WCDFTO: Fun Factor vs. Development Resources - RaychelSnr's Blog

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RaychelSnr's Blog

WCDFTO: Fun Factor vs. Development Resources Stuck

Posted on September 22, 2009 at 03:59 PM.

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Several of you commented on my post yesterday, most surprisingly were in agreeance that fun is maximized for everyone at around 80%. Today we're going to look at Fun Factor vs. Development Resources in an ideal setting:

As you can see, in an ideal situation, the more development resources you commit to a game, the more fun it should be since you are able to pack more stuff into it and refine the experience. This is probably the most straightforward graph I will present this week, but there is one caveat.

Towards the end of the graph, the rate of fun factor acceleration begins to decline a bit. I think that at some point in the development resources vs. fun factor relationship, you start to lose the effect that dollars give you because, at least in my opinion, the difference between a 90 to 100 on a review scale is a bit bigger than 80 to 90 is. So at some point, you lose the benefits of the additional resources as they become more expensive to raise the quality of the game from the perspective of fun factor.

Tomorrow we are going to get into the part where OSers really should start to care, realism. But for today, what do you think about Fun Factor? Do you think at some point it becomes harder and harder to make a game more fun? And is it even possible to measure such a subjective form of measurement? Let's discuss!

Comments

# 1 Shinyhubcaps @ Sep 22

Law of diminishing marginal returns. ECON 101 has taught me something... not much, but something.

The difference is, though, that game developers are asked to put out a product every year. This means, of course, that their resources can allow them to keep putting in more fun, even if the rate in year 10 is less than that of year 2. But even at that, they can use their previous years' work as a base, so they have a launching point.

If they were starting from scratch every year, it would be hard to rationalize reaching for the end of that graph. But, the way the cycles run, it's obtainable if they get a good base and don't have to go back and keep fixing previous screw-ups (I'm looking at you, NBA Live).