As I’ve mentioned before, the Japanese edition of A Theory of Fun for Game Design is out now. Masaya Matsuura was kind enough to write a foreword for this edition, and I thought I’d share it here. I met Matsuura-san for the first time at GDC this year, where we were the joint presenters of the “First Penguin Award” — Matsuura-san because he was last year’s winner, and myself because I do this online game thing sometimes, and the winner was Dr. Richard Bartle.
Now, I of course knew of Masaya’s work — when Parappa the Rapper came out, everyone in our family was hooked on it pretty hardcore. I had wanted to play VibRibbon, but it never came out in the US (alas! It’s a fantastic game, adding chording to the lexicon of rhythm games in a very unique way). With his company, Nanaon-sha, Masaya has pioneered the intersection of games and music, and most particularly, music through gameplay.
When I walked into the greenroom in which we would be held prisoner for hours on end, I didn’t know what to expect. I chatted for a bit with the other folks back there — namedrop alert! — Tommy Tallarico and Dave Perry and Kathy Schoback, I believe. And there was someone I thought was maybe my co-presenter, wearing knit cap, looking quite unsure of what was going on.
They handed us a truly terrible script to perform. And in between waiting, we tried chatting across the language barrier. Once we got onto the subject of music, it was all good. I had my laptop with me, and played him recordings of some of the instrumental guitar pieces I’ve done; a photo was snapped (by Kathy, I think) showing Masaya and his assistant Akiko both learning over my lap, ears to the tinny speakers.
We kept in touch afterwards, and they were kind enough to send me a copy of VibRibbon (hooray!), and even do an interview for HyperPS2 Magazine. We traded tips on books on cognition and how the brain works, a mutual interest. When the time came that O’Reilly in Japan asked me if I knew any developers in Japan who might be willing to do a foreword, he’s the one I thought of. You may have seen him around on the blog from time to time as well.
I hope to see him again at GDC this year, and maybe even tour him around San Diego afterwards. In the meantime, here’s the foreword he so kindly provided for the Japanese edition, and translated himself.
Endorsement by Masaya Matsuura
A game? It’s O.K. if it is “just fun”.
I assume this is the prevailing opinion among game fans.
“Just fun” is a bottleneck in the stable supply of commercial products.
Game creators to date adopted the method of “taking a wild guess and leaving everything to luck (p140)(note: this is not the original expression. This is the translation of the Japanese translation.)
I’m not the exception. (I wish I could say “ I wasn’t…”)
Needless to say, I made a lot of “wrong guesses” and as a result, some titles were called “Kuso-gae (shitty games)”.
If I wanted to clean my tarnished image, I should make efforts every day to find innovative idea that lead to “just fun”. Right?
Having said so, what exactly are “the efforts” to find innovative idea for “just fun”?
The one of the answers is this; “ Omoshiroi-no-game design”!
When I first saw Mr. RaphKoster, the book’s author, he had a face with a stubbly beard and wore glasses. It was hard to tell his nationality, age, occupation or anything at first glance. I even felt something fishy about him.
But then, he came up to me and said “ Are you Matsuura-san? I’m Raph Koster, I’m the one who go up on the stage with you to present this award tonight.”
It was then I felt something special about him, the “super” goodness of his character, which was totally opposite to my first impression.
At that time, we had “meaningful” small talks covering various topics.
This encounter gave me the opportunity to write this.After reading Japanese version of the book, I reaffirmed the importance of this.
When it comes to the process of game creation, especially at the beginning of the process, it is difficult to share delusion of imagination with staff members.
By the time they all got the idea of the image, it is already at the end of production schedule.
That is why we often push ourselves to our limit and find it difficult to sustain.
What’s worse is, the end results could be a total commercial disaster.
It could be too wonderful(?) to remember.
Even in such a situation, we have to move on. And usually we don’t have enough time to learn from past failure.
If a game creator or designer is lucky enough to achieve commercial success, he or she may have the luxury of exploring the essence of “Fun”, as little as it may be.
Or, he or she may not even want to find the answer.
Due to various factors, drilling down on “Fun” was slow in progress.
The games already overtook the movies and the music in terms of expressions, size of industry and so on.
The effect they have on people is so large, games should not be treated too casually such things “to “kill time” or “ relieve stress”.
How we’re going to cope with concurrently growing( suppose to grow?)demand?
There are a pile of issues we need to address.
The goal of book is to clarify the challenging issue of “what is Fun”, which probably afford the demand that I mentioned before.
