More Flow Needed

This week we enhanced our learning of the gaming world.



Last week I discussed gamer’s habits and how playing games affected them. This week I will look into why this happens using something called ‘flow’.

So, what is flow?

Flow is what something gamers use when describing their state between stress and boredom. This is calculated by the level of challenge and ability of the player.

However, flow is not just used in games and can be applied to everyday life.

It is important for games to weave in and out of the flow zone as to keep the attention of the player, a game must be challenging enough that the player feels the need to beat it but not impossible as the player would get bored.

This is the same in any school, work and social life. The balance between stress and boredom needs to be balanced.

Most students would say they feel very little flow whilst at school as they need to be prepared for work where they will come across states of stress. Flow isn’t desired by teachers for this reason, stress can be good and is an everyday part of life that people need to be ready for.

The same with a social life, there needs to be busy days as well as lazy days to enable the balance between stress and boredom is just right. Work and social lives can also balance themselves out to make an all-round flow, people with highly stressful jobs normally need to do easy chilled things to wind down and relax, whereas people with less stressful jobs enjoy being busy in their own spare time.

People have the ability to turn games off, which they cannot do with their life so it is very important for game makers to get the flow levels right and ensure people keep playing their game.

I have created a diagram to show the level of flow and how it is created. As you can see when the challenge and ability are matched it creates perfect flow. When the challenge is greater than the ability stress is created and when the ability is greater than the challenge boredom kicks in.