The common definition of the psychology term “Flow” is: the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, involvement, and in which success seems easily attainable but not too easily attainable. Let's break this down for a moment...
Here is the basic breakdown of pure psychology flow theory, as stated by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. As states there are several different parameters that affect the induced emotional state. One critical thing to understand when applying flow theory to game design is that player skill can be accounted for in more ways than just making things three times as strong and inhumanly fast. Now I'll go over the elements of flow that go directly into the game's design.
Energized Focus: This state of mind is what gaming is all about, we grab the player's attention and we hold onto it with Vader's force grip. Visuals, sound, challenges, they all combine in perfect harmony to create a flow that both evokes emotions in the player and makes them slightly forget that what they're
doing isn't reality.
Involvement (a.k.a. Replacing Reality): Expanding further upon how we begin pulling the player away from reality, 'involvement' is a great choice of words in this genre because a player can feel like they are truly involved in the events of a game world. An excellent example of this is Bethesda's new sequel to their Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim. Massive landscapes, NPCs that operate casually and interact with one another, wildlife living normally such as seeing wolves attack a rabbit, this all provides the groundwork for something known as 'suspension of disbelief', which is a term for justifying the use of fantastic elements in a work of art. With suspension in place, the player can feel truly rewarded for their participation in the world they're inhabiting. And finally, arguably the most critical element of flow theory: Success.
First off, consider other activities besides gaming that induce states of feeling “in the zone” or something totally enthralling for some people. Painting models, knitting, sports, working out, all of these activities induce flow-state. Why? Take painting models or knitting for example. For those who are interested in these hobbies, they have provided themselves this feeling of energized focus, they are involved in their work, and the task at hand will eventually result in success and a feeling of accomplishment. Coming closer to gaming, we have sports. Here a challenge is introduced, overcoming an opposing team. As challenges are introduced into the system of flow, the end result becomes more and more powerful. That feeling of elation and accomplishment reaches euphoric levels, but at the same time that feeling of defeat or messing up also gains in power.
In gaming there are varying kinds of challenge, degrees of challenge, etc. to consider. To select a couple of popular/well-known gaming examples to review, we'll go with Call of Duty, Ninja Gaiden: Black, Assassin's Creed, the game Flow, and how can I write an article that doesn't have a section about D&D? Come on now.
Call of Duty: This is an example of a game that has some Flow rights and wrongs. Call of Duty on the normal settings provides a pretty excellent feeling of focus and challenge, getting the player into the feel of warfare, intense action sequences, etc., and it even has excellent involvement points with gorgeous environments, excellent voice acting, all things that really immerse a player in the game. However, the system in which you can wait a few moment and grievous gunshot wounds suddenly go away detracts from that involvement severely. Suspension of disbelief can't handle that level of a logic break. This issue is also enhance as the difficulty increases, naturally. The second break in flow comes at these higher difficulties, Veteran especially, in which the challenge presented is no longer assuring the player of a modicum of success. It's like the game punishes people for choosing this difficulty setting by making enemies into demigods that can see through walls. The next game is another example of why killing your player so many times does not make them feel challenged.
Ninja Gaiden Black: Now this is a game for the hardcore player. Again it incorporates all the excellent traits of flow, gameplay and reward and because of this Ninja Gaiden became a great console hit. However, Ninja Gaiden shifted towards placing the player up against increasingly impossible odds, and some bosses took even hardcore players scores of deaths to defeat! This takes that aspect of success and blows it out of the extreme end of the difficult spectrum. It's so inhumanly hard that the player gets angry, and when they finally do beat it instead of the normal elation and feeling of “Aha! I am a super awesome ninja that slew these foul demons!” its “HAH. SUCK THAT ONE GAME, I BEAT YOU. GAH I HATE YOU!”
This is not our goal as game designers.
Assassin's Creed: Now this is an excellent example of flow in all aspects. It is nigh-incomparable in the depth of its environment against other Action games. The level of immersion and story depth and sheer amount of focus players give it is impressive, but on top of that the game has a perfect balance of challenge and success. It not only places the player in a position of power – a critical element in game design is empowering the player – but the combat system in the game allows players to take on a dozen enemies in martial combat at once and skirt that edge of being overwhelmed. Make one too many missteps and you'll be on the retreat, but even then the player can escape onto a nearby rooftop or between buildings and avoid that flow-destroyer called death.
Flow (Game): This is more of an art piece than a video game but it captures the essence of flow theory quite well. It isn't challenging, it is aesthetically pleasing as well as having excellent sound, and the player is rewarded for every single successful step. Essentially it's a glorified game of snake that the player can't lose.
D&D: Now that we've gone through so many examples of flow and you're all masters on it now (right?), you're probably already formulating that D&D itself has no flow, because the entire point is to create the adventure and the game yourself! The DM and the players all contribute to the involvement that the adventure can have, as well as the focus you pay to it, and it is up to the DM to create a dynamically challenging campaign that adjusts according to player skill, player power, and even simple variance in dice rolls. Therefore I'll leave you with a few D&D examples of good and bad flow: Good Flow
Players solve a mystery, crime or puzzle without sitting at the table totally lost and guessing, while also not having too easy of a time with it.
The party encounters a large group of enemies and barely claims victory, each member barely hanging on to life and many of their resources and skills depleted.
Bad Flow
Players encounter a dragon in a narrow tunnel and one use of it's breath weapon kills a party member or two.
Players are awarded far too much loot and/or equipment, or a challenge is simply not made hard enough, and your bored party rolls its way through an encounter while watching TV and texting.
About the Author
Richard Wirth is a Game Designer and Creative Writing student at UT Dallas. He is a competitive Magic: The Gathering player, having placed 17th at Grand Prix: Dallas/Fort Worth and having one of the Top 50 highest Total ratings in North America. He has played D&D and a plethora of RPGs since the late 90s, and finds time to be a hardcore MMO player and writer.
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