Perhaps it is absurd to offer advice on how to enjoy a game. Isn’t the point of a game to provide enjoyment? Not necessarily. Some games are serious and meant to discover information, such as Model UN simulations. Some games asymmetrically provide enjoyment for some players and torment others, such as a game of keep-away played by a couple of bullies who’ve just stolen your hat. But let’s narrow the discussion to games meant for the enjoyment of all players.
I’m about to get Aristotelian for a moment. For many human endeavors, there’s a range between two extremes, inside of which is a preferable middle. Not enough courage? You’re a coward. Too much courage? You’re foolhardy. That’s the Aristotelian mean. One range applied to games is the balance between what’s under your control and what’s beyond all control. You can use this balance to understand how best to enjoy the game.
Webster’s 1828 definition of game includes the following.
3. An exercise or play for amusement or winning a stake; as a game of cricket; a game of chess; a game of whist. Some games depend on skill; others on hazard.
https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/game
The first definition is just sport, but that’s to broad. We’re talking about an exercise, that is a series of procedures, meant to induce amusement by way of a winning condition. Games can require skill and they can present hazards. Skill is the beneficial application of the rules to enforce one’s will on the game condition. Hazards are events produced by the game beyond the control of the player.
Games have rules. Generally, the rules don’t change during the course of a game session, though there can be games with rules for changing the rules themselves. That’s getting a bit meta, so we’ll set it aside. The rules specify the actions a player can make within the context of the game. The player makes choices from these rules towards some personal satisfaction, usually to the win the game.
Most games offer an element of chance. These are the hazards beyond the control of the player. They may come in the form of dice, cards or even the inscrutable actions of an opposing player. Defeating the hazards, that is, getting your way despite them, is one way to feel satisfaction at the end of a game. This could be described as the agency theory of fun.
Consider a game at the extreme end of the range when it comes to randomness: Candy Land. This is a boardgame that simulates a race. A path leads from the start to “Home Sweet Home”. Players take turns drawing cards which direct the player’s token to advance to a colored square. The game offers no choices whatsoever. The result of the game is determined by the randomness of how the cards were shuffled.
Candy Land is not a fun game for anyone but toddlers. Youngsters who have not yet learned to count can still find some satisfaction in challenging themselves to follow the rules by matching colors. Sadly, there other games of extraordinary complexity that offer as little choice as Candy Land. Perhaps adults find these games amusing in the same way. The challenge lies in following obtuse rules.
What about a game with no hazards, no resort to luck? It would be natural to think of chess, checkers or go. These games have no element of chance such as a deck of cards, but they do offer the challenge of an opponent whose actions you cannot control.
To eliminate all uncontrolled elements, we must find a game with a single player. We can’t choose klondike or similar solitaire card games because those rely on a randomized deck of cards. We end up considering an activity with rules where only our own choices matter. Is writing a poem still a game? Whether it’s a sonnet or haiku, the poet must follow some scant rules.
Putting together perfect iambic pentameter with consistent rhymes is a difficult challenge that can be solved with many interesting choices. Once again, we find the game itself to be lacking while some enjoyment can be found in struggling with a personal ability to follow the rules.
Have you ever found that certain experiences tip over from being unenjoyable to being enjoyable when you add something outside the “rules” of the game? Maybe it’s the cake or the keg that convinces you to attend the party. Aside from intoxicants, maybe you indulge in meta behavior during a game, such as role-playing as a snobbish socialite while playing Monopoly or tormenting your fellow Risk players with insults in order to distract them from good play.
They key is recognizing where the game falls on the spectrum between hazards and skill. And speaking of intoxicants, I am reminded of The Serenity Prayer, or the first part of it, anyway.
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Neibuhr
Look for the balancing procedures in a game. Most games will have the hazard of other players. Any cooperative game must make up the difference in some way, else it will creep too far towards staleness of “everyone agrees on this one best choice”.
Look for the skills required by the game. Developing those skills over time will be a separate meta-game played against yourself as you “get good”. As your skill increases, your ability to apply your will into the game state increases, as does your enjoyment. You achieve more and more agency.
When a game contains more randomness, you can accept that these are elements you cannot change. Focus on what you can change and don’t worry so much about what you can’t predict. As you develop the wisdom of knowing the balance between hazards and skill in a game, you can detach from any frustration that comes from lack of control.
Finally, my advice is to recognize opportunities to step outside of the game rules themselves to find amusement. Where the rules are silent, your will has free reign. Roleplaying games offer huge gaps in the procedures for injecting your own creativity for everyone’s amusement. Nothing in the rule book requires you to talk like a pirate, but it’s a choice you can make if it pleases you.
And after all, the point of playing a game is to have fun.
