Ever since Rules of Play, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow has been a semi-obligatory topic for game design books and courses.
Games sometimes provide Flow, but is creating that Flow a core game design consideration? Is the Flow experience central to why people play games?
Is it worth making a distinction between Flow and an immersive experience?
One thought on “Flow Reconsidered”
Separate but related topic: Flow comes from the field of positive psychology, which also brings us other concepts like empathy, mindfulness, forgiveness, etc.
Mostly, the reason we all know about Flow is because Raph Koster reinstantiated Csikszentmihalyi in the context of game design. Could we do similar things for other elements of positive psychology, and would we find them as useful and relevant as we do flow?
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