I watched Chris Crawford’s “Dragon” speech a while ago and, having watched it, I’ve been looking into Crawford’s work, in particular his current “Storytron” project.

One thing that struck me was his declaration that games don’t need to be fun: Crawford believes that trying to be fun hurts a game’s potential to teach, to move the audience and otherwise to convey the author’s ideas and feeling, but while I agree with him on many points I think he’s missed the mark with this one.

In my view games are just like any other medium: they can entertain, educate and influence in the same way as books or plays or films. However, in the same way as books or plays or films, they cannot do so without the audience’s consent. You need to give people some reason to listen to your message, and thus your presentation is just as important as what you’re presenting.

Let me give you an example: I had an electronics lecturer at university who clearly knew his subject back to front. Unfortunately, he was a terrible speaker. Listening to him made you want to pair socks and watch paint dry, and it was near impossible to stay focused for more than a couple of minutes before your mind started to wander. He had important information to convey, but he might as well have nothing to say at all because he was unable to engage his audience.

Obviously good presentation without meaningful content is no better. Take for example the film “Transformers 2″ : a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. No matter how spectacular the special-effects are they can’t make the film worthy of note. Sure, you might enjoy the experience, but it’s hardly going to mark you, and you’ll likely soon forget it.

Some Game Designers are starting to say to things like “fun hurts meaning“, which may be true. Taking this principle to the extreme and deliberately making your boring game is not a wise move though. Think of all these fad diets that take what might seem like a reasonable idea, say “carrots are good for you”, and turn it into a very bad one, like “you should only ever eat carrots”.
There’s an expression, “moderation in all things” : absolutes simply don’t work in real life, so it’s always important to find the balance, the synthesis, the “Golden Mean”.

At the end of the day fun is a very important part of any form of communication – it is necessary to have a mixture of entertainment and message: to make people listen while giving them something worth listening to. If anybody understands this it’s the world of comedy: in making fun of various contemporary issues, comedians can denounce, criticize and make suggestions. Their humour is the sugar that makes the medicine go down. Games can be deep and meaningful, but a message without an audience is worthless: it’s a tree falling in a forest that nobody is around to hear. This is why it is games need to be fun.

What do you think of Chris Crawford’s comments – do games need to be fun in your opinion?