Everyone should have fun, but winning is relative to who you are playing against. Sure, I have let my kids win but as I want them to enjoy playing games I have too. Do I let them win all the time? No way, they have to learn that they can't be winners all the time.

Against "Adult" players, its harder. I won't loose a game but maybe I won't try as hard as I could or should. Generally on a games evening we play a number of games, and there is never any one winner throughout the night.

Just play the games.

Count Zero
Everyone listens to reason.
.......Neal Stephenson....Snowcrash

In that case, I tend to think people derive enjoyment from different places.

Now, there are people that will play 3 hour games of chess, not talking to the opponent, just sitting there quietly contemplating. Yet at the end of the game, they have indeed enjoyed themselves.

Or at CABS meetings I go to, the wargamers have their huge maps, and piles of chits...and they're just staring over their glasses, and rolling tiny dice into a tower for hours, but they are having fun. It may just not look like the kind of fun we will have in our games of Pitchcar or Cash n Guns.

I agree that some people do lose sight of the fun of a game, but I think even if it doesn't look like someone is having a good time...there is a good chance they are having fun in their own way.

There is a vocal subset of the gaming community that fits your description, Steerpike, but I think that characterization does not fit most gamers.

This Nietzsche quote has stuck with me for many years (gotta put that advanced degree to use somewhere!):

"A man's maturity - consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play."

Children play seriously? Wha? Not serious in the sense that they take themselves too seriously (like you're saying, Steerpike) but serious in that their play is all-encompassing; they throw themselves into it; they lose and find themselves in it and through it. As an adult, this mindset, to be able to lose yourself in the game while still keeping the perspective that it is a game is a roadmap to fun. Not the same kind of fun you have as a kid, not a better kind of fun. Just a different house down the street, or at least a county nearby. This kind of "seriousness" explains how and why it can be fine to let someone win a game if it helps make the experience more fun for those involved.

There's no one monolithic singular FUN (as scooterb23 is so right to point out); it is such a tricky beast. We know it when we have it but we don't always know how we came by it. It arrives invited or not but is always welcome. It can be experienced but takes a deft hand to manufacture. It resists all but the most abstract definitions. It's almost like we have an uncanny instinctual knowledge for fun. But that instinct varies greatly from person to person. Games provide lots of different intersections and wellsprings for fun, but ask each person to define the kind of fun they derive from it and 1. you kill the fun and 2. you'll come up with a ton of different answers.

If you have fun, you've already won. That's what the game experience boils down to, to me. We take some grief over our tag line ("you don't have to play to win, you just have to play") but i am glad to defend it. In fact, I think it is our way of declaring "don't take yourself too seriously." When most people think of games, they think the majority of fun comes from winning. No silver medal for second place, boy! Competition in games is important, absolutely. But winning at the cost of fun is why so many people get turned off to games in the first place.The process of playing is so much more important than winning if you're going to get what we're up to and what the show is all about. If only the winner can have fun that leaves most people out of the loop. It sounds so touchy-feely, but win or lose, the fun from playing is there for the taking for every player in every game.

So, to sum up, don't take yourself seriously, but play like a kid, seriously!

Stephen, still hobbled, bruised and recovering from the dozen roller coasters Dave and Mark made him ride yesterday.

Every gaming group I have been in with more than a few handpicked members has had at least one of these sad, angry individuals. I've seen them in RPG groups, miniatures groups, wargaming groups, etc.

The major common trait that they had is that they needed to Get A Life. In other words, gaming was their life. They tended to be single, underemployed, sometimes quite bright. Their hobby became the focus of their life and therefore anything that didn't align with their goals and vision was subjected to criticism.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Gamers as a group are probably above average in intelligence. However, the school system in the US does a horrible job of developing and socializing bright kids and the dropout rate for gifted kids is the same as the general population. Don't know how it is in other countries.

(As an aside, though I'm a rocket scientist now, I'm 3 hours short of a BA in Sociology to go with my BA in Astronomy and EE master's.)

BTW, the absolutely worst group I've ever seen for these types was the SCA. I had some friends that were honchos in the SCA and went to some events. My wife and I came to the decision that there were too many of these annoying people in the SCA for us to join. I think we made the right decision, based on the experiences these friends had.