Sorry, I missed the comment. I would agree with you. Let’s say you have solved tic-tac-toe, so there’s no uncertainty anymore. You might want to play with your younger brother/sister just to win. You wouldn’t really experience fun, but rather simply pleasure from the pride of winning.

Tere from Teravisiongames here. Thank you for the article, I got to it 2 years later ( 🙂 ), but it’s really helpful and complete.

I have one very punctual question and is about the Csikszentmihalyi theory graphic (the one on the right):

In the lower fringe of the Fun Zone, where the player is not yet under his lower comfort limit (so he hasn’t reached boredom), what should be expect the player to experience? Should it be pleasure but not fun?

Thank you

I am happy that article helped you, especially after having read Raph Koster’s book! Reading it was also a great vision shift for me.

When I found this article I was extremely excited and learned a lot so thank you. I feel that using uncertainty is what I had in mind for a long time but I could not really express it correctly. It seems to complete what I learned from “A Theory of Fun” into a quite exciting package that I will store in my “toolbox”– along with many other concepts — as I continue to learn about and design games.

Sorry if it was too long and what not (I feel anything over a paragraph comment is too long) and thanks again.

heh =) Well, that’s the whole point …