Wu, Matthew_Senior Thesis 2026

Active Fun in Goblin Goons: Activity Theory in Game Design Matthew Wu Senior Thesis | 2026

Wu 1 Matthew Wu Rosemary White Senior Thesis Writing 1 March 2026 Active Fun in Goblin Goons: Activity Theory in Game Design What makes a fun game? This thesis aims to find out, and to create a fun computer science project, titled Ms. Mushroom and the Goblin Goons. Activity theory is the groundwork for this.

Activity theory is a framework from social science that considers a work environment beyond just the actors of the environment, accounting for factors like objective, tools, and environment; activity theory can be applied on a broad range of systems.

Additionally, activity theory defines three important concepts: activities, actions, and operations. To summarize, within an activity system, the activity is the overall goal of the system.1 Actions and operations are both steps taken to achieve said goal. The distinction between operations and actions is that one doesn’t have to think about operations, as they are unconsciously performed. To give an example, let a restaurant be the activity system we are analyzing. The activity of that restaurant would be running the restaurant and serving good food. Actions, according to activity theory, are the steps consciously taken to work towards said goal.

Chopping vegetables, taking orders, and cooking dishes are all actions. Lastly, operations are the unconscious ways that actions are performed. For example, holding the knife, adjusting heat, and walking to tables would all be operations.

Activity theory also categorizes the different parts of an activity system. There are seven key components of an activity system, and are denoted in a pyramid (Figure 1): the subject, object, tools, rules, community, division of labor, and the outcome.

To go back to the restaurant example, the subjects are the actual 1

Hashim, Nor , and M L Jones. 2007. Activity Theory: A Framework for Qualitative Analysis.

Wu 2 actors of an activity system, or the chefs, waiters, and managers.

The object, or activity, is the goal of the activity system. The tools are the items used to achieve the object, such as knives and sinks.

The rules are the laws the system must abide by, like health codes.

The community is the social network within the system, such as the owners, suppliers, chefs, and customers. The division of labor is the distribution of work among the subjects, such as cooking for chefs and waiting for waiters. Lastly, the outcome is the overall product of the system, such as profits and happy customers.

Figure 1. A diagram of an activity system, depicting the elements and how they connect to one another.

The word "fun" is vague and hard to define; two games can differ wildly, yet both can be considered fun. For the purpose of this project, I’m following Raph Koster’s theory of fun. It explores the main driving force behind what makes a game fun. Koster states that the main thing that makes a game fun is the loop of learning and mastering patterns. Within the context of activity theory, actions can become operationalized. In other words, when an action is repeated over and over, it can become unconsciously performed. Koster states that this process of learning makes a game "fun," as the player finds satisfaction in mastering a game’s patterns and mechanics. Koster additionally adds some

Wu 3 requirements for "fun." Firstly, he states that when the player figures out how the game works, the game becomes trivial and therefore unfun. He uses tik tak toe as an example, stating that the trivialization of the game makes it unfun to players. The way to fix this issue is to continuously introduce new patterns for the player to learn. In summary, games that are “fun” create a constant, satisfying loop of learning and mastering new patterns.2 Although ideas like activity theory and the theory of fun can be universally applied, as they can be seen in things like board games, tabletop games, and even physical sports to an extent, the goal of this thesis is to apply these theories to a video game. I analyzed existing game projects to see how the theories could be applied. First, I analyzed them in the context of activity theory.

Many followed the same structure: the subject is the player, the tools are their input machines, be it keyboards or controllers, and the rules are the game’s programmed ruleset. An important thing that I noticed was that the object differed heavily game to game, yet was always clearly defined. For example, in Hollow Knight, the player's object is to reach the next area. In Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, it was to beat the next boss encounter. In Stardew Valley, it was to make money. Any actions and patterns introduced to the player were all tools to progress the game’s object. Moreover, I noticed that mastering patterns was also a common occurrence in many popular games, even if they are conceptually very different.

Take Hollow Knight and Stardew Valley as examples. For both games, they introduce patterns to the player to master and operationalize. In Hollow Knight, actions like movement, combat, and spellcasting can become second nature for a player to execute.

