may not be competent. They put together. Um, I was
Speaker 1: trying to think of what would be a good example
Speaker 1: of a film that feels this way to me, where
Speaker 1: it's it's good, it's something I like, but it is
Speaker 1: not maybe not fun. And I was thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 1: the Texas Chainsaw Masker. It's an example that the original.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a film I would hesitate to
Speaker 1: call fun, but I enjoyed it a lot when I, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, saw it. In times that I've seen it,
Speaker 1: it remains stuck in my head. Is kind of like
Speaker 1: an easy reference point for things. It has excitement in it,
Speaker 1: it's in one is engaged in it, and yet I
Speaker 1: don't know if I would say it is a fun movie.
Speaker 1: And as we'll discuss, they're all sorts of qualifiers on that,
Speaker 1: especially when we start talking about about media. Right So,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that we have this word that we use
Speaker 1: extremely casually, and we both know what we mean when
Speaker 1: we're talking about fun movies, and yet there are tons
Speaker 1: of movies we like that are not fun, and the
Speaker 1: fun movies that we like don't necessarily have really anything
Speaker 1: in common. Right um Now, when we're talking about movies especially,
Speaker 1: but also the other forms of media, I've I've heard
Speaker 1: this employed for non cinematic media as well. Oftentimes you'll
Speaker 1: see the fun description used as a positive counterpoint to good,
Speaker 1: as in, hey, how is the new Jurassic World movie?
Speaker 1: Was it good? It was fun? And maybe you're being
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to yuck anyone's yum, But
Speaker 1: this is actually how I felt about the I guess
Speaker 1: maybe the all three of the Jurassic World movies. I
Speaker 1: would never argue that they were they were good movies
Speaker 1: or great movies. Um. I wouldn't say they were my
Speaker 1: favorite films. They weren't my favorite rampaging dinosaur movies, but
Speaker 1: they were fine. They delivered on fun and um. And
Speaker 1: of course it's just it's very subjective to even try
Speaker 1: to explain like what that means, because at this point
Speaker 1: we're just absolutely knee deep and subjective vaguary when it
Speaker 1: comes to saying, well, this movie was good and this
Speaker 1: one was fine. Well, you know one thing I would say,
Speaker 1: they're uh, they're probably multiple ways of coming at this.
Speaker 1: But when somebody asks is a movie good, you kind
Speaker 1: of interpret that question is being about the intrinsic qualities
Speaker 1: of the movie itself. I mean putting aside questions of
Speaker 1: like whether you could actually objectively judge something like, you know,
Speaker 1: is the script good? Is the acting good, but putting
Speaker 1: you know that caveat aside. You're at least asking about
Speaker 1: something that is true of the movie, no matter who's
Speaker 1: looking at it. And when you talk about fun, you're
Speaker 1: saying something more about like your experience of watching the
Speaker 1: movie at the time and place that you did, like
Speaker 1: I had a good time. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 1: some like you said, there's so many ways of looking
Speaker 1: at a film. You can just you can look at
Speaker 1: it technically, you can, you can think of it, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the acting, you can. You can purely
Speaker 1: base it in your own experience of watching it or
Speaker 1: a communal experience of watching Adam. And there's so many
Speaker 1: ways to go to go at it. And yeah that
Speaker 1: it is a vague question when someone asked is this
Speaker 1: a good movie? Because on one level they're sort of
Speaker 1: asking like what, they just want to know what did
Speaker 1: you think about it? And should I see it? Would
Speaker 1: I like it as well? Um? And uh yeah. Answers
Speaker 1: can be all over the board. Sometimes it could be
Speaker 1: like it's a great movie, you would hate it, it's
Speaker 1: I loved it, You should not see it, and if
Speaker 1: you do see it, please don't tell me about it
Speaker 1: because I know that you won't like it, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, yep, yep. So I wanted to look at
Speaker 1: fun on the show because fun is clearly extremely important
Speaker 1: in our lives. It's a type of experience that we
Speaker 1: seek constantly as one of the core ways of of
Speaker 1: enriching our existence, and yet it actually seems to be
Speaker 1: a rather complex and elusive concept to define. Uh So
Speaker 1: I thought it would be worth spending a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes trying to examine the concept of fun and try
Speaker 1: to see if we can draw any interesting conclusions about it. Now,
Speaker 1: the immediate question that comes to my mind and all
Speaker 1: of this, of course, is not only what is fun
Speaker 1: and how can it be research, which of course we'll
Speaker 1: get into, but also is it distinct from other areas
Speaker 1: that have been researched so such as play, Because the
Speaker 1: study of play would seem to be a big one,
Speaker 1: as this is generally understood as the spontaneous activity of children,
Speaker 1: as well as being central to game sports, many different
Speaker 1: hobbies among all ages, and especially in children, play has cognitive, physical, emotional,
Speaker 1: and social benefits. And I think that we've covered play
Speaker 1: on the show before. I think the research we're about
Speaker 1: to look at here considers play part of fun, but
Speaker 1: not fun in and of itself, right right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of ideas that have
Speaker 1: a significant overlap with the concept of fun, but are
Speaker 1: not the exact same thing as it. Play is a
Speaker 1: type of activity that I think would usually be described
Speaker 1: as fun, though you could imagine types of play that
Speaker 1: maybe are not fun, uh, and yet people would still
Speaker 1: call them play. And you can also say that there's
Speaker 1: tons of stuff that is fun that is not play.
Speaker 1: So fun is bigger than play, but play often seems
Speaker 1: aimed at fun. Yeah, Like if you had a camp
Speaker 1: fund then and you had like really strict rules, you know,
Speaker 1: you might be you couldn't really kick people out by saying,
Speaker 1: well what you are you? Are you having pleasure over there?
Speaker 1: No pleasure? This is camp fun? Get out? Or are
Speaker 1: you playing? No playing? This is serious business. This is
Speaker 1: camp fun. Out of here? Right. So to trying to
Speaker 1: get underneath this, you know, the seemingly elusive and variable
Speaker 1: characteristics of fun, One interesting thing to start with is
Speaker 1: just say, okay, what if we just did a survey
Speaker 1: and and see out in the wild, what types of
Speaker 1: experiences do people consider fun? Like if you ask people,
Speaker 1: tell me something fun you did recently. What are the
Speaker 1: types of things that people are most likely to talk about,
Speaker 1: and what do those experiences have in common? And here
Speaker 1: I thought it might be useful to, uh, look at
Speaker 1: a couple of parts of a paper that I found, uh,
Speaker 1: that was published in two thousand ten in the journal
Speaker 1: Psychology by a couple of researchers based out of University
Speaker 1: College London. These authors are I See McManus and Adrian Fernhum.
Speaker 1: And the paper is called fun Fun Fun, Types of fun,
Speaker 1: attitudes to fun and the relationship to personality and biographical factors.
Speaker 1: So already, even with the title, we're getting into the
Speaker 1: fact that this is going to be highly dependent on
Speaker 1: an individual's background and sensibilities. Well, you have to to
Speaker 1: spoil one of their major conclusions. Uh, We're gonna end
Speaker 1: up finding that there really is no such thing as
Speaker 1: saying something is fun for everyone. Different groups of people
Speaker 1: find different things fun and uh and often a lot
Speaker 1: of people just seem to go around assuming that whatever
Speaker 1: they find fun is what other people are going to
Speaker 1: find fun. But it's not true. It made me think
Speaker 1: of old Mickey Mouse magazine covers. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: seen one of these and forever, but at least for
Speaker 1: a very long time, the run of these magazines had
Speaker 1: the slogan at the bottom, fun for the whole family
Speaker 1: was guaranteed. And I mean even I have a small family, uh,
Speaker 1: just talking about immediate family that my wife and my
Speaker 1: son and and sometimes it's a challenge for us to
Speaker 1: find fun for the whole family. And I think anyone
Speaker 1: out there with a much larger family unit you can
Speaker 1: certainly attest that this is not the case that Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse Magazine was lying to us. And yet at the
Speaker 1: same time that that could make you feel, well, then
Speaker 1: is it hopeless? Is there just nothing we can say
Speaker 1: about fun? It's totally random. Obviously that's not the case either.
