As most of us here have dabbled in some kind of game development, I think that we all know that there are many aspects to a game - many facets to the overall product - that determines how successful it turns out to be. Some of the things that factor into how well received a game is are it's graphics, sound, story, game-play mechanics, and challenge. The most important thing of all though is whether or not the game is fun. Fun is the make-or-break factor for just about all games, and while it can be achieved in innumerable ways, it's presence will determine if your game is played or not.

Take a game like Pong, for instance. The original of originals, the grandaddy of all games. Pong is a game in it's simplest form: Two rectangles and a dot. Two colors. Only two ways to move. And yet so many people have spent so many hours playing this game. I've never played the original myself, but I remember being distracted by the Pong game stuck right in the middle of the Commander Keen options screen… I probably played that thing more than the actual Commander Keen game!

Or how about a game like Super Mario Bros., a game that launched one of the most famous franchises in the industry? Better visuals than pong, that's for sure. Better sound as well. But still a pretty crummy looking game. People have played the hell out of this game, finding every hidden box, bridging every seemingly unjumpable gap, and exploring every inch of the game world.

So why have people devoted so much time to these games? Because they are fun! By today's standards especially, neither of these games really has much going on as far as presentation, but sit down and play them, and you'll put in at least 30-60 minutes before you go do something else. The game-play, no matter how complex or simple, is fun, and that's what keeps players coming back over and over.

The unfortunate thing about fun, as many of us have found out one way or another, is that it can't just be injected into the game the same way good graphics or sound can. It's easy to give a game a face-lift and swap out the graphics, but when a game just isn't fun, it can be a daunting task to try to change the way the it plays in order to make it enjoyable.

So what can be done? When you're developing a game, don't let it go through too much change as it progresses without letting people play it and give you feedback. Don't get so involved in one aspect of the game that you let other aspects wither. And try to take a step back from your work now and then to look at it from a different perspective.