7 1/2 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE SHORTEST FOUR-LETTER WORD IN GAMES
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
When players enjoy a game, they say, “That was fun!” When designers make, journalists review, or academics theorize about a game, the word fun rarely comes up. A word so commonplace as to sound meaningless and typically ignored, “fun" remains unmentioned by those who make and write about games. This talk looks beyond game development, game journalism and game studies for ideas to help us better understand the role of fun in games and beyond. Drawing on fields as diverse as cognitive psychology, anthropology, cultural theory, the philosophy of art, and sociology, Sharp explores the power and potential of fun as useful concept and tool for experiencing, thinking about, and understanding play. ù
John Sharp is a designer, art historian, curator and educator with thirty years of involvement in the creation and study of art and design. John's current design work focuses on cultural games, artgames and non-digital games. His current research addresses game aesthetics, the processes of creativity, and the intersections of aesthetics and ethics. Sharp is Associate Professor in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons School of Design at the New School. He is the author of Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art (MIT Press) and coauthor (with Colleen Macklin) of Iterate.Ten Lessons in Design and Failure and (with David Thomas) Fun, Taste, & Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful (MIT Press). Sharp and Macklin are Codirectors of the PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab) at Parsons. John was the curator of Spacewar!: Videogames Blast Off (2012) and A Whole Different Ball Game: Playing Through 60 Years of Sports Video Games (2018, co-curator Jason Eppink) at the Museum of the Moving Image and co-curator of XYZ: Alternative Voices in Game Design (2013) at the Museum of Design-Atlanta. John’s Games include The Metagame (2015) and Losswords (2019).