Speaker 1: There are there are clearly certain types of activities that
Speaker 1: large numbers of people agree on is fun, and so
Speaker 1: it would be useful to figure out what are those
Speaker 1: types of activities? Now, I wanted to mention a few
Speaker 1: things from the background section before the authors get into
Speaker 1: describing their original research, and one of the things they
Speaker 1: start off with is discussing just the pervasive role of
Speaker 1: fun in culture. And I had a thought about this
Speaker 1: which Robert I wonder if you agree with this. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about how while you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: part of basic human life to seek pleasure. We all
Speaker 1: seek pleasure in some ways, a lot of pleasure seeking
Speaker 1: activity is not openly discussed the same way that the
Speaker 1: quest for fun is, even though there's a huge overlap
Speaker 1: between fun and pleasure. It's it's totally normal and acceptable
Speaker 1: to talk about trying to find fun and like seeking
Speaker 1: out activities that will be fun, But it's kind of
Speaker 1: weird to talk about trying to seek pleasure and seek
Speaker 1: out activities that will feel good, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Yeah, I mean unless you make a point
Speaker 1: of it, if you're like really embracing a kind of
Speaker 1: hedonistic uh um lifestyle, or it's you know, something you
Speaker 1: know like Lavayan Satanism, where you're like, no, the purpose
Speaker 1: of life is pleasure and that's what I'm all about,
Speaker 1: you know. Otherwise, Yeah, it's it's it's kind of Another
Speaker 1: example might maybe be coming around to like the ideas
Speaker 1: of mindfulness and like a non attachment and seeking that
Speaker 1: out and seeing that this is this is the way
Speaker 1: to go through life and the sort of of mental
Speaker 1: landscape to try to cultivate in your own mind. Oh well,
Speaker 1: speaking of cultivating a sanctum in the mind. Uh. The
Speaker 1: authors here, actually they include what I thought was a
Speaker 1: kind of interesting quote from a different paper by a
Speaker 1: couple of researchers and the C. D. Bryant and C. J. Forsyth,
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to read the whole thing, but
Speaker 1: they're speaking particularly about the place of fun in US culture.
Speaker 1: And these other authors right quote the pursuit of fun
Speaker 1: as a place of dominant centrality in our daily lives.
Speaker 1: But fun seeking is not a compartmentalized area of our
Speaker 1: cultural fabric. Rather, it is a constituent to almost every
Speaker 1: aspect of our daily lives. Fun seeking is very much
Speaker 1: integrated into our to our entire culture, in our daily
Speaker 1: cycle of life, home, work, rest, maintenance, even sleep. Our
Speaker 1: hedonistic quest has become a deified entity of its own,
Speaker 1: the fun God, as it were. Uh. And elsewhere this
Speaker 1: is phrased as the great God fun as kind of
Speaker 1: like the great God pan um. But but I kind
Speaker 1: of see what they're saying that, like, seeking fun is
Speaker 1: not a separate activity to the other things we do
Speaker 1: in our life, but rather seeking fun is sort of
Speaker 1: in degraded as a part of all the other activities.
Speaker 1: Now you could easily comment though in this case, especially
Speaker 1: in the United States and many in many Western countries,
Speaker 1: like to what extent is um is consumerism the dominant
Speaker 1: way of life and the idea that things must be
Speaker 1: purchased like so many of our purchases are made in
Speaker 1: the name of fun. I mean, certainly, yes, not not
Speaker 1: all of them is this. They're necessary purchases, the bills
Speaker 1: to be paid, etcetera. But we if we have the
Speaker 1: money to spend on fun, we tend to spend the
Speaker 1: money on fun. Think about all of the attempts to
Speaker 1: make you believe, I mean, whether or not these actually
Speaker 1: work at least somebody's always trying to convince you that
Speaker 1: shopping is fun, that work is fun, that education is fun.
Speaker 1: It's it's fun to go to school, it's fun to sleep,
Speaker 1: it's fun to work out, it's fun to eat your vegetables.
Speaker 1: Like it's all supposed to be fun, at least according
Speaker 1: to somebody. Yeah. Well, and to be fair, most of
Speaker 1: these things can be fine but are not exclusively fun.
Speaker 1: Um And some of these things are worth doing but
Speaker 1: are not fun. Like well, one one example that came
Speaker 1: up in the article. I noticed. The main study we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss here is that is they brought up swimming. Um,
Speaker 1: it's brought up kind of off handedly, as as just
Speaker 1: a comment one might make or judge swimming is fun.
Speaker 1: And then it's also brought up a little later a
Speaker 1: little more specifically regarding like social context for swimming, which
Speaker 1: which is interesting because on one hand, swimming with people
Speaker 1: and enjoying a pool with people like, yes, I think
Speaker 1: a lot more people might say that's fun. I would
Speaker 1: say that's fun. But if it's like swimming laps for exercise,
Speaker 1: which which I do most weekday mornings, I would never
Speaker 1: classify that as fun. I do it. I think it's beneficial,
Speaker 1: but I do not enjoy doing it in a way
Speaker 1: that I would classify as fun. You know, is and
Speaker 1: it's and it's nice to have done it, but then
Speaker 1: it is not, but it's still not fun to have
Speaker 1: done it, and I do not reflect on it as
Speaker 1: having been a fun time. I think that's true, and
Speaker 1: yet there are some people who do that and would
Speaker 1: say it's fun. Yet again back to the interesting subjective variability,
Speaker 1: and I think that may be related to certain types
Speaker 1: of personality differences, even ones that you can sort of
Speaker 1: measure on like a five factor personality model. Um, we'll
Speaker 1: get more into that in a bit. To be clear too,
Speaker 1: it probably depends on where you're swimming your laps. But
Speaker 1: if it's just the same pool some in every day, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, the fun factor probably wears off a
Speaker 1: little bit. Oh yeah, I mean novelty. Novelty is a
Speaker 1: big part of all this will will probably come back
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, yeah, I would say, In fact, I
Speaker 1: suspect novelty is especially an important part of fun for
Speaker 1: you because Robert, I think you are probably a person
Speaker 1: who is high in openness to experience generally. So yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So the authors are talking about how, at the time
Speaker 1: they published this paper, the fundamental nature of fun was
Speaker 1: an understudied subject in psychology. Remember a thing. This came
Speaker 1: out in two thousand and ten, and most studies involving
Speaker 1: fun at the time. We're about using fun as a
Speaker 1: motivation or outcome state in something like education or healthcare
Speaker 1: in some other context, rather than asking the basic question
Speaker 1: like what types of experiences are most often categorized as fun?
Speaker 1: What does it feel like to have fun? How do
Speaker 1: people describe it, what other you know life and personality factoris,
Speaker 1: does it correlate with? And Just as a side note,
Speaker 1: I wanted to point out that while this study provides
Speaker 1: a lot of insights, sometimes the authors phrase things with
Speaker 1: an almost hilariously square addiction. I was singling out a
Speaker 1: sentence where they say, conceptualizing fund is not straightforward, in
Speaker 1: part because of the number of synonyms for funds such
Speaker 1: as amusement, enjoyment, and entertainment. And in addition, every generation
Speaker 1: seems to produce its own synonyms for funds, such as
Speaker 1: far out or cool. But but they are correct, of course.
