Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen Tekinbas & Eric Zimmerman

Author:Katie Salen Tekinbas & Eric Zimmerman [Tekinbas, Katie Salen & Zimmerman, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Computers, Programming, Games, Software Development & Engineering, Computer Graphics, Interactive & Multimedia
ISBN: 9780262299930
Google: QZ7uDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2003-09-25T20:37:20+00:00

Game Flow

Listing categories is one approach to describing pleasure in a game. Are there other approaches? Is it possible to look at game pleasure in a more abstract way to synthesize the diverse pleasures of gaming into a single concept? Think again about the experience of playing a game. One aspect of game pleasure lies in the intensity with which it is experienced, the almost overwhelming sensation of play. Whether the pleasure rests in a cognitive response, an emotional effect, or a physical reaction, the experience of play, and especially play in games, can be strikingly deep. As writer J. C. Herz writes of classic arcade gaming, “Just the emotion, the survival nature of the videogame—you’re tapping into the most powerful human instinct. Survival. Fight or flight. That is so hugely intense that in some ways it becomes too intense. People really lived the games. They dreamed the games.”

All game players have experienced this feeling at one time or another, even if for only a short time. This level of engagement with a game suggests that the player has transcended an ordinary psychological state to arrive at a more profound relationship with the game. The psychologist and theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is best known for his research on what he calls the flow state—a particular state of mind in which a participant achieves a high degree of focus and enjoyment. His book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience offers a great general introduction to his ideas. Flow is filled with anecdotal accounts of individuals achieving a flow state, documented over the years of Csikszentmihalyi’s research.

The phenomenon of flow comes in many forms. Some people reported to Csikszentmihalyi that they reached flow through the rigors of perfecting an assembly line work task, or through the immersive problem-solving of law library research. Others say they achieved flow during the solitary exertion of rock climbing or through the exacting vocation of surgery. What exactly is flow? Csikszentmihalyi suggests that flow is something we have all experienced. It is a feeling of being in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. Although rare, when we achieve a state of flow we are deeply exhilarated. Csikszentmihalyi refers to this phenomenon as an optimal experience.

It is what the sailor holding a tight course feels when the wind whips through her hair, when the boat lunges through the waves like a colt—sails, hull, wind, and sea humming a harmony that vibrates in the sailor’s veins. It is what a painter feels when the colors on the canvas begin to set up a magnetic tension with each other, and a new thing, a living form, takes shape in front of the astonished creator.11

Flow is, more than anything else, an emotional and psychological state of focused and engaged happiness, when a person feels a sense of achievement and accomplishment, and a greater sense of self. What might be the relevance of flow for game design? In many ways, the heightened enjoyment and engagement of the flow state is exactly what game designers seek to establish for their players.

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