[cogman10]

This is all well and good, and I agree, fun can be different things to different people. So can good.

But that wasn't the comment I was responding to. The comment I responded to made the positive assertion "Things are fun because they are profitable"

> what you define as fun isn't apparently what others define as such, at least when it comes to voting with their dollars.

If you want to change the argument to "fun is unknowable" I can get behind that statement. However, I think the slot machine example is a really good one to prove that fun and profit are not the same thing. Even if you want to argue that the slot machines can be fun, I think you'd have a hard time arguing that addicts to slots are all having a blast.

What's changed in the gaming industry is more focus on profit and less on fun. The gaming industry has learned is what B.F. Skinner discovered decades ago [1], how to get repeat behaviors out of someone with randomize rewards.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-wise/201311/us...