I am currently writing a report on flow in game design. I am about to make a discussion whether or not flow is necessary for a good game design.
For you who don’t know what flow is.
“Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.”
I am wondering, when you create a game, or a concept of a game, how much do you think about flow?
Do you think it is necessary to get the player in flow, for the player to have a good game experience?
Playing devil’s advocate, there’s hundreds of games which have minimal flow. Turn based, adventure, roguelike etc… plenty of games you can just pick up, mess about with and drop. Or leave while you do things like put the kettle on. I can’t say Civ 5 has my complete flow going on. I play it while doing other things as well sometimes.
Here’s something to consider: how tiring on the player is it to have nothing but total flow?
Depends on what your concept is and who your target audience is, if youre making games that are supposed to sell a bunch, youre probably aiming at a deliberately paced experiece that consumes you in the alternative universe it offers
On a more artistic note however, i think a game that throws a lot of jarring juxtaposition that break you from ‘playing’ to maybe realising a didactic intention, or prove a point during breaking that immersion, can be effective and a valid ‘expression’ of a game, i dont say storytelling because it might not be telling a story. Its not like you’d sell many copies but in a medium in which you can do anything (its an alternative universe), just sticking to familiarity to give direction and appeal to people its a huge waste of potential. Maybe your definition of flow is a smallminded approach to the medium - no offense meant there by the way, i just think the videogame industry is still very immature and afraid to take risks - a game in which you’re just trying to please and absorb everyone is like saying every book should be like harry potter (not in tone but easy accessibility, and you dont have to think very much), whereas i’m more interested in how someone might feasibly make a game using the same jarring hallucinatory nature of The Naked Lunch… which wouldnt sell much and you wouldnt play it twice but you’d be glad you had the experience
Yeah, I think that the simple answer is “very important for some games, not important for others”.
But I’d like to attack the question: OP, you ask if it’s necessary to achieve flow to provide a good experience. To me that implies a backward causality - I think that a great experience results in flow, not the other way around.
With that in mind, I think that the somewhat more subtle answer is “no, I think good design is necessary for flow”. And even then, it’s only an issue in games where it’s a thing. I don’t really care about flow in Angry Birds, but if the next Bioshock doesn’t get there it won’t keep my interest for long.
Can it be un-tiring?
When I’m playing a game that’s good enough to get me in the flow, I don’t get tired of them. I can happily play them in unhealthily long sittings, and even when my body gets tired I’m often engaged enough that I don’t really care. The rational, responsible part of my brain has to take over at some point and say “righto, you started playing this at 10am, it’s now past midnight and you’ve barely taken a break, it’s time to get some sleep”. And the part of me that’s in the flow is reluctant to stop.
This question was originally given by my game design teacher, and it started great discussion in my class. Glad to see the many points of view on this topic. I already have a lot of great material for my report.
That is a good question. Personally I don’t get tired as long as I am in flow, but when I stop, I can really feel it. I really like The Witcher 2, but after a really fun gaming session for 12 hours, no matter how much I wanted to play, as soon as I started again, I felt like quiting instantly.
Never thought of it like that, but if think flow comes with a great game experience, how do you plan out a great game experience? Personally I think that goals like designing after getting the player in flow, was a good way to design a game. But after many discussion on the internet or in class, I can understand why flow may not be necessary for a good gaming experience. So I am very curious how do you design your game to be a great gaming experience, without including flow in the design phase?
Why does the direction of causality stop it being plannable?
“Flow” and “great experience” are both outcomes. Neither of them are things you put into your game, they’re things that you design for. As such they’re like any other outcome from any other design exercise - find out what supports them and what hinders them in your particular use case and take those things into consideration in your design. You don’t put convenience into a car. A car becomes convenient as a result of a number of factors arising from its design - low maintenance, compact size, fuel efficiency, and so on.
So, what does “including flow in the design phase” mean to you? And how do you “design after getting the player in flow” (ie: how do you propose getting the player in flow without knowing what you’re getting them in flow for)?
fair point.i guess a designer should rather focus designing around choices like fast paced game or fun quick game, instead of designing for the end result.
