**4.3 Creation**

*'Creation is the pleasure participants get from having the power to create something while interacting with a work. It is also the pleasure participants get from being able to express themselves creatively'. Zagal, Rick and Hsi ([33], p. 65).*

The final characteristic of the pleasure derived from play is that of creativity. Unlike challenge and completion, for creativity to exist the system being engaged with must offer the opportunity to express creativity for this pleasure to be elicited. This distinction is perhaps not immediately clear, as the definition of creativity is somewhat ambiguous; for example, it could be argued that a chess player displays creativity when playing, taking an unexpected approach to certain game situations. However, for our purposes here we will make the following differentiation, which links to notions of opportunity and uniqueness. Our chess player demonstrates skill and understanding when choosing an unexpected move, but does so in a system with clearly defined set outcomes. This differs from the experience of the painter, where the artist has the opportunity 'to make exist that which didn't' [41]. To return to the example of rock climbing, when the climber climbs an existing route that someone else has defined and laid out, the pleasure of challenge and completion are elicited, but when the climber looks at a virgin cliff and defines a new route from scratch the pleasure of creation is also a factor and can predominate. Or, to take an example from commercial video games, in Minecraft™ the player can create something entirely unique from the varied building blocks provided, with pleasure derived from the creative process, which is non-defined and open-ended. Creativity within gaming then provides a distinct form of pleasure that may or may not be experienced depending on the game and perhaps on the skill of the player.
