Agenda Item Week 8

From the reading: Gameflow: A Model for Evaluating Player Enjoyment in Games- Sweester & Wyeth

Flow is an experience “so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult or dangerous” [Csikszentmihalyi 1990]. This implies that people play games for the experience itself, and for no external reward. Futhermore, "every flow activity provides a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of being transported into a new reality (a familiar sensation for game players)" (3). Also, the criteria were used to develop a concrete understanding of what constitutes good design and player enjoyment in real-time strategy games. The GameFlow model serves as a starting point for academics and game developers to understand enjoyment in games and to conduct further research into understanding, evaluating and designing enjoyable games (24).

Flow experiences consist of eight elements, as follows:
(1) a task that can be completed;
(2) the ability to concentrate on the task;
(3) that concentration is possible because the task has clear goals;
(4) that concentration is possible because the task provides immediate feedback;
(5) the ability to exercise a sense of control over actions;
(6) a deep but effortless involvement that removes awareness of the frustrations of
everyday life;
(7) concern for self disappears, but sense of self emerges stronger afterwards; and
(8) the sense of the duration of time is altered.
Eight core elements that relate to flow: concentration, challenge, skills, control, clear goals, feedback, immersion, and social.

Are there games where this model wouldn't work?

Agenda Item Week 7

In Jonathan Belman's reading, "game reviews", he states "we believe that design decisions affect the range of plausible values interpretations for a game in a roughly systematic way" (2).

"The exact make-up of a particular player's values experience is likely to depend on the idiosyncratic combination of personal, cultural and situational factors that he or she brings to the game" (1). Each person's experience with the game is different. Thus, game values offer personal values of the makers/designers of the game. In a sense, this suggests that games are beginning to resemble more and more like reality.

Examples:
Left Behind: Eternal Forces--
Either this is just poorly balanced game play, or it does suggest something about he relative values of prayer and the lives of non-believers in the designers’ ethos.

Crackdown--
So, while Crackdown can be regarded an intolerant game regarding issues of ethnic origin and gender, it might also be considered tolerant, diverse and inclusive regarding issues of race.

Ico--
The designers of Ico challenge this paradigm that has a religious aspect in it, shifting the focus from violent rescue to caring and protective in-game behaviors.