Natural Funitivity

What makes a game fun? This is the question asked by Noah Falstein in his article Natural Funitivity.

What Noah wants to focus on, is not the definition of fun. What he wants to know is, what makes us enjoy games and why have we evolved to enjoy games.

He believes that the reason we enjoy games is in our past, a few thousand years to be exact. The reason we have to look so far back, is because the modern world can "mask or distort the evolutionary sense behind our drives or interests".

First he explains about refined sugar syndrome (RSS). He says that thousands of years ago, the craving for sugar would motivate us to hunt for food. In the modern world, there is no shortage of sugar, we could eat it by the bucket load if we wanted to, and we often do. This, he says, applies to other things as well, like entertainment.

Different animal used play differently. Some would use it social, some to show their dominance and some to practice survival skills. In the same way that sugar has been refined, "Play" has also been refined.

Back then, humans would use play to improve their hunting skills. Noah gives an example of how 3 different people could behave after a successful hunt.

Person A would go straight out and hunt for more. His skills would remain sharp, but it’s also dangerous doing this.

Person B would relax, his skill would diminish, but he would be well rested by the next hunt.

Person C, however, finds it boring to sit around. He invents a small game, in which he throws rocks at a piece of wood to knock it over. He has the best of both worlds, he stays safe and is well rested, but is also improving his skills.

He goes on to say that while A and B are not necessarily bad methods, it is evident that alot of us have evolved in the same way as person C, enjoying games and play. Is this due to person C being more successful with survival? Maybe.