Speaker 1: I mean, I absolutely agree that fun is its own
Speaker 1: psychological and social phenomenon, but it can be difficult to
Speaker 1: study because of its significant but not exact overlap with
Speaker 1: other concepts like amusement, like entertainment, etcetera. And another thing
Speaker 1: they point out is that we use the concept of
Speaker 1: fun in different sort of grammatically functional roles. Like fun
Speaker 1: can be just an adjective that describes an activity you know,
Speaker 1: like that game was fun, or it can be a
Speaker 1: state you are in, like I am having fun. It
Speaker 1: is describing something about your sort of mental state in
Speaker 1: the moment or it can be like a trait of
Speaker 1: an activity or even a person like he's a fun guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the the experience of it, like it's sometimes when
Speaker 1: you're watching a movie, you may not be sure of
Speaker 1: it is fun. Uh, and then you think back on
Speaker 1: it and you have to decide, yes, it was fun.
Speaker 1: It was fun. Ha ha, it was fun. Well, and
Speaker 1: you know what, And in fact, I think that actually
Speaker 1: does come down to some of the fun as a
Speaker 1: trait of personalities, because you know people like this, right that,
Speaker 1: Like you know certain people who they can take an
Speaker 1: activity that would otherwise not be fun, and merely by
Speaker 1: them participating in or reflecting on it, they make it fun.
Speaker 1: That's a powerful kind of personality and a good friend
Speaker 1: to have. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um. Likewise, though, you do
Speaker 1: encounter people who, maybe especially in work environments, who maybe
Speaker 1: how that they need to make it fun. Situations to
Speaker 1: the person who um whoo, who not not only will
Speaker 1: try to make it fun, must make it fun. Um.
Speaker 1: And then of course you have the opposite, someone who
Speaker 1: can take something that otherwise would be fun and make
Speaker 1: it dull and depressing. Well, there go straight into one
Speaker 1: of the next things they talked about, which is that
Speaker 1: sometimes you can get inside on a slippery concept by
Speaker 1: looking at its opposites. So if you say an activity
Speaker 1: is fun, what what would be the most common descriptors
Speaker 1: who describe the exact opposite type of experience. The authors
Speaker 1: here suggest the the opposite descriptors would be tedious, boring,
Speaker 1: or dull, which indicates to me that we often think
Speaker 1: of fun as an activity that's stimulating. It's high engagement,
Speaker 1: it easily holds our attention. And I think this is true.
Speaker 1: But the semantic equation doesn't balance perfectly here, because it
Speaker 1: does not follow that everything that is not tedious or
Speaker 1: boring is fun. For example, being in danger is not
Speaker 1: tedious or boring, but for most people it would not
Speaker 1: be fun either, right right though? Of course, even there,
Speaker 1: I mean it's good that you mentioned and not everyone,
Speaker 1: because you see that creep to with adventure seeking, Like
Speaker 1: some people's idea of fun and excitement is being is
Speaker 1: jumping out of an airplane with a parachute. For other people,
Speaker 1: that does not sound like a good time and not
Speaker 1: something they are interested in doing for fun, exactly right. So,
Speaker 1: based on all this so far, I think we very
Speaker 1: often use the word fund to characterize activities that are
Speaker 1: like UH, that are high on two different scales. One
Speaker 1: is that they are stimulating, meaning they're the opposite of
Speaker 1: boring they easily hold our attention, and the other is pleasant,
Speaker 1: there's a positive valence rather than a negative one. UH
Speaker 1: and I believe that these two things help get it
Speaker 1: a lot of the concept of fund, but again still
Speaker 1: not all of it than now. While the authors of
Speaker 1: the study maintain that fun is not studied enough in
Speaker 1: the psychological literature, at least not at the time this
Speaker 1: paper was published, they linked to a couple of concepts
Speaker 1: that have been studied and that have some strong features
Speaker 1: in common with FUN, and one I thought this was
Speaker 1: interesting is the idea of intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is
Speaker 1: a concept in the psychology of motivation. So there are
Speaker 1: tons of activities that we do because we're motivated by
Speaker 1: desire to achieve some kind of consequence or outcome. For example,
Speaker 1: when you cook dinner, you might cook dinner so that
Speaker 1: you can eat or so that your family can eat.
Speaker 1: So the food reward or the nurturing of family reward
Speaker 1: is the desirable consequence that motivates you to cook. But
Speaker 1: then again, some people might cook dinner literally just because
Speaker 1: they enjoy the activity. They just like cooking, in which
Speaker 1: case you would call this intrinsic motivation. Activities that we
Speaker 1: do not because we're trying to achieve some consequence or outcome,
Speaker 1: but because we just find the activity itself in some
Speaker 1: sense rewarding. Now, I assume you're someone who generally finds
Speaker 1: cooking enjoyable and fun. It depends for me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I cook a lot, but it it's very much about
Speaker 1: the context. If it's like a relaxed pace and I
Speaker 1: can cook what I want and I'm not in a rush,
Speaker 1: then yeah, it can be very pleasurable and fun. If
Speaker 1: I'm like tire in a hurry and all that, it's
Speaker 1: it's not so much fun anymore. Okay, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not too far off the mark on that.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times I find myself having to
Speaker 1: reflect on it, on the experience, and also after finally
Speaker 1: getting to taste the food, and then if if, if
Speaker 1: the food is turned out, okay, if people seem to
Speaker 1: enjoy it, and I look back on the experience of
Speaker 1: cooking and it wasn't too frustrating, that I might say well,
Speaker 1: that was a fun recipe, and also it had me
Speaker 1: do something a little different. I think if I'm making
Speaker 1: some sort of food that I haven't made before, but
Speaker 1: I'm also able to pull it off, then that's kind
Speaker 1: of the sweet spot for for cooking being fun for me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say most of the time when
Speaker 1: people cook, it's more an extrinsic motivation. You know, we're
Speaker 1: doing it so that food will be ready, so that
Speaker 1: we can eat, or so that we and our family
Speaker 1: can eat, or so that somebody can eat. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a goal directed nous to the activity. You're not
Speaker 1: just doing it for fun, right, So there may be
Speaker 1: a little satisfying bits in there, like for some reason, Um,
Speaker 1: not that I don't like the chopping of garlic. I
Speaker 1: find this to be tedious because the garlic slices stick
Speaker 1: to the knife and then you have to shake them off.
Speaker 1: But the removal of all the uh, the the external
Speaker 1: wrapping around the bulb of garlic, the paper, Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that's the part I enjoy. Like getting it ready to slice,
Speaker 1: where you make it into this just perfect white pearl,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's satisfying. Oh, it's almost like a like
Speaker 1: a Simian grooming instinct. It's like a popping a pimple
Speaker 1: or picking a bug out of hair or something. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're just kind of like it's the
Speaker 1: cleaning of the thing, and then when you remove all
Speaker 1: that wrapping, it's like it's so pristine and perfect. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like finding a gym stone, uh and removing
Speaker 1: the you know, the dirt from it and polishing it up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, something something like that. It feels very
Speaker 1: and it almost feels like a non food activity totally.
