Optimized for Fun

On a recent road trip with my sons, we listened to a podcast on the history of Nintendo. It’s a great listen on many levels, but the part that resonated most with me was the story of exactly how Nintendo cornered the early video game market. Like any memorable victory, it’s noteworthy because it’s counterintuitive.

In the 80’s, as computing power was increasing exponentially, Nintendo’s rivals staked their hopes on harnessing that power. Which makes sense. The more realistic and killer your graphics are, the more people will want to play your game, right? Yet Nintendo came out on top by doing the opposite. As the podcast puts it:

The famous thing that Nintendo went on to do…is that their games are optimized for fun, not to show off the hardware… It's not about using state-of-the-art chips. It's not about using the most expensive hardware. It's about how clever, inventive, and fun can you be with it.

This is one of those things that seems obvious in hindsight. If consumers have to choose between two games – a boring one with marginally better graphics or a fun one with inferior graphics – of course they’re going to choose the one that is “optimized for fun.” And yet that wasn’t obvious in the moment, as Nintendo’s competitors blew through their R&D budgets.

I think this is instructive for writers. How often do we drill down on something we think readers want… but maybe they don’t? In writing, what is our version of “showing off hardware”?

I would argue that it’s DETAILS. In particular, exhaustive descriptions of setting and dense character backstory. Readers don’t want that stuff nearly as much as we think they do. Elmore Leonard (who knew a thing or two about writing that was optimized for fun), said, “I leave out the parts that people skip.” Backstory and description are what he’s referring to.

Think about your experience as a reader when you run into, say, a half-page description of some hotel room. You’re probably not thinking, “Alright! Now we’re getting somewhere.” But as a writer, how often do you get to that same scene – character opens the door on a hotel room – and feel strangely compelled to write that half-page description?

Sometimes we feel like things have to be hard. Like, if it’s easy, we’re not doing it right. But what if – on occasion – the shortcut is the better way?

Details are hard. Description is hard. It’s hard to write that half-page description. (It’s also hard to read it.) It’s easier to give one or two sensory details about the room, then move on. Easier on the writer and the reader. The best writing is not about showing off your vocabulary or powers of description. If anything, it’s about trimming those things back to give the reader an optimal experience.

That’s what 1980’s Nintendo realized about video games. The ten-year-olds who played them didn’t care about the technical virtuosity that went into the processor. They just wanted to know, “It is fun?”

Same goes for readers.

What’s fun in a video game? Navigating obstacles to achieve a goal.

What’s fun in a book? Navigating obstacles to achieve a goal (also known as story).

And anything that obscures that story – five-dollar-words, ponderous backstory, self-indulgent descriptions – has to go.

It’s not about showing off your hardware, it’s about creating a fun experience for the most important person in the whole literary universe – the reader.