Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Flow is part of a psychological theory, first proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi; it describes a
state of focused motivation where someone's so involved and energized by what she's doing
that she becomes completely absorbed and caught up in it. This state of flow is similar to col-
loquial ideas like “being in the zone.” It sounds like a wonderful thing; understandably, many
game creators want as much flow as possible in their games. Flow doesn't just come out of
nowhere, though. Much has been written about flow, but most of what's useful for making
games can be summarized in three elements
that Csíkszentmihályi says are necessary for flow
to occur.
The first condition for flow is a situation with goals and a participant who can take action to
make progress toward those goals. Luckily for us, both these things are fairly common elements
of games. The second condition for flow is feedback: the person experiencing flow has to see
what happens as she tries to move toward her goal and be able to adjust her actions to respond
to changing demands. If this sounds familiar, it's because feedback is exactly what we've been
referring to as resistance. Flow is just one way to talk about what happens when the
objects,
verbs, and resistance of a game develop at a particular pace that encourages a player to stick
around for more of the conversation.
It's not enough to simply give players feedback in response to their actions. The third element
of flow is that demands on the player's choices and actions
must
change and evolve over time.
At first, figuring out how to use a game's verbs to jump over a wall might be an interesting goal
with feedback. The player figures out when to jump, and the game shows her that she made
it over the wall. Now imagine repeating that action. If she had to jump over the same wall in
a modded version of
Super Mario Bros.
, at the same interval, for
ten minutes on end, it would
become tedious. It would turn into a test of patience more than anything else, and it potentially
would feel like a waste of time (see Figure
6.1
).
Figure 6.1
What if your avatar had to tediously jump over a long series of walls?
The simplicity and lack of evolution in repetitive, already mastered tasks results in
boredom
, one
of the two pitfalls that disrupt flow. On the flip side, flow can also be disrupted if challenges are
too difficult before the player has enough understanding and mastery of verbs to overcome
them. If the next challenge after jumping over a simple wall involves a highly developed use of
the verb that requires a lot of timing, the player may fail over and over again. She may end up
feeling like her attempts are futile. This results in
frustration
a
waste of time. The player feels stuck “doing nothing” rather than continuing to move through a
flow-inducing series of evolving choices, actions, and challenges.
and, like boredom, it can feel like