Speaker 1: I get what you're saying. Okay, So, so there's some
Speaker 1: mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and in cooking probably
Speaker 1: for most people, but it's I would say it's probably
Speaker 1: most of the time more extrinsic. But so this intrinsic
Speaker 1: motivation is things we do because we just we just
Speaker 1: like them. There's something about it we just want to
Speaker 1: do for its own sake. Now, this clearly has some
Speaker 1: overlap with fun. Lots of things are intrinsically motivating because
Speaker 1: they're fun. However, I can also think of lots of
Speaker 1: intrinsically motivating activities that are not fun at all and
Speaker 1: almost nobody would call them fun. A good example, I
Speaker 1: would say, is scrolling social media or doom scrolling. I
Speaker 1: don't think I do it, and I don't think most
Speaker 1: people do it with the hope of achieving some consequence
Speaker 1: or outcome. The motivation for the scrolling is contained within
Speaker 1: the activity itself. You're doing it because it just feels
Speaker 1: like something you should do, and yet it's not fun
Speaker 1: at all. It's miserable. Yeah, I would agree. So wait, wait,
Speaker 1: with a caveat unless you're just on a particular platform
Speaker 1: and you've own got cute cat memes and animations and whatnot,
Speaker 1: if you so calibrated so that you can ensure like
Speaker 1: maximum fun per scroll, then then I guess that would
Speaker 1: make sense. Right, You're you're not letting the full swamp
Speaker 1: of misery get to you. Maybe if you're just like
Speaker 1: focusing on one thing that is actually fun, then it's fun. Right.
Speaker 1: But even that, as we'll discuss, that has its limits
Speaker 1: to al right, So intrinsic motivation, there's some relationship to
Speaker 1: the idea of fun, but it's not exactly the same
Speaker 1: thing the other ideas the concept of happiness studied in
Speaker 1: positive psychology. Clearly there is a relationship between happiness and fun.
Speaker 1: In fact, well, as we'll get to in a minute.
Speaker 1: When people in this survey were asked to describe an
Speaker 1: experience that they considered fun, the single most common descriptor
Speaker 1: that they later applied to that activity is the word happiness.
Speaker 1: But it's clear that once again, happiness and fun are
Speaker 1: not exactly the same thing. There are tons of situations
Speaker 1: you can describe being happy, but you wouldn't call them fun.
Speaker 1: You might just be, uh, I don't know, sitting around
Speaker 1: doing nothing, and a lot of people might say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm happy, but am I having fun? Not really? Fun
Speaker 1: means probably something else to me. Happiness itself, of course,
Speaker 1: is also difficult to define their multiple competing models of
Speaker 1: it in the in the literature, UH, and so forth.
Speaker 1: So this study in particular is trying to help shed
Speaker 1: some light on the concept of fun. By first, it
Speaker 1: used some qualitative methods like some focus groups and interviews
Speaker 1: involving a whole bunch of undergrads in a in a
Speaker 1: psychology lab to try to pull out some UH some models,
Speaker 1: and design a questionnaire survey questionnaire UH to ask people
Speaker 1: about fun, to ask what types of activities or experiences
Speaker 1: do people most often describe as fun? How is the
Speaker 1: experience of fun related to demographic factors like age, sex,
Speaker 1: and social class, as well as related to how is
Speaker 1: it related to education and personality as measured by the
Speaker 1: five factor personality model. Also, how do people's attitudes towards
Speaker 1: fund differ. Now we've got a weirdness alert on this
Speaker 1: on the methodology here. Unfortunately, this is just often the
Speaker 1: case with psychological studies, especially older ones. But it looks
Speaker 1: like the majority of the participants in this study where
Speaker 1: college students or recent college students in the UK. So,
Speaker 1: as always, you got to hold that caveat in your head.
Speaker 1: Results are limited and may or may not be different
Speaker 1: if the same study were done in the more general public,
Speaker 1: in the same country or in a different country or culture.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not going to explain all of their findings,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to highlight a couple of things that
Speaker 1: seemed interesting. One is uh a part of their their
Speaker 1: survey that was the fun situation. So they asked all
Speaker 1: participants to think of a typical situation in their life
Speaker 1: in which they were having fun, and then they were
Speaker 1: asked to describe what was happening in that situation in
Speaker 1: their own words and a few words, and then they
Speaker 1: were given a list of forty two descript and asked
Speaker 1: to circle the ones that would correctly describe the situation
Speaker 1: they had in mind. Now, obviously I'm not going to
Speaker 1: list all forty two of these, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: note a few of the extremes, the descriptors that were
Speaker 1: most often and least often matched with the situation people
Speaker 1: were thinking of. At the top of the scale, you
Speaker 1: had the word happy. That's seventy one eight percent of
Speaker 1: fun situations we're happy, laughing was laughing applied to sixty
Speaker 1: two point two percent of fun situations entertained at I'm
Speaker 1: gonna round off the decimals here fifty two percent, stress
Speaker 1: free at forty eight percent, excited at forty eight percent,
Speaker 1: energetic attent, relaxed at forty seven percent, joyful at forty four,
Speaker 1: joking at forty four, playful at forty three. And then
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the scale the opposite end, you've
Speaker 1: got vulnerable at four percent, fearful at five percent, nervous
Speaker 1: at seven percent, lazy at eight percent, private at nine percent,
Speaker 1: lustful at nine percent, sensual at nine percent, and surprised
Speaker 1: at ten percent. Now, I think it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: even the highest two percentages, the two ones, the two
Speaker 1: that were the most common in fun situations, happy and laughing,
Speaker 1: were only in the range. And even the lowest rated
Speaker 1: descriptors there are still five to ten percent of situations
Speaker 1: that they apply to. People usually would not describe being
Speaker 1: vulnerable or fearful as as fun, but you know, roughly
Speaker 1: five percent of people thought of a situation and that
Speaker 1: was an accurate descriptor well, I mean it kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of movies. Uh, for instance, Jordan Peel's Nope
Speaker 1: movie that came out last month or a couple of
Speaker 1: months ago. I think I've probably felt vulnerable, fearful and nervous.
Speaker 1: There were stretches of the movie. Um, but I like
Speaker 1: the movie a lot. What I classify it is fun?
Speaker 1: Probably not? Probably not, but you've brought it up. You've
Speaker 1: brought it up a few times. I still haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm behind the curve. But some people
Speaker 1: might very well say it was it was fun, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think ill of them for saying that's a
Speaker 1: fun movie. I wouldn't even really second guess it or
Speaker 1: feel like I needed to like jump in and be like, no,
Speaker 1: not a fun movie, and let me explain why now.
Speaker 1: In this study, based on their research, the authors tried
Speaker 1: to extract some major categories or types of fun found
Speaker 1: throughout the activities being described, and they ended up with
Speaker 1: five factors here. These are not mutually exclusive, so a
Speaker 1: fun activity could involve one or more of these factors
Speaker 1: at the same time, but they seem to be the
Speaker 1: five big ones. And I'm not sure I think in
Speaker 1: every case they've picked the best terminology for for titling
Speaker 1: these types of activities and their linked descriptors. But once
Speaker 1: I read the descriptions, I think these five really do
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense, and they are sociability, contentment, achievement, sensual,
Speaker 1: and ecstatic. Now I'll describe each one briefly. Sociability is
Speaker 1: activities involving talking, laughing, joking, going out to social functions,
Speaker 1: and otherwise engaging with friends. This seems to be a
Speaker 1: very uh other people oriented type of fun. A major
Speaker 1: emphasis seems to be on relationships with others and doing
Speaker 1: things with others, especially doing things with others that involve talking.
