I suppose if I were to break it down and take SF6 as an example (or any fighting game for that matter) and answer the question why is the game fun?
I would have to start with the core of the game; the mechanics.
Doing combos feels good.
Landing a punish is satisfying.
Anti airing their jump in feels satisfying.
There’s more of course but fundamentally I don’t think these things are fun by themselves. You can do all this in practice mode vs a dummy, but I wouldn’t say I have fun doing so. The very act of competing against another player who is trying their hardest to stop you from doing all the “fun” stuff to them allows the mechanics of the game to feel fun (hypothetically, we all know what low elo is like haha).
So then if fundamentally the act of competing against other player(s) makes the mechanics of the game fun, I should find all competitive games fun, right?
However, I know this isn’t the case. I tried and know I didn’t have fun playing CS:GO. I had fun for a while in Valorant, but that waned with time also. Even League lost its fun for me for a while. But League and CS:GO have wildly different game mechanics, and more so if we compare those two to SF6.
So then if taking the above into account, there’s certainly more to “having fun” than just competing against other players. But now we know it is a vital factor to “fun”.
Then that leads us back to game mechanics, clearly they have some impact on whether or not I would consider myself to “have fun” playing a competitive game. But why are the mechanics “fun” and when are they “fun”?
Let’s find out by asking myself a hypothetical question: would I have fun playing SF6 if all I needed to do for a combo was press 3 different buttons in succession. Or just press 1 button for an anti-air, etc. Probably not, which must mean that the difficulty of executing certain concepts contributes to the amount of fun.
So does that mean the following is true? The more difficult it is to execute concepts in a competitive game, the more fun the game is.
Now I don’t think that statement is true, I know from experience that if things overly difficult without reason or just plain convoluted it actually subtracts from the amount of “fun” I have playing the game.
So there is a point where the amount of “fun” gained from increasing difficulty hits a threshold. But why is this difficulty fun?
My initial thought leads me to believe it is because one has something to work towards while playing the game. Something you can’t do right now, but know with enough practice will be able to do in the future. Like the game is giving you a reason to stick with it. To improve.
So at the core, improving at something is fun. Seeing yourself be able to do things you previously thought to be either impossible or difficult feels incredibly satisfying.
If looking at everything so far, I think two things can be concluded: (a) competing against other players is fun, and (b) improving at something is fun.
But I missed an important topic. Winning and losing. Personally I don’t mind losing, while it does subtract from my “fun” it doesn’t diminish it enough to have a real negative impact. However, winning adds quite a lot to my “fun”. So then is the outcome of any given game important to “fun”? While losing doesn’t hold a tangible negative impact, winning certainly holds a decent positive one. Can one, from that, conclude that losing in fact holds a greater negative impact than might seem? I suppose an argument could be made that losing deprives me of a decent amount of “fun” I could have gained if I had won instead. Can I therefore conclude that losing does matter for the amount of “fun” I am having?
Even though I do not like to admit it, I think it does. However I also think the outcome is not what is necessarily significant to this. Whenever one wins or loses a game, a lot of things have happened to make it so. Usually when one loses, many mistakes were made. I know from experience that when my screen says DEFEAT I don’t actually mind all that much, but I do mind when I make obvious mistakes. And they certainly subtract a substantial amount from my “fun”.
That was quite the tangent, but bear with me. I believe having fun and not having fun go hand-in-hand. One must not have fun in order to have fun. Quite a cryptic statement, but let me explain: In order to achieve the earlier mentioned two fundamental aspects of “having fun” one must be competitive, and improve at something. But improving requires one to make mistakes, without them it’s nigh impossible to truly improve. But I mentioned earlier, making those necessary mistakes subtracts from my “fun”. Therefore, like a pendulum, “having fun” is in a state of constant change. One moment I will feel like I am “having fun” and the other I will feel like I’m not “having fun”.
What does all this have to do with what we talked about, you ask? Well I suppose this is just my incredibly lengthy way of explaining: I have no idea how to put more emphasis on “having fun”. Somehow it feels like if I put more emphasis on “having fun” I will be in the way of actually “having fun”.