You might think of game design as a mechanical process of tuning, but I think theres a definite poetics to it. My experience with flow verified this, not only was it smooth and intuitive in a metrical way you might write about in your thesis, it was a journey to the void.

When I finally descended to the deepest blackness, I saw a snake zooming around a level below. My first impressions was that this was the devil, and only after running away, returing, and then consuming the creature, did I realize that it looked just like me. Thats a crazy metaphore lurking underneath a seemingly simple verb set-up.