- Final Crits
- Post Rules of Play, Chapter 6
Based on Design for Emotion and Flow
- What is "flow"? (a mental/emotional state where all of our attention (or energy) is totally focused on an activity)
- What are some of the things that define "flow"? (Total concentration and focused attention, A sense of control over interactions, Openness to new things, Increased exploratory behavior, Increased learning, Positive feelings)
- How is flow broken?
- How do we cause "flow"? (A clear goal, Immediate feedback on the success of attempts to reach that goal, A challenge you’re confident you have the skills to handle)
- And how can this be applied to design? (creating clear tasks/objectives, building arousal elements to the anxiety level of your users, expanding challenge and ability as proficiency increases, using narrative)
- How well did the games you play induce flow?
What are some lessons we learned?
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In Super Meat Boy (~36min), the designer talked about level design, such as making a level that is just a long gap that requires running to get over, or a solid wall that requires wall climbing. This builds skills through design (instead of text), and gives the user a bigger sense of mastery since they figured it out themselves. This goes with the idea of flow from the reading
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Similarly, the onboarding process for Mailbox guides people to learn essential skills in an easy, low-risk way. Plus, it gives really positive and instant feedback.
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Fez: It's easy to get caught up in endless iterations. Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the necessary.
In many ways, Flow = Good User Experience.
- What games did you guys play?
- Did anybody play a new game?
- How do you learn new games?
- What are the mechanics of the games you played?
- Which games used randomness?
- Which games used "perfect information" (all information is known to all players, eg. Chess) and which had "hidden information"?
- How did these affect the choices that users make? (perfect information games tend to pit players directly against one another, imperfect allow for intrigue, deception and mystery, but players make decisions without full knowledge)
Have students read traits as I play through the level on my screen.
- How is increasing complexity used to induce flow?
- How is increasing complexity used to increase skill level?
- Flappy Bird
- Tic Tac Toe
- Banagrams
- Taboo
Discussion:
- Which games provide the closest thing to flow?
- What were the objectives?
- What about these games make them work or not?
- What are the kinds of choices players could make in each game?
- Why do we care as designers?
Oh my! What a day! Games are fun. Hope you enjoyed them, too. Here's your homework for the weekend:
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Read Rules of Play, Chapter 6 (Interactivity)
Obviously we are designing games to better understand design in a broader sense. This chapter discusses the attributes of interaction and how they can create meaning within a game. We'll talk more about this next week.
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Make a Game
Take a game that only uses pencil and paper (here is a good list to draw from), and modify it's rules so that it encourages a state of flow. Write out the rules and post them to the blog.