Discover the Fun

"Find the fun" is such a loaded term these days, that I am going to avoid using it going forwards.

Find the fun feels like fun is a dollar bill you pick up on the sidewalk, and frankly most game companies treat the process kind of like that.

But in reality, I think there are two ways to build a fun product.

The most common way is to craft the fun.

Most game projects start with someone playing a game and thinking they have a unique take on the gameplay. This might include a new theme or a tweak on the gameplay or progression systems

When it comes to game projects like this, the fun is already there and as developers, you need to put your effort into the craft of building and polishing every aspect of the game that matters towards what makes the game fun.

The second, and more interesting way to "find the fun" is to "discover the fun."

When someone takes the discover the fun methodology, they don't start with a clearly defined game they are trying to build on. Instead they have a direction or a vibe they want to hit and then experiment on paper, or in code and try to pull something unique from the latent space.

These sorts of game ideas are the hardest to pull off, but thankfully it's fast to prototype a rough demo and determine if it is not fun.

And the upside is that if you discover something that is both new and fun, you are going to have a much bigger winner on your hands than another [insert hot genre] game.