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Flow in Game Design: Achieving Immersive Engagement

This lecture explores the concept of flow in game design, where players are so engaged in an activity that nothing else matters. Learn how to create realistic goals, match skills and opportunities, and develop player commitment. Discover the importance of difficulty, pacing, and learning affordances in enhancing the flow experience. Get practical tips on designing interactions and managing repetition for mastery.

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Flow in Game Design: Achieving Immersive Engagement

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  1. Week 3 GAM 224

  2. Outline • Announcements • Demos • Break • Discussion • Break • Lecture • Playability • Flow

  3. Announcements • Games on order • order was mistakenly canceled • reorder happening now • Change to discussion leader duties • eliminate the genre paper requirement • Book • arrival date unknown • read e-book from library

  4. Flow • "The state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it." • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  5. Flow state • Loss of sense of time • Intense focus • Responses are fast, continuous and (almost) unconscious • Many examples • athletes, musicians, surgeons, pilots, soldiers • gamers

  6. What builds flow? • Attention invested in realistic goals • Skills match opportunities for action • Skills can be mastered • Learning • acquisition of skills • increased ability to participate • shared community / developed commitment

  7. Flow as a design goal • Present the player with realistic goals • Match skills and affordances • Teach skills • Have those skills increase level of participation • Develop the player's commitment

  8. Realistic goals • Goal is realistic if it can be accomplished by the player • might require acquisition of new skills • Player has to adopt the goal and understand that it is possible • Level of challenge

  9. Level of Challenge • "hide and seek"

  10. Difficulty • Too hard • game can't be enjoyed • Too easy • game is boring • nothing to learn

  11. Quantifying difficulty • Analytical • # of choices • complexity of decision • branching factor • complexity of execution • Empirical • Playtesting

  12. Adjusting difficulty • new option • new opponent / environment • new constraint

  13. Pacing • "Pace" of the game • speed at which new challenges are introduced • = speed at which player must master each in order to succeed

  14. Arcade games • primary challenge • speed and accuracy of response • "button mashing" • difficulty adjustments • number of targets • response speed required • cost of error • usually continuous increase of difficulty until impossible

  15. Example

  16. Match skills and opportunities • More opportunities than skills • player will flounder • game becomes overwhelming • More skills than opportunities • game is limiting • player feels confined

  17. Affordance • Psychologist J. J. Gibson • argued that perception exists to support action • objects have perceptual properties that tell us they can be manipulated • Designing artifacts • means designing affordances into them

  18. Examples • coffee mug • game controller

  19. Learning affordances • Players have to learn • what their capabilities are • what features of the world signify that these capabilities can be used • Example • ability to jump • are these two platforms close enough?

  20. Mastery • When the choices and perceptions become "automatic" • non-deliberative • Can only happen when • skills are fully learned • perceptions correctly trained • Not 100% essential to flow • but a big enhancer

  21. Path to mastery = repetition • Basic psychology • repetition of skill increases performance • But • how to manage repetition? • major concern in game design

  22. Repetition • Invariant • starting level all over • Drawback • level involves many skills • failure in one means need to repeat all • Decomposition • emphasize new skills as acquired • Problem • must generate more levels • Practice Mode • allow player to practice outside of main game

  23. Interaction loops • Computer game skills = interaction loops • evaluation situation • choose action • execute action

  24. Designing interactions • What information must be extracted from the environment? • What choices must be made? • How will choices be executed?

  25. Example

  26. Next week • Strategy • Mortega – Civilization 3 • Reedy – Warcraft 2 • Kaplanskiy – Evil Genius • Johnson-Vinion – Railroad Tycoon 3 • Lanucha – Sims 2 • Hernandez – Rise of Nations • Ingebrigsten – Age of Empires • Henry – Warcraft 3 • Irsheid – Full Spectrum Warrior • Piloni – Star Trek: Armada 2

  27. Homework #1 • Game ideas

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