week5

Pleasures of play- Flow
Play, huizinga (1970:p25) says, is “a non material activity”. I agree with this statement, though there is pleasure involved and I am going to examine the pleasure of play we derive from flow. Flow is , Csikszentmihalyi says, “a particular state of mind in which a participant achieves a high degree of focus and enjoyment” (salen and Zimmerman, 2004:p336). Csikszentmihalyi goes on to say it is a zen like state. Flow is according to csikszentmihalyi, a state where “action follows upon action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention by the actor” ( poole, 2000:p168).
I experienced this state while I was playing Max Payne, in which the player has to shoot everyone they see (well that's what I do) get to the next level by finding the correct way. Csikszentmihalyi says that there are 8 components of flow which are (salen and Zimmerman, 2004:p336-338) clear feedback and goals, control in uncertain situations, challenging activity, merging of action and awareness, concentration, loss of self consciousness and transformation of time. I remember a special stage in Max Payne where I experienced flow. In this stage the character was in a big hall and there were lots of people coming to kill the character. That was when I experienced flow. Their was a clear goal: kill all the people without dying and reach the other end of the hall. The feedback was my health bar and the number of people I was killing. Though I had control to kill people and save my life but also with it the risk of dying. The whole stage was very challenging of not difficult. When I was in this stage I started shooting wildly at first but after a little while I started shooting spontaneously with good results and a high level of concentration, shooting and ducking without being perfectly aware of it. Every step and movement was casual and without any sense of time until of course my character was killed. After the death of my character the feeling was like coming out of a trance. When it was over I was aware that I had been in a flow state. I tried to complete the stage three times at last giving up and not in a state of flow anymore. Flow is a very common concept that I think every gamer experience’s (with or without being aware of what it means in theory) at some point or another.

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Bibliography:
Huizinga,J.(1970) HOMO LUDENS a study of the play element in culture
Poole, S.(2000) TRIGGER HAPPY videogames and entertainment revolution
Salen,k. and Zimmerman, E. (2004) RULES OF PLAY game design fundamental