It is the very first and most aggressive book on Fun that covers a wide spectrum of areas such as recognition theory, gender understanding, learning patterns, chaos theory, graph theory, literature criticism and so forth. (p173)
IT is a thought-provoking book and I myself gained a new understanding by reading it.
I sincerely hope that many readers will gain benefits from this book.
I’ll work on getting this posted on the main Theory of Fun website too.
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[…] https://www.raphkoster.com/?p=253As I’ve mentioned before, the Japanese edition of A Theory of Fun for Game Design is out now. Masaya Matsuura was kind enough to write a foreword for this edition, and I thought I’d share it here. I met Matsuura-san for the first time at GDC this year, where we were the joint presenters of the “First Penguin Award” — Matsuura-san because he was last year’s winner, and myself because I do this online game thing sometimes, and the winner was Dr. Richard Bartle. […]
His description of the day you guys met really made me giggle.
That was a strange day. I ran into a pair of friends I hadn’t seen in almost a decade. (I didn’t even know they were involved with the industry. Go figure!) We chatted so long, we ended up having to watch the awards from one of the overflow screening rooms. That was pretty unsatisfying. But Bartle’s speech was funny! I think that was the best part of the whole show.
[…] could try making an effort every week to find innovative ideas.ReadPermalinkEmail thisLinking BlogsComments[0] […]
[…] Parappa creator introduces book to JapanPosted Jan 16th 2006 7:00PM by Christopher GrantFiled under: CultureWill Wright wrote the foreword for the original release of game designer Raph Koster’s book, A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Now Masaya Matsuura, creator of the PlayStation hit Parappa the Rapper, has done the same for the Japanese edition. He has some interesting things to say about his career, and the difficulty of game design: "When it comes to the process of game creation, especially at the beginning of the process, it is difficult to share delusion of imagination with staff members. By the time they all got the idea of the image, it is already at the end of production schedule. That is why we often push ourselves to our limit and find it difficult to sustain. What’s worse is, the end results could be a total commercial disaster." He also said, "I made a lot of ‘wrong guesses’ and as a result, some titles were called “Kuso-gae (shitty games)”. I’m not sure what titles he’s referring to; though it might not have been Parappa, I didn’t think Um Jammer Lammy was that bad! He continues, "If I wanted to clean my tarnished image, I should make efforts every day to find innovative idea that lead to ‘just fun.’" Or, like Patrick Curry, Matsuura-san could try making an effort every week to find innovative ideas.ReadPermalinkEmail thisLinking BlogsComments [0] […]
[…] Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun has been translated to Japanese and Parappa The Rapper’s Masaya Matsuura has written the foreword, which is available at Raph’s website. I met Matsuura briefly in Tokyo a few year’s ago, at a conference in Makuhari. He was kind enough to authograph Aki Jaarvinen’s copy of Parappa’s soundtrack. There is one thing that I kept from Matsuura’s speech that morning, the description of a cell phone game so outrageously original that I now think that I dreamt about it (Aki, are you there? Please refresh my memory). I haven’t found any reference to this game, so if somebody heard about it, please let me know. It was a game that was played purely through audio, using a phone as interface. The game had a funny title (maybe it was the English translation what made it funny). Something like “10.000 speed girl” or “10.000 speed grandmother”. Yes, I know it’s a wild title. Anyway, the game worked as a 24-hour Tamagotchi that you could call and talk to. Once you started the game, you were able to call a girl. She would be born at the moment that you started and she would age and become an old lady within 24 hours (and eventually die). Her life would be accelerated so it would last 24 hours (hence the game’s title). So, the first time that you called, you would just hear some baby sounds. If you called a couple of hours later, you would interact with a girl. The process would go on and you would have different conversations with the same person through different ages. I am not sure how complex the interaction was but I think some sort of voice recognition was involved. On your last call, the woman would have became an old grandmother. She would say things grandmothers say (Matsuura said something like “Oh, it’s so nice that you called me. You don’t call me very often lately”). Given Matsuura’s musical genius, I am not surprised that he could pull out an all-sound project like this. I guess that the game is not available anymore (and even if it was available, it was in Japanese language). After reading his foreword to Koster’s book, I remembered this story and thought that it was too good not to be shared with you guys. […]
[…] Previous | In celebration of the Japanese printing of A Theory of Fun for Game Design, author Raph Koster has posted to his blog the new and exclusive foreword by NanaOn-Sha’s Masaya Matsuura, and the results are as typically freeform, charming and revealing as readers of Japanese game developer blogs have come to expect. […]