In Stardew Valley, processes like farming, buying seeds, and learning schedules are all patterns placed for the players to master.

A common theme in both of these games is that the actions are 2

Raph Koster. 2005. A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Scottsdale, Az: Paraglyph Press. ‌

Wu 4 easy to execute. In Hollow Knight, attack strings are triggered through a single button press, and the same can be said for the actions in Stardew Valley. Of course, while games can introduce difficult executions, such as a long string of various button inputs, an easy execution is key to making actions intuitive to operationalize. Additionally, following Koster’s comments on trivialization, Hollow Knight introduces new patterns slowly over time to prevent trivialization. After beating the first major challenge of the game, the player is introduced to Hollow Knight’s spellcasting system. Like Hollow Knight’s base mechanics, spellcasting uses an easy to execute, one-button input. What makes it difficult to master is that it necessitates the player to not just rely on their previously operationalized actions. In order to beat the game, they must mix in a new pattern with ones they have already mastered. To force players to engage with these new mechanics, games often use incentive structures rather than hard rules. In Hollow Knight, you won’t lose outright for refusing to use the spellcasting mechanic, but it is noticeably more efficient to do so. ​ My own game project, Ms. Mushroom and the Goblin Goons, was developed over the summer with all of these elements in mind. The main pattern the player must master is the parrying mechanic, heavily inspired by popular games like Nine Sols and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The game is a platformer, or a 2D sidescrolling game that involves jumping from section to section, forcing the player to engage with and eventually operationalize the game’s movement mechanics. Within each level, there are multiple combat encounters the player must complete in order to move to the next section (see Figure 2). The game’s parrying mechanic is centered around these encounters. Enemies can launch an attack on the player, and players can deal with these attacks by pressing a designated parry input right before the attack would hit. If the player presses the input within a certain timing window, the attack is considered "deflected," and thus nullified. A non-deflected

Wu 5 attack will deplete a player’s health resource, and if said resource is completely depleted, the game is lost. In the context of the framework of activity theory, there is a clear object: trying to reach the next level. Following what I observed from popular games, the player is the subject, the input buttons their tools, and there are a clear set of rules. Most importantly, the actions executed to perform the object are controlling the player character’s movement and engaging with the parry mechanic. The first part of this game revolves around learning and mastering these mechanics. The game’s overall objective is to progress through levels until they beat the final boss.

Figure 2: A screenshot of the game depicting one of the combat encounters ​ In order to incentivize the players to use these mechanics, I worked on trying to make the parry mechanic feel more rewarding to use. The primary way to defeat enemies was through an attack mechanic. Pressing a designated attack input slowly depletes an enemy’s health resource. Theoretically, players could rely solely on movement to avoid enemy attacks while using the attack input to defeat the enemies without ever engaging with the parry mechanic.

During one of my first rounds of playtest, consisting of around 5

Wu 6 people, I noticed this when a player breezed through the content by quickly attacking enemies to death before he would be forced to use the parry mechanic to survive. To fix this, I took inspiration from major video games. In Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, poise is a way to reward the players for blocking. When a player successfully blocks an attack, the poise meter fills by a certain amount. When the meter is full, the enemy is temporarily stunned and is open to a special attack. In Ms. Mushroom and the Goblin Goons, the mechanic was implemented in a similar fashion. Each enemy has a poise bar, and executing a successful parry rewards the player with the bar being filled by a moderate amount. After the bar is full, the enemy is stunned, giving the player a window to deal a stronger, enhanced attack (see Figure 3). After implementing this, a separate issue arose in that the poise bar and the attack system were both completely isolated from one another. Wanting players to engage with both parrying and attacking for more dynamic gameplay, I made it so normal attacks would also fill the poise bar, but by a much smaller amount compared to a successful parry.

Figure 3: A screenshot displaying an enemy with a full poise meter, ready to be attacked ​ Another problem that arose while testing was that the game was often too punishing. A missed parry would cause the player to

Wu 7 lose a significant amount of health, which could create frustration, especially since the game demanded extremely precise timing.