Speaker 1: That's one. Number Two is contentment. This is activities that
Speaker 1: are often described as quote peaceful, warm, relaxed, loving, caring
Speaker 1: uh And these can be with others or alone, but
Speaker 1: the emphasis really seems to be on peace and relaxation
Speaker 1: activity scoring high in this nexus, we're gardening, relaxing at home, swimming,
Speaker 1: going to the beach, or going to a favorite cafe.
Speaker 1: So this seems to be like a very uh an
Speaker 1: idea of fun based on cultivating and experience of sort
Speaker 1: of gentleness and low stress. Third factor, this one they
Speaker 1: call achievement. I don't know if achievement is the best
Speaker 1: term for this, but this type of activity involves states
Speaker 1: described as quote focused, challenged, accomplished, absorbed, and engrossed, and
Speaker 1: contains some sense of a flow state. Uh. Now, when
Speaker 1: I read that, that makes sense. I think this category
Speaker 1: involves games, sports, engrossing or creative work performances and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I think this grouping of activities is really sort
Speaker 1: of about total engagement of your attention and abilities in
Speaker 1: a challenging and intrinsically rewarding pursuit. So this might include
Speaker 1: everything from playing basketball to playing a musical instrument or
Speaker 1: or doing creative writing or some other creative work. Doing
Speaker 1: deeply engrossing research, a sort of total attention encapsulating pursuit.
Speaker 1: This is also where I would classify my experience. It's
Speaker 1: a swimming laps at the y like this is just
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just about about focusing entirely on what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, uh, and spending my whole headspace and also
Speaker 1: my all of my physical energy in this one practice
Speaker 1: and getting it done. But like I said, swimming with
Speaker 1: the friends, I can see that definitely lines up with sociability,
Speaker 1: and say swimming and a relaxing and beautiful I don't know,
Speaker 1: mountain spa environment that would definitely line up with contentment.
Speaker 1: So it's gonna come come down a lot to not
Speaker 1: only you know who you are, but where are you
Speaker 1: doing this? What are the what's the environment? And what
Speaker 1: are there Are there other people around and are you
Speaker 1: communing with them? I mean there are other people around
Speaker 1: when I'm swimming at the y, but everyone and everyone's
Speaker 1: literally in their own lane doing their own thing. Is
Speaker 1: not a very social experience. You're not chatting while you're
Speaker 1: while you're doing the laps. Well, occasionally I chat a
Speaker 1: little bit with with someone that I see there all
Speaker 1: the time. We'll say, exchange some pleasant he said, there's
Speaker 1: a little of it. I want to make it sound
Speaker 1: totally grind. Okay, two more categories. One is sensual. This
Speaker 1: would tend to include sensory experiences, fun sensory experiences involving
Speaker 1: stimulation of the senses, but also romantic love. This seems
Speaker 1: to include sex and romance as well as things like
Speaker 1: good food and good company. So the spa swim could
Speaker 1: also line up here. You know, you're surrounded by beautiful surroundings,
Speaker 1: their flowers, maybe you're there with the romantic partner, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Sure, and then you got the fifth category,
Speaker 1: This is ecstatic. These are activities I thought this one
Speaker 1: was really interesting, things that put you in a heightened
Speaker 1: state of positive excitement or euphoria. Commonly referenced activities in
Speaker 1: this category include partying, going out, dancing at nightclubs, going
Speaker 1: to concerts, going to raves. I think very focused on
Speaker 1: like dancing and music especially, but also just sort of
Speaker 1: like partying and clubbing, getting yourself into, often with others,
Speaker 1: a heightened state of excitement. Now, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: one thing the study makes extremely clear is that while
Speaker 1: there are some pretty common features to activities, described as fun.
Speaker 1: It is wrong to assume you can make something fun
Speaker 1: for everyone. People just have different ideas about fun, and
Speaker 1: these are often correlated to things like personality differences. So
Speaker 1: for a few examples of correlations between types of fun
Speaker 1: that are more often reported in demographic factors as well
Speaker 1: as personality factors, the authors found quote, overall, women reported
Speaker 1: more fun situations involving sociability and contentment and less with achievement,
Speaker 1: and older respondents reported more fun involving contentment and achievement
Speaker 1: and less sociability, sensual or ecstatic fun. So you this
Speaker 1: may explain why you don't often see very old people
Speaker 1: at raves. I don't know. Rave music is getting getting
Speaker 1: kind of old now, so maybe you do see a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of older people at it raves.
Speaker 1: But then they also list personality factors, and here they
Speaker 1: they reference the Big five personality model. This is where
Speaker 1: personalities are charted along five dimensions. You've got extraversion, neuroticism,
Speaker 1: openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Uh. And the the
Speaker 1: authors here say they found quote extra version was associated
Speaker 1: with sociability and ecstatic fund. Okay, that seems uh what
Speaker 1: you might expect right, Extroverts tend to be more focused
Speaker 1: on fund that involves getting together with other people, socializing
Speaker 1: and having sort of I don't know, like going clubbing
Speaker 1: or going partying or something. Uh. They found to pick
Speaker 1: up with the quote again. They found agreeableness with more
Speaker 1: fun involving sociability and less that was sensual, and openness
Speaker 1: to experience with more fun involving achievement. Uh So, I
Speaker 1: found that last one kind of interesting. That uh that
Speaker 1: openness to experience tends to be associated with the personalities
Speaker 1: that like novelty as opposed to familiarity. Um and uh so,
Speaker 1: apparently openness to ex sperience is correlated with that that
Speaker 1: category that is, like these really focused activities that might
Speaker 1: involve everything from like sports to playing a musical instrument
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, being absorbed in the task. You know,
Speaker 1: this is all interesting to think of in terms of
Speaker 1: the beach. When one goes to the beach. You know,
Speaker 1: we all have our own things that we're into. But
Speaker 1: you you also, if you go to a beach that
Speaker 1: is in your number of people there with you, uh
Speaker 1: you know, strangers and other families, etcetera, you do get
Speaker 1: to see all these different levels of engagement, all these
Speaker 1: different personality types, perhaps engaging with the environment that's provided there.
Speaker 1: You know, for some people, this is where you just
Speaker 1: you sit on the beach and you read, you stare
Speaker 1: off into the middle distance. Maybe you go for a walk. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe you go for a run. Maybe it's about building
Speaker 1: a sandcastle. Maybe it's about playing volleyball against a rival team.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's about keeping your distance from other people. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's about meeting other people. You know, it gets it's
Speaker 1: an environment where you see all these different types of
Speaker 1: fun being had with some overlap but not not necessarily
Speaker 1: overlap between them. Well, and I think that actually is
Speaker 1: a good point that, Yeah, activities that really are quote
Speaker 1: fun for the whole family are those that allow different
Speaker 1: people to do different things within them. You know, so
Speaker 1: like different members of the family are gonna have different
Speaker 1: ideas of what's fun. Things that succeed in pleasing all
Speaker 1: of them usually succeed by allowing them to focus on
Speaker 1: different things. I can't imagine how a ten cent copy
Speaker 1: of Mickey Mouse magazine, though from whatever decade this was
Speaker 1: some I'm guessing NID or early twentieth century, can't imagine
Speaker 1: how this had true fun for the whole family. Maybe
Speaker 1: it did. I can only judge it by its cover,
Speaker 1: which I've been told not to do, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe i'd be surprised than now. Now. I haven't covered
Speaker 1: everything that's in this study. I think there's more to
Speaker 1: say about it. I may come back to it in
Speaker 1: a subsequent part of this series, but for the sake
Speaker 1: of time in this episode, I think I want to
Speaker 1: move on, uh to to address a question that I
Speaker 1: know you were interested in, Rob, because I I think
Speaker 1: that this is a core question within the subject of fun.
