GDCOnline: A Theory of Fun, 10 Years Later

Here are the slides for the design track keynote I gave yesterday, as a PDF. Edit: thanks to Alexandre Houdent for providing a version of the PDF that works on all OSes…

Among the topics: a recap of Theory of Fun, discussion of what I would change about it today, and all the thoughts it led me to: game grammar, games as art, games as math, the ethics of games, gamification, etc. With a dash of Classical philosophy.

I had the shakes bad before I started… but it felt like it came together in the end.

Apologies to anyone whose face I rendered unrecognizable. And the unlabelled woman is Jane McGonigal.

The press coverage so far:

Gamasutra has a detailed article
Games.com has an unfortunate headline, but a nice brief overview
PocketGamer.biz also has an in-depth piece

A challenge for you all: can you name all these people without peeking at the slides?