This went against one of the core things that I noticed while researching other games: easy execution. From watching others play, I realized that the parry mechanic was often difficult for new players to grasp. In order to remedy this, I introduced two additional mechanics. Firstly, I introduced a regeneration mechanic, in which the player could restore some health in exchange for standing still for a period of time. This was done to make the player feel less vulnerable, and to make losing health less punishing. It also created an interesting decision option for the player, making the game feel more dynamic: if they had a window of safety, they were forced to make a decision between using their time to heal or to attack the enemy. The second mechanic I introduced was a secondary timing window for the parry. If the player pressed the input too early, there would be a longer time window after the initial “perfect” time window where an incoming attack would still be considered parried. This “imperfect” parry did not fill the poise meter, but also heavily reduced all damage that the player would take. That way, a player that could not perfectly execute precisely timed inputs could still beat the game, albeit in a slower fashion than those that could. ​ After implementing these mechanics, I conducted a second playtest round, using the same group as the previous round plus two new players. From the responses I received, I created several more major mechanics. One of these mechanics was the currency mechanic. The issue that I encountered was that players were actively running past enemy encounters instead of fighting them.

Due to this, the combat patterns that I created weren't being engaged with, and thus couldn’t be mastered. In order to remedy this, I took inspiration from a game mechanic that many games utilize: currency. In short, to incentivize players to engage with difficult mechanics, games like Dark Souls, Hollow Knight, and

Wu 8 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice employ currency rewards, which can be traded in later for various items. When a player defeats a combat encounter, they are given a certain sum of currency, scaling depending on the difficulty of the encounter. After adding this system, I created an interactable shop interface that accepted the currency in exchange for various power-ups. ​ Another mechanic I implemented was the build system, or a player customization system. During the playtest, the gameplay was incredibly linear; players followed the same path and all were forced to interact with the combat system in the exact same way.

Since each player had to follow the same route and learn the same patterns, some had a lot of trouble, while others breezed through.

This was because the game’s structure favored certain habits and playstyles, while punishing others. In order to remedy this, I added a large amount of collectibles around the game’s world. These collectibles augment the player’s power in unique ways. For example, one rewards using the healing ability often, while another rewards pressing parry inputs perfectly. Different playstyles were now incentivized instead of punished. A player that relies on creating distance and healing could have just as much fun as a player who really enjoys skill intensive timing mechanics. Of course, these collectibles weren’t designed to warp the core gameplay too much; all players were still expected to use the parrying and attacking mechanic to defeat enemies, as I wanted that to be the main pattern to master. Another mechanic I added was the level-up mechanic. Players can trade currency and explore to find level up materials. Each level can be allocated to a different attribute, each bolstering a different playstyle. The attributes "strength" and "dexterity" both empower the game’s base attack mechanic, through damage and speed respectively. The attribute "vitality" increases the player’s health pool, and the attributes "focus" and "harmony" empower a ranged, distance based playstyle. This was done in order to further augment the player’s

Wu 9 customization in conjunction with the collectibles system (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: A screenshot depicting the attribute menu, allowing players to customize their playstyle ​ Additionally, although the game was short, by the final stretch, parrying had become trivialized. Following Raph Koster’s theory, I added a second kind of attack that enemies could perform.

These attacks are visually indicated through a red coloring, and cannot be parried, but rather must be moved away from. This forces the player to mix in the movement mechanics rather than just relying on the parry mechanic. In conjunction with my own spellcasting system, the player customization system, and the game’s varying enemy variety, the new “unblockable attack” mechanic made the game feel constantly challenging. ​ Ultimately, creating a fun experience in a video game was a very challenging experience. Through building a game from the ground up, I realized the importance of many mechanics that modern video games utilize. Even so, Ms. Mushroom and the Goblin Goons was still a relatively unoriginal work, boasting some mechanical confusion despite the many rounds of playtesting.

Even so, I feel as if I succeeded in creating a fun experience, as such a sentiment was shared among my playtesters. For one to create their own creative project, and to implement daring

Wu 10 mechanics beyond just those from inspirations, it is vital to understand the theoretical foundations that a fun game is built on.

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