The Flow State And How It Affects Gaming
Xavier Baez
In psychology, there are endless amounts of different states your mind can be in, but I will be talking about one of, if not the, most pleasurable sensations you can have: being in the flow. The flow state is a state of mind that was named and popularized by psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura. “There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback,” Csikszentmihalyi said in a 2004 TED Talk.
Now that we know what the flow state is, it’s time to explain how it affects your gaming experience (or anything that you enjoy doing). When you play a video game, it’s going to be an experience. There will be times when the way forward seems impossible to reach. There also will be times when you find the puzzles and bosses way too easy. Games usually fall into each of these scenarios, causing your experience to be hampered; but the way to enter the flow state is to be in the middle of the two. You want a challenge, but you also don’t want it to be too easy. The goal is to find that middle ground that provides a perfect challenge for you to utilize your skills.
One example is fighting games. There is a big skill gap between the worst player and the best player. When both players are put together, the best player would win every time. There is no enjoyment for either player, as the worst player keeps losing and the best player keeps winning; so no one gets the stimulation they need. This problem can be solved by putting the worst player in a match with other players around their skill level so they could both figure out the game at the same pace. On the other hand, the best player would need to face off against another that is near the same skill level as the them so both of their skills are pushed to their limits. When the worst player gets the practice they need, they can focus more on the game and improve their overall performance. As battles become more intense, they know what needs to be done in order to win, causing their enjoyment to skyrocket when they start to catch others off guard, improving their play. This is how most gaming addictions start: you feel that rush of winning for the first time and you want to be in that state of flow but don’t really understand how it happened, so you keep playing in order to get that feeling again. In the best player's case, they already know what needs to be done in order to feel the flow, but they have trouble finding challenges that allow them to reach that state of mind. When the best player finds that competition, they are able to get that challenge that perfectly aligns with their own skill set, causing both players to have a high end match. You can experience the flow state no matter what you are doing, because all that matters is that you are enjoying the challenge presented to you by using all the skills you learned through that task to complete it.
