Moroagh’s excellent blog continues to have thought-provoking pieces on game design. This time around it’s a great post on social fun, looking at an often neglected quadrant of Nicole Lazzaro’s four types of fun.
This is an important aspect of family gaming that doesn’t fit the all to heavy if not pure challenge model of “hard fun” alone. We play social games not just to gloat and be proud of the achievement of our beloved ones. We also play social games to socially interact, learn about each other, foster social skills, form bonds, explore others in a safe context of an artificial game environment, learn to cooperate, learn to give in, learn to support, learn to empathize, learn to see things from someone else’s perspective, learn to argue with grace, learn to be able to accept that multiple points of view are present, learn to cope with interpersonal frustrations, learn to unwind together. And of course learning to not gloat and be a graceful winner as much as a proud and respectful loser.
A lot of social behaviors are about the ability to not win for the sake of someone else, to forgo competition for the sake of preserving a social bond, to seek activities that are cooperative rather than competitive.
I couldn’t agree more; and yet, the picture is pretty tangled.
