What makes things fun to learn? heuristics for designing instructional computer games

In this paper, I will describe my intuitions about what makes computer games fun. More detailed descriptions of the experiments and the theory on which this paper is based are given by Malone (1980a, 1980b). My primary goal here is to provide a set of heuristics or guidelines for designers of instructional computer games. I have articulated and organized common sense principles to spark the creativity of instructional designers (see Banet, 1979, for an unstructured list of similar principles). To demonstrate the usefulness of these principles, I have included several applications to actual or proposed instructional games. Throughout the paper I emphasize games with educational uses, but I focus on what makes the games fun, not on what makes them educational.

Though I will not emphasize the point in this paper, these same ideas can be applied to other educational environments and life situations. In a sense, the categories I will describe constitute a general taxonomy of intrinsic motivation—of what makes an activity fun or rewarding for its own sake rather than for the sake of some external reward (See Lepper and Greene, 1979).

I think the essential characteristics of good computer games and other intrinsically enjoyable situations can be organized into three categories: challenge, fantasy, and curiosity.