Why Video Games are Fun to Play

Why Video Games are fun to play:

what kind of pleasure do games aim at? What is the gaming equivalent of katharsis? My answer is that games aim to inspire a characteristic sort of pleasure, the delight in the discovery and mastery of rules. Play is an expression of the human mind’s native lust to master the lawlike natural world through experiment and planning. As Kant says: “The understanding is hungry after rules, and it is satisfied when it finds them.” And video games are most fitting artform to satisfy this desire, because unlike other games and sports the rules of a video game are not disclosed in advance. Each game reveals a novel rulebound world to the player, and asks her to uncover its underlying logic through inquiry and imagination. And that is why the games are fun to play.

via Versus CluClu Land: A Clarification.