Games are tasty patterns for your brain to eat. Fun happens when your brain chunks information into mastery, moving from conscious learning to automatic pattern recognition. But once the patterns are solved, we need new ones to stay motivated.
In Five Definitions of Game, I talked about my favorite definition of game:
"A game is a problem solving activity, approached with a playful attitude".
But here's another one I recently learned from game designer Raph Koster:
"Games are just exceptionally tasty patterns to eat up."
Our brains constantly crave patterns. Games feed this hunger. (Related: Curiosity is pain.)
When you first learn a game, you process every rule separately. With practice, you begin to recognize patterns. You combine individual actions into meaningful units. In cognitive science, this is known as chunking.
For example, a beginner chess player thinks about each piece while an experienced player sees entire positions as single concepts.
As you refine your understanding, your chunk size gets bigger, and conscious learning becomes automatic. You don't just remember the facts.
You feel it instinctively, like a musician improvising, an athlete performing reflexively. Gameplay becomes fluid.
However, your brain's goal is efficiency. It turns repeated actions into automatic routines to save energy for new challenges. Once you've solved a game's patterns, your brain has "eaten" all the interesting bits.
This is why tutorials feel tedious once you know the game, why speedrunners keep finding new challenges.
This phenomenon extends beyond gaming. We enjoy activities most when we're still discovering, chunking, and growing. Once the patterns are solved, we need new ones.