Defining "Toy" and "Fun" - Explaining the Wobbly Slapper

In the first week of my last year at university, my Game Design III class was again tasked with creating a "toy" that is fun to play with in isolation--without any other gameplay tied to it.  In order to complete this assignment, it is first important to understand what exactly a toy is. 

What is a toy?

The simple answer provided in "The Art of Game Design 3rd Edition" by Jesse Schell is that a toy is something that you play with. He goes further to explain that a good toy is one that is "fun" to play with. But what exactly is "fun"? 

What is fun?

It is my belief that something that is "fun" is something that you enjoy doing. The concept of fun also requires an element of excitement involved. What people deem as "exciting" is subjective, which is why some people enjoy some things while others do not. For someone, simply sitting outside and watching the wind and rain is exciting enough to be a "fun" time. On the other hand, those who enjoy thrill rides will feel excitement when riding them, while those who do not enjoy them feel something more akin to terror. 

I will go further to suggest another essential component behind "fun". The feeling of fun is exactly that--a feeling. Fun is not created by the things we do, rather it is created by the things we think and feel while doing. When a child plays with a toy sword, it is not the action of  swinging a sword that creates fun, rather it is the feelings and thoughts that the swinging action provides the user that creates fun.

Back to the assignment at hand:

With that explained, my task at hand can be looked at as "create an activity or action the player can do that provides them excitement and enjoyment." There are an astounding amount of directions I could go down, so it's first important to narrow down what I wanted to do. The world's best toys are ones that are nearly universally enjoyable. I want to create a toy that the majority of people can gain enjoyment and excitement from. One of the most common forms of enjoyable excitement are "surprises", so I wanted to incorporate that into my toy in some way. I decided on choosing "unpredictability" as the form of surprise I wanted to use to approach my idea for a toy.  Many popular real-world toys have unpredictable natures. Bouncing balls, slinkies, dart guns, spinning tops, and many more use this as one of their core components. 

Unpredicted surprises can be "fun", but in order to make a universally enjoyed toy I will need more than just that. Unpredicted surprises happen all the time in daily life. While a bit crude, one example of this could be bird defecating in the air nearby. For a moment you may think "Oh!", but that quickly turns into "Eww..."  Unpredictable surprises alone are exciting, but still need to be enjoyable.

Following this, I understood that I needed something that is nearly universally enjoyable. Something that warms up to our senses and we just can't help but enjoy.  What I chose, was "satisfaction". Our brains are wired to maximize pleasure. Our brains release neurotransmitters that make us feel happier when we experience pleasure, and satisfaction is a surefire way to create pleasure in some form. Many of the worlds greatest toys implement both satisfaction and unpredictable surprises. Some examples include the basketball, wind-up-cars, boomerang, and the trampoline.

Creation of the Wobbly Slapper

There are many different human emotions or instincts that can be "satisfied", so there are still many options to go down. But at this point, I have narrowed down my options enough that I felt I has sufficient knowledge to start using my own instincts and experiences to choose what toy I wanted to create. After a brainstorming session, I had thought of a "wobbly javelin" for my toy. 

The wobbly nature of the javelin would cover my satisfaction requirement. As the player swings the javelin around, it would continuously correct itself to become straight again, and it would curve as the player looks around. When the player stops swinging the javelin, they can watch it rhythmically bob as it corrects itself. This creates satisfaction because it appeals to the human desire for everything to "be as it should". It is also mathematically consistent nature of the wobble also appeals to humans temporal perception in the same way that rhythm does in music.  

The wobbly nature in itself is also unpredictable as the player swings it around. This however, was not enough of an "unpredictable surprise" alone. Because of this, I made the javelin into a toy that produce a sound when swung into other things. The trajectory of the other things is always a surprise similar to baseball, and the sound that plays can be unpredictable to the player. The sound is a slapping sound that changes based on how fast you swung the javelin into the object. At a very high speed, a loud *THWACK* will ring out, while slow speeds are more of a (thud). 

How did it turn out?

I was unable to produce the same "wobble" effect that was in my mind, but I got something that was somewhat close. I still think the toy turned out pretty fun, but I do think I missed the potential a tiny bit. I think I adding a sheet metal "wobble" effect that plays while the player wobbles the javelin would help elevate the "unpredictable" nature more. I used physics constraints for the javelin, so I was able to get the "satisfying" feeling down well enough. This would be elevated further if I got the wobbly motion to be more accurate. I do have some ideas of how I could program that if I had more time. I would probably instead apply a custom "lag" effect to the endpoint instead of relying on the physics constraint. The physics constraint doesn't really have the functionality for this, so I would have to build it myself.