Assignment 3: Flow
For many years, I didn’t like the FPS genre. Not only did I live on a dial-up connection until college (which hardly supported networked FPS play), but I wasn’t a skilled twitch gamer either. Though I’d tried an occasional FPS at a friend’s house, I owned none and found the style of game play to be very frustrating. Without the skills to play the genre well, and hating the panicked feeling of anxiety enough not to want to learn, I chose to ignore the genre for the most part. Lacking both the entertainment and social motivations to explore the realm of FPS games, I’d always preferred and turned to more story-driven ‘intellectual’ games – and for that matter, I still do. Yet I’ve grown to appreciate the FPS in a social setting.
More recently than most I started playing Counter-Strike from time to time. It was the first FPS game I’d played consistently since Tribes, a considerably older game that was popular back in my high school days. I started playing Tribes in high school when some friends did – given my gaming preferences, it would not have happened otherwise. When I played Tribes, I approached it in much the same intellectual way that I’d dealt with other games – I’d work alone (as my friends and I rarely seemed to be able to log on at similar times), find strategic locations, good cover, wait for the perfect shots. While that has its own intrinsic value, I never achieved a state of flow doing it. Each action was carefully planned and timed, a calculated approach to gaming that offered satisfaction, but no true thrills or challenges.
As I began playing CS, I had a very different experience from my earlier tries at the genre. CS forces the players into teams, small units in levels that are typically small enough as to keep players within reasonable distance of each other. Tribes had maps so expansive that I could play for hours and never encounter another member of my team. With the forced team interaction of CS, I found the social aspects and strategies that emerged from team play to be remarkably compelling. Not only did having the reassuring presence of teammates allow for a greater degree of relaxation, but the social interaction and camaraderie truly created a different experience. While I realize that I likely could have achieved this is any networked FPS, CS forced it on me, showing me what a powerful experience a good FPS can provide. The smaller maps do not allow for the fully lone wolf strategy, nor are there typically wholly-protected sniper spots in which to hide. I think it was the forced team mechanic for me that allowed me to slip from the anxiety area of Csikszentmihalyi’s chart into a flow experience and truly begin to move and experiment within the FPS. Once I discovered the fun of firefights, chases, surprises – general spontaneity with the game – I was able to truly ‘zone out’ and just enjoy the experience, even given that I’m still not a particularly skilled player. All I had needed was the right game to show me how.