Mission One – Find the Facts - Creating E-Learning Games with Unity - page 63

Designing games to maximize fun
Prior to designing the first playable level in the game, an understanding of how to
model fun in games is required. Have you ever been involved in an activity and lost
track of time, such as playing a game or otherwise? Cognitive psychologists call this
mental state flow , and it is thought to be one way of maximizing fun. This is desirable
because when the user is most engaged and having fun, learning and retention of in-
formation is maximized.
Game designers are interested in how we can design games that maximize the likeli-
hood of the user entering this mental state.
It turns out that we have a model for how to entice the user to achieve flow. Consider
the previous diagram that illustrates the relationship between the difficulty and the skill
required for a given task. This is when the activity is moderately challenging and un-
der moderate pressure. If the activity is too hard or too easy, or if the situation is too
boring or too stressful, it reduces the likelihood of maximizing fun via the flow model.