Speaker 1: What makes a game fun? You know, we have all
Speaker 1: played various games, games of various types, sports board games,
Speaker 1: video games, party games, and it's pretty clear that, well,
Speaker 1: of course, everybody's going to have different preferences, there are
Speaker 1: some that just overall are way more fun than others.
Speaker 1: Aside from all the you know, the external factors that
Speaker 1: that do make a difference, such as when, where, and
Speaker 1: how and with whom a game is played. I was wondering,
Speaker 1: what are the factors intrinsic to the design of a
Speaker 1: game itself that make it more or less fun? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a great, great question. Um, it can be
Speaker 1: kind of a maddening question as well. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of of my experience with jigsaw puzzles. For example, jigsaw
Speaker 1: puzzles are something I'll admit or are addictive. I like
Speaker 1: the social aspect of people working together on solving a
Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzle. I like the rewarding experience of finishing that
Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzle, especially some of these these newer ones that
Speaker 1: have like special hidden sections and all sorts of neat
Speaker 1: bills and whistles. They've really come a long way. Uh
Speaker 1: And of course just nothing else, finally getting to see
Speaker 1: the fruits of your labor. That that cool image I'll
Speaker 1: laid out there on the kitchen table. But uh I
Speaker 1: would I would never classify putting a jigsaw puzzle together
Speaker 1: as fun um, and yet I'll continue to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna avoid putting together jugs
Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzles. And if someone has a cool and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm all in. Uh So, there's something about and
Speaker 1: a jigsaw puzzle isn't quite a game, but it lines
Speaker 1: up with some of the things that games are. Uh So,
Speaker 1: if something like a jigsaw puzzle can be addictive and rewarding,
Speaker 1: and social but also not fun. Then what does that
Speaker 1: tell me about about game design? What does that tell
Speaker 1: me about the prospect of finding than a game that
Speaker 1: will be truly fun for the whole family, Because that's
Speaker 1: something I do think about a lot now, and I'm
Speaker 1: act actively seeking out games that uh that my wife
Speaker 1: and I and our son can play together, the three
Speaker 1: of us, and everyone can agree that we're having fun
Speaker 1: when we do it. Because I know that I was
Speaker 1: left of my own devices, I would tend to go
Speaker 1: for maybe a more complex game, maybe something a little
Speaker 1: more strategic. My wife would tend to go for something
Speaker 1: more casual. And my son, being ten, he's more He's
Speaker 1: into games that are going to cater to his sense
Speaker 1: of imagination. It's going to have some level of strategy
Speaker 1: to it. But also I think it really helps if
Speaker 1: it's something he feels like he can win, and certainly
Speaker 1: if he can win at it um, which which is
Speaker 1: interesting especially given something I'm gonna bring up here in
Speaker 1: a bit um, so you know, there, I'm going to
Speaker 1: lean more towards the game where I have to really
Speaker 1: think and take my time about each turn. They're both
Speaker 1: more into some of these action based games like spot
Speaker 1: It or Taco Cat Go Cheese Pizza, which which that
Speaker 1: is certainly a game that I find more stressful than anything.
Speaker 1: If you played this one, Joe, no, I haven't. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of I mean, it's it's not that different
Speaker 1: from a lot of card games where there is a
Speaker 1: certain amount of like slapping the table or slapping cards
Speaker 1: and you have to be on your feet. I like
Speaker 1: games where you have some some time to really breathe
Speaker 1: it all in and decide on what your next move
Speaker 1: is going to be. I even like my video games
Speaker 1: like that give me a nice turn based game, let
Speaker 1: me take my time. I also appreciate as far as
Speaker 1: like card games and board games go, I really appreciate
Speaker 1: if it's not something I have where I have to
Speaker 1: be on my toes when it's not my turn. So
Speaker 1: as an aside, if anyone has any good recommendations for us,
Speaker 1: let let me know. But I will say that games
Speaker 1: like Katan Dominion these are these are good balances for everyone.
Speaker 1: We've found know. These are games that that that are sociable,
Speaker 1: but they also have room for you know your own
Speaker 1: personal strategy and uh and at the same time, they
Speaker 1: are also games that a ten year old can definitely
Speaker 1: win at now. I thought we might come back, at
Speaker 1: least briefly to a previous episode of stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind for this next bit, because I think it's
Speaker 1: important to remember that a board game or a card game,
Speaker 1: but basically any sort of game we might be thinking
Speaker 1: about in this context of fun is a finite game
Speaker 1: as opposed to an infinite game. And I thought we
Speaker 1: might just review a little bit about that from our
Speaker 1: previous episode on finite and infinite games. Oh yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a book by James peak Cars that. Man, it's
Speaker 1: been a while since we did that episode. I thinks
Speaker 1: like three or four years now probably. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been that long for sure, but a really interesting
Speaker 1: book that applies to a lot of things in life,
Speaker 1: not just literal games, though it does apply to literal games,
Speaker 1: but uh, the basic idea of the metaphor being that
Speaker 1: finite games are games that, um that are bounded in
Speaker 1: some way like they have they have fixed rules and
Speaker 1: a win condition and you know when they're over, and
Speaker 1: the goal of a finite game is to win, whereas
Speaker 1: infinite games are games without fixed rules or boundaries or
Speaker 1: win condition, and the purpose of the game is to
Speaker 1: keep the game going. Yeah yeah, and also had that
Speaker 1: a finite game is voluntary, you're only playing it if
Speaker 1: you want to, and there are temporal boundaries as well,
Speaker 1: like it's going, it's gonna have a beginning and it's
Speaker 1: gonna have an end, whereas infinite games, yeah, you're just
Speaker 1: are you alive while you're playing it? Congratulations? And when
Speaker 1: does it end? It never ends? When did it begin? Well,
Speaker 1: we might look to the history books, but maybe that's
Speaker 1: hard to nail down as well. So infinite games you
Speaker 1: get into areas I mean, ultimately I would recommend go
Speaker 1: back and listen to that episode or certainly reading this book,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, you get into large areas of live
Speaker 1: like politics and wicked problems and so forth. But the
Speaker 1: fine I think the finite nature of many games, board games,
Speaker 1: card games, video games as well is that is that
Speaker 1: they are the world made small. So a game like
Speaker 1: Settlers of Catan is about trade and economics, but it
Speaker 1: is trade and economics condensed into a form that everyone
Speaker 1: can grasp, compete, and excel at within a set time limit. Um,
Speaker 1: While you cannot say the same thing for economics as
Speaker 1: a whole, for global trade, etcetera. Likewise, I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of miniature war games, at least when they're you know,
Speaker 1: firmly based in fantasy or science fiction, which like a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot like a lot of combat related games,
Speaker 1: they're a simplification of struggle and strategy. I guess fighting
Speaker 1: games of video games and so forth can also fall
Speaker 1: into this category as well. And I think they are
Speaker 1: once again, you know, they are the world made small.
