Doom III Demo An alternative to fun
I gave a talk today at the ITU on persuasive games (I'll post a version here in the near future), and afterward we had an interesting discussion about fun in games. One of my precepts regarding rhetorical games is that they reject fun as a first principle of games. This doesn't mean that rhetorical games are therefore not fun, but rather that they don't measure themselves on the total fun they generate. Instead, rhetorical games need to measure themselves based on the impact they have in the material world. One question that came up is how non-leisure games can communicate successfully if players need to alter their attitude toward gameplay in a rhetorical game. I can think of many films and works of studio- and fine art I don't enjoy experiencing, but whose core messages stay with me despite my distaste for the phenomenal experience of the work itself. I think the force of rhetorical games will take a similar form.Later, we replayed the Doom III demo, remember...