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The Fun Factor | What Makes Video Games Fun (Part One)


Video Games are usually synonymous with fun, much like any other form of play, video games can be a thrill to the senses and be some of the most rewarding activities out there. But what is it exactly that makes games fun? And are there particular elements in any game that determine how fun a game is and is there a way to take those elements and use them to make the experience of playing a game that is not considered fun enjoyable?

 Now in order to really find out the answers to those questions, it is necessary to dig deep and discover what fun is and means, what its correlation is to video games, and how all of this creates the foundation for fun to be tied to video games. The Miriam Webster dictionary describes fun as “what provides amusement or enjoyment”. And also according to Miriam Webster, fun first appeared in the English language in the 1600s in France and the term made its way to the United States when petty criminals from London were carried over to the shores of the USA who was owned by Britain at the time. Much like the term itself, the fun that is widely associated with video games would also wind up being imported from all over the world.

As for its correlation to video games, that started many years in the future with the birth of the first ever video game that was sold to consumers, the Magnavox Odyssey, which was released in September of 1972 to little to no fanfare. So the amount of fun that was had is more than likely minute.
PROMO

But when the first Pong consoles were made available pretty soon after the Odyssey crashed and burned on store shelves, so much fun was had by consumers that purchased a Pong console and played it with their friends and family. And from there, video games then made their way into the arcades with the rise of extremely popular games like Pac-Man and Asteroids. And millions of people across the globe began to gladly pay their hard earned money to have fun playing games for hours straight. The American public in the early 80's during the peak of arcade mania were having so much fun with video games that a novelty song reached the top 10 on the billboard charts, just because it had "Pac-Man" in the title.



Because of this boom in video games and their popularity, it soon became an industry that companies like Atari that had previously released some of the first Pong consoles to the public found very desirable and extremely profitable. And began exploiting this new idea of fun by expanding their reach to the console market and taking a page from the failed Odyssey. The result of this was the Atari 2600 and it was a gigantic hit and redefined fun and video games for years to come.
BREAKOUT


And even the eventual crash of the Atari did not snuff out this new particular facet for fun. The Nintendo Entertainment System would arrive to the states soon after in 1985 and kickstart a video game wave that has still yet to subside to this day with the releases of more Nintendo consoles and a multitude of consoles from competitors like Sega, PlayStation and Microsoft.
CONSOLE

Click on the links below to see the next two parts of this multi modal gaming essay.
PART TWO
PART THREE



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