Speaker 1: They are this thing that is large and complex made
Speaker 1: into a smaller form that can be grasped, that can
Speaker 1: be uh excelled at, etcetera. Okay, well, so I assume
Speaker 1: when you play a tabletop sci fi war game, you're
Speaker 1: not doing it because you're you're competing for a big
Speaker 1: pot of prize money or something. You're doing it for
Speaker 1: the intrinsic reward of the game itself. Something is fun
Speaker 1: about it. So what makes that fun? Yeah? I mean personally,
Speaker 1: I think a big part of it is like a
Speaker 1: game is maximum fun when it is fully captivating. Kind
Speaker 1: of getting back to some of the stuff where we
Speaker 1: talked about, like you know, flow states and so forth. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not too complex, but it's not too light on engagement.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's inspiring, it's creative. You know, it's competitive in
Speaker 1: some form and that and I have to stress there,
Speaker 1: especially with so many different choices in games today, that
Speaker 1: competition might not be against another player. It might be
Speaker 1: against the game or the game system. It might be
Speaker 1: against an ai, um, it might be against yourself. But
Speaker 1: there is some sense of like, I'm I'm in this,
Speaker 1: I'm doing things and there is something that I'm I'm
Speaker 1: i'm competing against, you know. So I was looking around
Speaker 1: for some some expert thoughts on this, and and there's
Speaker 1: a book that came out, I think it came out
Speaker 1: about about ten years ago at this point by Ralph Coster,
Speaker 1: a game designer and one of the people behind Ultimate Online.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book titled Theory of Fun for Game Design,
Speaker 1: and his core thesis in all of this is that
Speaker 1: learning and fun are essentially the same inside the brain.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, I've got a study in child development that
Speaker 1: relates to this, but I guess we won't get to
Speaker 1: it till the next episode. But that yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: he writes, quote, fun, as I define it is the
Speaker 1: feedback the brain gives us when we are absorbing patterns
Speaker 1: for learning purposes. You know if this is true. It
Speaker 1: kind of relates to an idea we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: which is a hypothesis. Uh. I apologize in the moment,
Speaker 1: I forget who this is attributed to. There was a
Speaker 1: book that talks about the idea that what if um
Speaker 1: the biological explanation for humor, like why we find find
Speaker 1: things funny is that it is an intrinsically motivating reward
Speaker 1: for debugging ideas in the brain, essentially for resolving some
Speaker 1: type of confusion or conflict within the brain. When you
Speaker 1: resolve the conflict and fix the problem, uh, then you
Speaker 1: are rewarded with the feeling of funniness. Yeah. I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about the connection there, but that's good. And so
Speaker 1: this would be a similar idea, not exactly the same,
Speaker 1: but related that the sense of intrinsic motivation we get
Speaker 1: for fun is a reward system, an internal feedback reward
Speaker 1: system when the brain is doing some kind of important
Speaker 1: discovery process. Yeah, and I totally get this. I feel
Speaker 1: like it. It matches up with some of my experiences
Speaker 1: about things that I would subjectively consider fun um. Taking
Speaker 1: a new nature walk or even an old nature walks
Speaker 1: into nature is not something that's fixed, it changes, and
Speaker 1: therefore every every walk is an exploration. Likewise exploring a museum,
Speaker 1: you're seeing and learning new things. Even following a narrative
Speaker 1: is a learning experience. And be that narrative something that is,
Speaker 1: you know, meaningful and important or you know, kind of stupid,
Speaker 1: it's still something you have to move through and learn
Speaker 1: from and follow um. And certainly interacting with the gaming
Speaker 1: system and or competing against human opponents within that system,
Speaker 1: there's learning going on there as well. I'm learning the game,
Speaker 1: I'm also learning how my opponent engages with this game,
Speaker 1: and so Costa rights quote. Games are puzzles to solve,
Speaker 1: just like everything else we encounter in life. They are
Speaker 1: on the same order as learning to drive a car,
Speaker 1: or picking up the mandolin or learning your multiplication tables.
Speaker 1: We learn the underlying patterns and file them away so
Speaker 1: that they can be run as needed. And he also
Speaker 1: points out quote games grow boring when they fail to
Speaker 1: unfold new niceties in the puzzles they present. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: the game gets boring, when you feel like there is
Speaker 1: nothing interesting to discover. Yeah yeah. He writes that games
Speaker 1: need to keep people engaged in a flow state. Encountering
Speaker 1: immersive puzzles and challenges, and once challenge is mastered, it
Speaker 1: becomes routine. And this certainly reminds me of games that
Speaker 1: end up focusing way too much on grinding for resources
Speaker 1: and unlocking rewards. When a game's play life is artificially
Speaker 1: extended by dangling these prizes, but the gameplay itself has
Speaker 1: become wrote, Um, I'm no longer exploring, I'm no longer
Speaker 1: testing myself against anything. I'm just executing the routine for
Speaker 1: the mild reward of you know, winning various in game
Speaker 1: costumes or whatever whatever it happens to be. I've certainly
Speaker 1: had this experience with games where like, clearly I have
Speaker 1: reached the end of the game's real life cycle. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be playing it anymore, but I'm keeping I continue
Speaker 1: to play it because I think I need to maybe
Speaker 1: unlock this thing, or you could just pay seven unlock
Speaker 1: that thing. True, true that it's all the same, to
Speaker 1: the to the game punt companies, right. I'm also reminded
Speaker 1: in this of games that, um what where they have
Speaker 1: some lack of balance, perhaps in the challenge throughout the game,
Speaker 1: like games that are more challenging in the beginning, or
Speaker 1: more challenging in the middle of the game, Those can
Speaker 1: feel a bit wonky, especially if the final act of
Speaker 1: said games feels like more of a victory lap. Um.
Speaker 1: I felt this way about x Com games in the past.
Speaker 1: It's a franchise that I that I that I love.
Speaker 1: I know others have had this experience with it before,
Speaker 1: where you have an intensely rewarding challenge in the early
Speaker 1: stages of the game, like can I keep my people alive?
Speaker 1: Can I can just even get to the next mission
Speaker 1: while we having to deal with all these other fires
Speaker 1: all around me. But then towards the end of the game,
Speaker 1: or at least some of these games in this franchise,
Speaker 1: you perhaps get a little bit over powered. You're very
Speaker 1: confident about everything, And I wouldn't say that say that
Speaker 1: the game stops being fun entirely, and certainly if it
Speaker 1: is a victory lap, it's a victory lap you very
Speaker 1: much earned by that point, and you still have the
Speaker 1: game to beat, You still have these characters continue to follow,
Speaker 1: but the learning fun balance is certainly a bit different
Speaker 1: by that point. Now, for a different approach to the
Speaker 1: same question, I ran across a fun article called why
Speaker 1: Do People Love Games? By Sam von Aaron, former game
Speaker 1: master for the New York Times, writing for the New
Speaker 1: York Times, and he touches on something that I was
Speaker 1: also thinking about, like this idea of of must a
Speaker 1: game be fun? And uh and this is what this
Speaker 1: author has to say. Quote. Games sometimes model real world systems,
Speaker 1: allowing free exploration of their interlocking processes. The precursor to Monopoly,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Maggie's The Landlord's Game, was created to model and
Speaker 1: critique capitalism by giving players an opportunity to feel its
Speaker 1: failings firsthand. It was not very fun, but that's okay.