Knowing what to do
Knowing how to do it
Knowing how well you are doing
Knowing where to go (if navigation is involved)
High perceived challenges
High perceived skills
Freedom from distractions
The above is taken from Schaffer 7 proposed flow conditions. Is the above something you would design a game after?
I really like the idea of designing a great player experience, but even then clear goals for the design team is needed. So instead of asking the design team to get the player into flow, I should rather give tell them to design after the 7 conditions?
Well, going back to the car example, designing convenient cars doesn’t happen by accident. Nor does designing a powerful car, or any other type of car.
The first part of an effective design is knowing what you want to achieve. The next is knowing what factors influence it, which is what the above 7 rules are attempting to define. The next is being able to measure it somehow.
Oddly enough, that lines up pretty much perfectly with the first 3 of Tim Schafer’s 7 rules. Probably because they’re huge psychological ticks for humans in general - we like to have direction, mastery and feedback.
A friend and I started playing Space Hulk online. With him being on a different continent turns are only made every few hours. I wouldn’t call that “flow”, but it isn’t necessary for this kind of game.
I agree with absolutely everything angrypenguin said. I also think the Raider is correct in asking for a definition of flow(just realized there is one in OP), I feel like people are talking about two different things in here.
Flow isn’t a an emergent effect of game design, it’s a feeling that can be achieved in any other discipline as well. Doing something tedious and repetitive will make you bored. Doing something too hard will stress and frustrate you. Flow is right inbetween, doing something challenging enough to keep you concentrated, but at the same time not overstraining enough to frustrate.
I’m in flow when I paint. Or when I race. Sometimes when I am programming.
How important it is for games? I don’t know, probably more important for some games than for others. If I want flow, I’ll take an arcade racer like Need For Speed for a spin. Sometimes I want to relax and just look at nice scenery, so I’ll load up Flight Simulator, put an Airbus on autopilot and just watch it fly an intercontinental flight. Sometimes I’ll load up iRacing so I have to look in the rear mirror every few seconds and listen for the tire squeal while I try to get away from that openwheeler behind me. So yeah, for fun arcade games, probably very important. For simulators that are designed to be realistic first and entertaining second, probably less.
From a development standpoint I think flow should be considered nevertheless, even if it’s not the primary feeling you want to achieve. GUI can be unnecessarily frustrating. So can be bugs or performance issues. Too little rewards or feedback(“juice”) for the player as well.An unfair mechanic can break flow. A wrong difficulty setting most definitely will.
Interestingly, a GUI from a mid-90s game which was sufficient in its time can be considered clunky and complicated these days. Does that mean our “measurement” of flow changes over time?
Interesting indeed. When I think back to '90s games I think about strategy, where everything was neatly organized under 6 orso responsive buttons. Clunky would be what, maybe like a quantity button you can’t hold down? Or a text field that doesn’t have focus when it should? Dragging and resizing windows, not being able to click behind an active window maybe.
Those things don’t sound like they require crazy algorithms, maybe it’s just we didn’t realize how efficient those small things are back in the day. I mean, GUIs are barely a few decades old. So sure, our measurement of a GUI over time like it does with graphics. Ideally I would love to interface with computers via brain implant instead of a mouse, and when that day comes, I will scoff at mouses and keyboards.
Whether the state of the art interface at any point in time hinders flow or not is a different question. Do we have more fun and immersive games these days because the controls and graphics are better? I would say not really.
Haha, to me “clunky” is any interface that makes you think about how it works, or which actively slows you down. Good interfaces impart information to the user without conscious effort, and allow tasks to be completed intuitively. Those are moving goal posts depending on the target audience, of course.
I can’t think of a 90’s game that had flow and also had a clunky interface. Examples?
One of my favorite 90’s games is Baldur’s Gate. It had a clunky interface. It does not have flow.
In fact, most games that have flow have pretty minimal interface, or interfaces that add to rather than detract from the game’s engagement.
Dune II. I had great fun with it when it was new, but going back to its desert worlds without unit grouping, build queues and selecting multiple units at once after playing C&C or StarCraft makes it obvious how much better interfaces got over time. I never had the impression that it was clunky at its time, but once I got spoilt by its successors its flaws couldn’t be ignored.