Where is the Fun?

After reading the Origins of an Industry article I was thinking about the first computer games developed on those large university and military computers, like Spacewar. These games were first developed by the hackers who were exploring the possibilities of Computer capabilities at the time. With thoughts going back to our first week of class on what is fun, I found myself wondering what is was about these very basic first computer games that people found fun? Was it in physically interacting with the device? Was it seeing an output from the device respond to the players input? Was it in seeing the visual display of the computer to create various images? I do not think so, because these initial ‘game developers’ had put in so much time and work with these machines that they knew many of their capabilities and would not be entertained by the same old thing they had seen before. I believe their entertainment came from the thematic tone created by the combination of all of the computer aspects coming together to be called a game. It was the sense of doing something other than math and calculations with a computer. It was not the shapes that made up the space ships or lasers, or the input buttons that caused the game to be fun; but the sense that you were playing a game. I believe it was the sense that you are shooting space ship, aliens, or asteroids; the sort of story or template placed over the non-diegetic computer processes that entertained the players of these first video games. Even now in the present I feel it is the sense of play created by a game itself, which makes it a game.