Speaker 1: One of the dark secrets of game design is that
Speaker 1: games don't need to be fun to be meaningful. The
Speaker 1: board game Pandemic explores the trials of dealing with a
Speaker 1: now too familiar global crisis. News organizations have used games
Speaker 1: as well pro public as The Waiting Game captures the
Speaker 1: experiences of refugees trying to enter the United States, and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Media created American Mall, a digital game giving players
Speaker 1: firsthand experience with the decline of brick and mortar malls
Speaker 1: in the face of growing e commerce. Well, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: That's thinking about um games that are for something different
Speaker 1: than what games are usually for. Usually it's you know,
Speaker 1: you think of it as something that people can just
Speaker 1: sort of do casually for fun. But there are games
Speaker 1: that you could also think of more like a work
Speaker 1: of art or like a like a movie or like
Speaker 1: a painting or an article in a magazine that could
Speaker 1: tell you something about the broader world rather than just
Speaker 1: teaching you the mechanics of the game. Game. Yeah, yeah, now,
Speaker 1: I I will say that I did play the Pandemic
Speaker 1: board game pre Pandemic, and at least at the time
Speaker 1: it was, I would say it was fun. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be fun anymore, but it's still around. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I played it a couple of times and I remember
Speaker 1: thinking it seemed absolutely impossible. Maybe I was just not
Speaker 1: good at it, but it was like unwinnable. Oh really,
Speaker 1: I can't things I can't remember if we want or not,
Speaker 1: but that that was one of the things that was
Speaker 1: that was good about it, Like it was a game,
Speaker 1: and I think this was one of maybe one of
Speaker 1: the first really cooperative group games like this that I
Speaker 1: played at that point. Like that alone was was great,
Speaker 1: like we're all working together and there are no hidden spies,
Speaker 1: No one's secretly a werewolf or a cylon or anything.
Speaker 1: We're all truly working together on this. Maybe I just
Speaker 1: got unlucky when I was playing. I remember thinking like, okay,
Speaker 1: we're trying to set up some research bases, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly it's just everywhere, and it's like what, we didn't
Speaker 1: even have a chance. I don't know now. Von Aaron
Speaker 1: also described some thing I thought was really insightful. He
Speaker 1: talks about the magic circle as bring the place where
Speaker 1: a game takes place, and this reminds me of what
Speaker 1: we're just talking about concerning finite and infinite games. He writes, quote,
Speaker 1: I use the metaphor of a chalk line because the
Speaker 1: magic circle is not an absolute barrier or even a
Speaker 1: physical one. We can enter an exit the magic circle freely.
Speaker 1: We bring our bodies, personalities, and life experiences into the game.
Speaker 1: We take the memories and experiences of the game with
Speaker 1: us when we leave. The chalk line casts a spell
Speaker 1: on that space of sidewalk and turns it into a
Speaker 1: space for playing. So, in a way, participating in a
Speaker 1: game is much like suspending your disbelief when watching a
Speaker 1: fantasy film or something You know you you have to
Speaker 1: you have to step across the line voluntarily. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and he also points out that the space inside the
Speaker 1: circle here, inside this magic circle, is a place where
Speaker 1: where we give quote ourselves permission to explore to fail
Speaker 1: to lose. And I think that's also key. And that
Speaker 1: also is that can be challenging to teach to a
Speaker 1: young game player. You know, it's even at ten, I
Speaker 1: have to remind him sometimes, you know. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily about winning. It's okay if you're not if
Speaker 1: certainly if you're not great at the game right off
Speaker 1: the bat, it's not it's not that it's not bad
Speaker 1: to lose necessarily. It's about being within this system, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's being in a like a safe space to
Speaker 1: try new things, to succeed, but also to to fail
Speaker 1: to lose. Uh. That's I mean, that's the great thing
Speaker 1: about your battles taking place um on a on on
Speaker 1: a on a chessboard, for example. It's like it's it's
Speaker 1: okay to lose on the chessboard unless you've created some
Speaker 1: artificial steaks such as through you know, competition or tournaments
Speaker 1: or gambling. Yeah, it's a place where ultimately it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And if we're like, I mean, this is subjective as well,
Speaker 1: but if we're approaching the game with the right mindset,
Speaker 1: then like, this is indeed a neutral space. This is
Speaker 1: a magic circle in which we can we can bring
Speaker 1: things from the outside, but we don't have to We
Speaker 1: don't have to bring that intensity, that seriousness, and that
Speaker 1: life or death struggle. That's true, but it also makes
Speaker 1: me think about you know, again going back to the
Speaker 1: ways that different personalities and different people um have very
Speaker 1: different ideas of fun. I mean, I wonder if to
Speaker 1: some extent, part of what makes children able to engage
Speaker 1: so intensely with games and and get so involved in
Speaker 1: them is exactly the fact that they are able to
Speaker 1: maintain an illusion that the stakes of the game are
Speaker 1: higher than they are. You know, that they can play
Speaker 1: the game as if they had a thousand dollars riding
Speaker 1: on the outcome of it, when actually nothing at all
Speaker 1: rides on the outcome of it, I mean, nothing tangible,
Speaker 1: but they might react as if it did, and thus,
Speaker 1: like winning becomes absolutely necessary. And that's like, to some extent,
Speaker 1: part of the magic of what makes the game so
Speaker 1: compelling to the child. Yeah, there's I guess there's also
Speaker 1: there has to be some sort of awareness of that
Speaker 1: magic circle, because I know in just conversations with my
Speaker 1: my own son, um. And it's not like we have
Speaker 1: to talk about this every game, so it's or anything.
Speaker 1: But occasionally you don't have to remind us like and
Speaker 1: I don't don't worry if you don't you don't win,
Speaker 1: or you don't you're not getting everything at first. Um.
Speaker 1: But then sometimes he'll he'll chime in then and he'll
Speaker 1: be like, I don't care if I win, um, And
Speaker 1: we have to sort of be like, well, no, you don't.
Speaker 1: Don't have to be like that either. Like it's a
Speaker 1: careful balance. It's not it's not that you don't care
Speaker 1: that you win or lose, like you still can desire
Speaker 1: to win, but you're sort of open to the experience
Speaker 1: of failing. It's almost like it's almost like an appreciation
Speaker 1: of of of heroic story or a tragic story and
Speaker 1: a narrative. And when you're playing that game, you have
Speaker 1: to realize, well, my my people in the settlers of Katan,
Speaker 1: this may well be a tragedy. They only have the
Speaker 1: one sheep there. They're not really going to don't really
Speaker 1: stand a chance against these these these epic economies that
Speaker 1: are blooming all around them. Perhaps this is a tragic
Speaker 1: tale as being being told. But within the space of
Speaker 1: the game, that's okay. You know, thinking about the idea
Speaker 1: of being willing to step into the magic circle to
Speaker 1: sort of suspend your disbelief for the game, to play
Speaker 1: the game as if the outcome matters when it doesn't
Speaker 1: in any tangible way. You know, I think that has
Speaker 1: a lot in common with a broader personality trait that,
Speaker 1: in fact, we would describe as being a person who's game.
Speaker 1: You know, the person who is game for things like
Speaker 1: that is a person who, in a in a more
Speaker 1: general sense, is willing to step across the step across
Speaker 1: the line with you to go along with something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good comparison. Yeah, the the idea
Speaker 1: that that that you're agreeing with this person here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're about to step into the magic circle. Things are
Speaker 1: going to be all right, The same rules are not
Speaker 1: going to apply to this activity. And to just be
Speaker 1: willing to try something out, even if you don't know
Speaker 1: that it will be something you like or something that's fruitful,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna go ahead and call it an
Speaker 1: episode there, but we'll be back with another episode on fun. Obviously,
Speaker 1: everyone out there likes to have fun, though You're gonna
Speaker 1: have different ideas about what fun is and what it means,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. So right in with your thoughts on fun
Speaker 1: as it relates to stuff we've discussed in this episode
Speaker 1: and join us for the next one. Core episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish every Tuesday and Thursday
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast feed Monday's
Speaker 1: are for listener mail, Wednesdays are for a short form
Speaker 1: artifact or monster Factor, and on Friday's, well, that's when
Speaker 1: we have fun. That's when we that's when we do
Speaker 1: weird how Cinema, where we set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 1: and just talk about a strange film until our daddy
Speaker 1: takes the tea bird away. That's right. Huge, thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of
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