CTIN 482 Assignment: FPS meets Flow

When I see this assignment I felt very exciting because my thesis is about implementing mechanics to help more player get into flow in the game. I've read Mihaly Czicksentmihayi's book last spring. And pretty familiar about flow theory and all that.

So I want to talk about Battle Field 2 again which I gave a game deconstruction presentation before. To make this short. I'll give out my version of most important three elements in flow experience instead of the eight in Dr. Czicksentmihayi's book:

1) The player must have the active attitude to enter the flow. If he is sensitive about him being in flow or not, it will not reach him. If he look at games with negative bias, it probably won't catch his flow either.
2) The player has to be totally involved in his action so that he loses track of time and even space.
3) The player should feel in the control, a feeling makes you believe you are on the right track towards the positive goal in your mind

So let's look at Battlefield 2 game play experience among us:

I believe most of us can reach flow in this game especially when we played it before we were assigned this assignments. Although some people may argue, I believe I didn't realize the same flow I had before due to the negative entropy of being conscious about whether am I in the flow or not, itself broke the fundamental rule of total involvement. Yet I reached flow here and there during the player, during those moments I totally forgot about the assignment but concentrated on the game play.

Battlefield 2 is a very mature and polished game. The "polished" here means the gaming experience is not too hard or too easy. It's fair and the player won't complain about the rules, settings or graphic qualities. They barely have any psychic entropy during the game play. This keeps a player in the flow zone.

In terms of lose track of time and space. Nearly all video game today can do that due to the fact when player start playing video game they concern themselves inside the game world. And most video games have fairly enough cognitive loads. In Battlefield 2, player has to pay fully attention to the environment, other players, vehicles, game interfaces, voice and sound effects. They don't have any other time spare to think about their rent or unfinished homework.

Most people will fall in flow when they are winning in the game, but rarely in a losing team. When a player fights his best but still losing, he will feel out of control, and anxious. The normal positive goal between players is to win the game. That's why most people feel frustrated when they are losing. However if the player set his goal to something else for example, team kill or doing stunt. They will not feel bad at all when their team is losing, and they can still fall in to flow in killing their own teammates or doing crazy stunt.

The fully simulated world in Battlefield 2 supports all kinds of possibilities and free spaces for player to define their own goal which helps a lot in terms of getting people in the flow.

Posted by Jenova at September 11, 2005 5:56 PM