Games and the Design of Optimal Human Experience

Games are optimal forms of human experience... Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design.... is a fascinating exploration into human nature, evolutionary theory, and the design of optimal human experience... argues that fun is the experience of developing mastery... learning cannot be anything but fun... ... The best games are fun because they are optimal learning environments. ...
Boredom... is what we feel when our brain decides that there is nothing worth learning:.. an evolutionary reason for this. It’s wasteful to spend time learning skills you’ve already mastered... a good game is “one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing.”...Good games ... dynamically adjust levels to match player skill...
no guarantee that they’re teaching skills that you actually want or need...tend to teach primitive skills... of running, jumping, and fighting ... very important for an Australian boomerang-hunter ... a lot less useful for a writer... Games also tend to harness our natural tendency to operate in xenophobic packs....
games are ... sources of optimal human experience.... four categories of intrinsically rewarding human experience: Satisfying work... The experience or promise of success ... Meaningfulness ... Social connection . ...
atelic experiences; they have no telos, or end goal. Instead, they’re done for their own sake....when creating these intrinsically rewarding, atelic experiences, games do a much better job than real life... we should use games to make real-life experiences more valuable.