The flow model is a psychological model about motivation and learning. It's a recurring tenant of my creative research. Developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, it describes a mental state of extreme focus and joy, called 'flow'. For Csikszentmihalyi, flow is a very central and important emotional component of our lives, but I'm more interested in how it applies to learning, and skill. Below is a graphical representation of flow seen in Csikszentmihalyi's book.
The implications for video game design can be simply stated as this: at any given time in your game, the challenge given to your player must be neither too easy, nor too difficult for their skill level. In order for the player to actually enjoy solving the problem, the game must match them with an adequate challenge. Examples in video games of all kinds are ubiquitous. Skyrim is often criticized for having dungeons and monsters that do not increase in complexity or skill. The player may find Skyrim's dungeons a lot of fun at the start of the game, but as they level up and unlock new abilities, in addition to just becoming better at handling the game's combat encounters strategically and reflexively, the skill-to-challenge ratio quickly falls into the boredom zone. But in Crusader Kings II (CKII), a grand strategy game set in medieval Europe, the player is advised by the game to begin a session as the Duke of Normandy, or as King Harold of England, right in the heat of the English war of succession. Navigating this event skillfully requires a good understanding of Crusader Kings's war mechanics, city building, complex political gameplay, and many more elements that a new player - or even a seasoned one - will not be ready to employ. Such an experience easily falls into the anxiety section of the graph, and will likely result in a frustrating and confusing first game of CKII, possibly resulting in the player never trying to play again. All this happens because the game actually suggests that a new player should try to play as these characters, rather than a much easier, much slower-paced and smaller scale start as a duke of Ireland, or vassal of a larger kingdom. In addition, as the game is tailored around historical accuracy, CKII quickly employs gameplay surrounding the crusades and papal politics, long before a novice player has even had a chance to learn some of the basic mechanics.
The game I often cite as a masterpiece of well-paced challenge is Portal. Portal's core mechanic centers around jumping through portals to complete spatial puzzles. With such an unintuitive and unheard of task, employed to solve difficult logic puzzles no less, you would expect the game to suffer from an even less ideal learning curve than Skyrim or Crusader Kings II, as the designers may attempt and fail to predict the player's progressive understanding of a complicated mechanic. But in fact, Portal progresses quite smoothly and quite comfortably for most of its players. It begins with some simple levels that exhibit the basic concept of wall-mounted portals, before handing the player a portal gun that can fire just one portal, then two portals, moving on to introduce momentum and jumping puzzles, weighted cubes, and hostile turrets. Portal finally tests the player's skills in all of these areas, with a series of complicated tasks that include all previous aspects, before one final 'boss' puzzle. These final challenges only occupy the last quarter of the game, thus the common observation that Portal is 90% tutorial. In my experience, most players manage with each puzzle just fine. The game rarely dips into boredom or anxiety. It remains in the flow channel, adjusting the required challenge at roughly an equal rate to the player's progressively increasing skill.
How does Portal manage to stay in the flow channel, where Skyrim falls into boredom, and CKII into anxiety, along with so many other games? Csikszentmihalyi provides some functional guidance to encouraging flow. First, he identifies attention as the primary resource of a person performing a difficult task. He literally analyses it as if it were a resource; the psychological equivalent to physical energy. If several things are on a person's mind, that person is not applying themselves fully to the task at hand; Csikszentmihalyi calls this a state of 'psychic entropy'. If most or all of someone's attention is being applied to just one challenge, however, then the inverse emotional state is achieved - that state being flow. In this somewhat drawn out analysis, Csikszentmihalyi is basically summarizing one of his eight identified characteristics of flow. Four of these characteristics are actually conditions for flow, so I'll talk about these.
1. The task must be possible to complete.
2. We must be able to concentrate on what we are doing (as elaborated on above).
3. The task's objectives must be clear.
4. Immediate feedback must be provided.
It is interesting how closely these correlate with some principles I'm already familiar with in game design. Principle one, for example, is essentially a rephrasing of the 'options principle', 'counter-play', or the law of feasibility. The player must have a chance of actually succeeding at the task you give them. An impossible task is absolutely no fun, and an improbable one is also quite frustrating. This seems simple enough, but I've found that the lack of the options principle appears in unexpected places. For example, in a competitive multiplayer game. If one player is losing, and nothing can be done to actually turn the game in their favour (i.e. there are no options), the result is an extremely frustrated player. A game designer needs to ensure that in almost all situations, the player has the ability to achieve their task.
Principle two is very encompassing and quite abstract. Csikszentmihalyi means it in the sense that an untroubled personal life leaves someone free to focus on their professional work. Game designers don't have much control over their players personal lives, so this principle can only be applied to the game itself. Clean graphical user interface, and avoiding flooding your player with side-quests, are possible examples of this principle.
I find principle three extremely relevant to tutorial design. Nothing can shut down a player faster than not knowing what they're supposed to be doing, or not understanding how to do it. I experienced a good example of this only a few days ago, playing a horror game called Monstrum for the first time. Monstrum is reminiscent of Amnesia; you navigate corridors and rooms, searching for items and avoiding a frightening monster. However, during my first game it was never made clear to me how I was supposed to finish the level. What was I looking for? What were the win conditions? Without a target to actually aim for, my gameplay was much less engaging. At the same time, this principle crumbles a little when we consider that the challenge in many games, puzzle games in particular, lies in not knowing exactly what to do. In Portal, it is clear that you need to reach the end of the level. What is not clear is the specific steps needed to achieve this goal. The whole fun of the game is figuring out these steps. So I believe the third principle is a balancing act; the player needs an objective, but an unclear path between them and the objective. And again, going pack to principle one, it actually needs to be possible to figure out what this path is.
Finally, principle four is a classic game design imperative. Reward your player for achievement, punish them for failure (but don't punish them too hard). What constitutes a reward, and why a reward might be enjoyable, is an entirely different issue, so I'll just leave it at that for now.
Flow has been employed and investigated by a few game designers, to my knowledge. An excellent example of this is the game flOw, created by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark, and I can only assume named after the theory itself. flOw features a microbial snake/worm character swimming around and eating smaller creatures. The game does have levels, each one progressively more difficult, but the player is given the freedom to move between these levels as they see fit. To ensure that the player does actually progress, a level can be cleared, in which case there is no reason to stay, and being killed by a larger creature will knock the player back a level, so the game ensures the player will remain in the flow channel. flOw is available to play online. A link is provided at the end of this post.
Links
http://www.jenovachen.com/flowingames/flowing.htm - flOw
Bibliography
Csikszentmihalyi, M. 2002. Flow: The Classic Work On How To Achieve Happiness. London: Rider.
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