{"id":46270,"date":"2015-08-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-23T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gengo.com\/uncategorized\/should-video-games-be-interesting-or-fun\/"},"modified":"2019-10-23T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T10:05:00","slug":"should-video-games-be-interesting-or-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gengo.com\/language-and-culture\/should-video-games-be-interesting-or-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Should video games be \u201cinteresting\u201d or \u201cfun\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"This is a guest post written by a Gengo translator.<\/span><\/i>\r\n\r\nIn Japanese video-gaming criticism, <\/span>omoshiroi<\/span><\/i> sometimes translates to \u201cfun\u201d and other times to \u201cinteresting\u201d. However, the word <\/span>tanoshii<\/span><\/i>\u00a0is also usually translated as \u201cfun\u201d but is actually closer to the sense of \u201cenjoyable\u201d.<\/span>\r\n\r\nWhereas in games criticism and studies written in English, there is a fair amount of angst over the word \u201cfun.\u201d Is it a useful term? What gets lost if we stop using it?\r\n\r\n\u201cFun\u201d is usually recognized as a vague word that expresses some sort of pleasure. The benefit of using this expression is usually associated with the belief that gaming is a commercial industry within a male-dominated culture. However, when developers say that their peers don\u2019t focus enough on what makes a game \u201cfun\u201d, they often have a good point.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s difficult to do justice to the full semantic range of these words, which embrace the way that ordinary people describe games that they like or don\u2019t like. Overall, there are four terms (two dichotomies) that are central to games writing as value judgement (as opposed to games writing as critical analysis):\r\n