Slides and notes I used for a quick 10 min talk at London's Educational Games meet-up group in April 2013. I am a Product Manager and Game Designer at Mind Candy where I have been helping to build Moshi Monsters since 2009.

2. - Finding Fun is an Adventure
- Seek Mastery: Environment, User & Fun
- Toolbox
- Discovery Part I: Ideation
- Discovery Part II: Validation
- Iterate
- Summary

4. Finding Fun is NOT a journey that can be easily planned upfront. Es-
pecially for games (An interactive art where the experience takes
place in a space between the game and the user. We never know
how a user will play the game). Especially for kid's games.
Its an inexact science.
Party unknowable because you discover Fun as you create.
Can we always Find Fun?
ANS: Yes, if we look hard enough. BUT, time is of the essence!

6. Understanding and respecting your environment gives you a head
start and saves time.
Understand other games:
- Play and study good Nintendo games
- Play Board games & Sports
(Days of Wonder are a great Board Games publisher)
Understand your user:
- Chris Evans BBC Breakfast Show interviews kids everyday;
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid - writer knows what it’s like to be a kid
- Read psychology papers, books and blogs
- Run focus groups & surveys

8. Knowing your user will help you meet their needs and expectations
and saves time.
So much variation with gender and age.
There are as many different play styles as there are different models to
describe personas.
Find models that work for you
Previous slide is based on research by Lizzie Jackson and David
Gauntlett:
http://home.wmin.ac.uk/docs/MAD/AM/S02_SP03-LizzieJackson.pdf

10. Knowing about different types of fun will help you engage kids on
different levels in the short, medium and long-term.
Nicole Lazzaro's 4 types of Fun:
- Hard Fun: Goals, Obstacles, Strategies
- People Fun: Communicate, Cooperate, Compete
- Easy Fun: Exploration; Fantasy; Creativity
- Serious Fun: Repetition, Rhythm; Collection
http://www.nicolelazzaro.com/the4-keys-to-fun/
Easy Fun is really important for kids.
Especially silly, whimsy, slapstick - crude humour
Find models that work for you

12. Set yourself up to move quickly.
Must move quickly because the more ideas we play with, the more
fun we will find.
Quick: Paper & pencil; post-its and sharpies - Paper app
Precise: Omnigraffle, Google Docs
Low-Fidelity: Flash; Construct; Stencyl, HTML + jquery

14. Discovery is a 2 step process. First start with Ideation .
(This is where we open up the Discovery Diamond)
Collect & welcome ideas from everywhere.
Don't kill ideas too early; don’t edit yourself.
Be concerned if you don't end up with several alternative ideas.
Use your Toolbox to Prototype and test quickly by any means.

16. The second step in Discovery is Validation.
(This is where we begin filtering ideas and close the Discovery Dia-
mond)
Check if you've found the fun.
Use Mastery, Prototyping and Tests to reduce options.
Know when something's wrong - sometimes we become too at-
tached, but Validation should show us what’s simply not working.
We are NOT children.
You won't really know if you're Found some Fun until you put it in
front of kids.

18. Iterate on Ideation and Validation.
(This is essentially the Double Diamond approach to design)
We don't do big design upfront (we might spend too much effort
going in the wrong direction).
We do quick slices because it helps us validate if we've found the fun
more quickly.
After you have proved your core idea, do some more discovery.
(but know when something's wrong)

20. In suImary, when trying to Find the Fun for a kid's game, it is ex-
tremely risky to execute on a single idea.
To mitigate risk, start out informed, spread your bets, then build and
validate your ideas as frequently as possible.
The more iterations of Discovery & Validation we do, the more fun we
will find.

22. Mastery catapults you down the path of Discovery.
However, when flying through the air you often overlook subtle de-
tails.
Mastery is important but it will often take you to Fun Parks that you
have previosly visitied (nothing wrong with that).

24. Sometimes its good to walk through your assumptions.
It may lead you to discover untrodden paths.